Dying Snails, Crazy Algae, No Nitrates: What is wrong?

[Zakary2003]

Sounds like Dino’s

I can recognize dinos because my family's 60 gallon reef had them for a while. I have had dinos in the past in this tank a few months ago. I don't see them now. Doesn't mean they aren't there though.

 

[vetteguy53081]

First pic: the "day" portion of the schedule. Second pic: just the "cool white" channel on.
Keep in mind it's far less blue or yellow in person but my smartphone doesn't see that. This is also after an hour long session of algae removal.

No sign of dino but heavy presence of Green Hair algae.
Seeing little coral on therock, I would place them in a container of tank water and pull off as much as you can by hand and scrub the rest with a firm toothbrush and some 3% hydrogen peroxide.
Return to tank, reduce white light intensity and number of hours of white lighting and add some snails such as :
Astrea
cerith
turbo grazer
trochus
I would say aa sea hare but once algae is gone, you will want to rehome it

A Pencil urchin

8-10 Caribbean blue leg hermits

Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
What is your phosphate level?
Is tank at or near a window?

 

[Zakary2003]

Feed your tank normally. Add rowaphos to a mesh bag and exchange it every two weeks. The algae is going to mess with your test kits. You will need to do manual removal (pinch it out or siphon)(exchange your carbon every month). Other than that leave your tank alone and let it settle. Nothing good happens fast.

I'm not familiar with rowaphos but I will look into it. I exchange my carbon once a month and just changed it out March 10th. I manually remove the algae every few days with tweezers, a siphon, and by hand. Thanks!

 

[bkwonnn]

I recognize the dying snales and nutrients etc. Tried everything including vibrant. That seemed a good product but killed my sea stars and I think snails and crabs. Also unsettled the tank big time.
I fixed the gha with a sea hare and the dinos with uv like magic. Hope you find a solution

 

[Zakary2003]

No sign of dino but heavy presence of Green Hair algae.
Seeing little coral on therock, I would place them in a container of tank water and pull off as much as you can by hand and scrub the rest with a firm toothbrush and some 3% hydrogen peroxide.
Return to tank, reduce white light intensity and number of hours of white lighting and add some snails such as :
Astrea
cerith
turbo grazer
trochus
I would say aa sea hare but once algae is gone, you will want to rehome it

A Pencil urchin

8-10 Caribbean blue leg hermits

Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet ?
What is your phosphate level?
Is tank at or near a window?

I've been manually removing it and I have been using peroxide to clean the rocks as well. I had snails... they all died. I have a tuxedo urchin. I have around 10 blue legged hermits. I use RODI water. Phosphates are .02, which is low compared to my previous tests. Tank is not near a window, but is near some grow lights for my roommate's indoor plants. The lights don't directly shine into the tank though, and are lower down than the tank and point downwards so I don't think they're the issue.

 

[Lavey29]

Seems like a normal GHA jungle that comes to all new tanks. Weekly water changes with lots of manual removal. Dose your nitrates and phosphate back up so you don't get dinos. Cut lights to 6 hours with blue and uv only no whites. Diverse cleaner crew with turbos and tuxedo urchins. Raise magnesium to 1500. It helps kill off GHA. This is a 3 month process most likely. No harsh chemicals it kills your biome. Add pods and dose PNS probio weekly. It is a natural heterotrophic bacteria that eliminates organic waste in you tank that feeds algae.

 

[Pod_01]

How is the algae so bad when I don't have any readable nitrates?

From my experience algae thrives in low nutrient conditions and it can get what it needs from the rocks or what is bound to the surface. Also if your biofilm dies it releases what the algae needs.

I also believe this is not helping at the moment:

I grow mangroves in the back middle chamber.

They will remove NO3…

I personally would feed good quality pellets few times a day and take the rocks out and scrub clean with toothbrush. Rinse and repeat as required and maybe dose some bacteria potion after cleaning to rebuild part of the biofilm on the rocks.

Reduce light intensity…

I suspect your snails starved and from my experience I am not convinced they eat a lot of GHA as is generally believed. Mine only eat biofilm from glass, back wall etc.. and stay away from algae. Also they do contribute to NO3 so them dying could explain your drop in NO3.

Good luck,

 

[The_Paradox]

I hate doing it but when it gets that bad it’s time for a rip clean or fluconazole. Only had a few times where tanks got like that but any other method is really a loosing battle in a tank that size where you can’t have the right fish. The majority of the clean up crew you can have won’t touch algae that’s that established.

 

[Zakary2003]

I hate doing it but when it gets that bad it’s time for a rip clean or fluconazole. Only had a few times where tanks got like that but any other method is really a loosing battle in a tank that size where you can’t have the right fish. The majority of the clean up crew you can have won’t touch algae that’s that established.

 

[Lavey29]

OP everyone here has had a GHA jungle. You have to stay the course and let the tank evolve. Place your urchins in the middle of it so they have to eat their way out. Lots of manual removal. Get parameters where they need to be. Once the GHA phase passes it is usually replaced with coralline.

 

[Zakary2003]

Lol. So many conflicting responses. I've got people saying leave it alone, use different treatments, different clean up crews, restart the tank, cut the lights, dim the lights, turn off the whites. It's a lot to sift through.

 

[Zakary2003]

Get parameters where they need to be. Once the GHA phase passes it is usually replaced with coralline.

How do I get the parameters where they need to be? My tests aren't working. They show very low nutrients when that's clearly not the case. Do I just ignore the tests until the algae dies down?

 

[thrillreefer]

Lol. So many conflicting responses. I've got people saying leave it alone, use different treatments, different clean up crews, restart the tank, cut the lights, dim the lights, turn off the whites. It's a lot to sift through.

The beauty (curse?) of reefing! Many opinions, and many approaches that can work.

Your tank doesn’t even look too bad, honestly. I’ve had way worse! I don’t see Bryopsis (looks like tiny fern fronds, if you don’t know it), so fluconazole is not a good bet. Typical GHA (Derbesia, etc) that plenty of inverts will eat. I’ve had luck with turbo snails and emerald or Pitho crabs. The trick is sourcing the right animals, since many snails get sold as “Turbos.” Algaebarn, reefcleaners, or other reputable sources are worth it.

Re: Vibrant, it’s trash and should be avoided. In one of the all-time great R2R posts, it was shown to just be the active ingredient in Algaefix. Fine, except they lied for years that it was something else, bacteria, pixie dust, whatever. Don’t give those grifters your money. And you don’t need algaefix for some GHA. Manual removal plus the right clean up crew.

And about your poor Trochus snails, I’ve found them pretty hard to keep alive too! Several dying at once does suggest a toxin, but I agree your Dinoflagellate problem looks under control. So you may never figure that one out. Stay the course. GHA won’t kill anything (except by smothering it), just looks ugly.

 

[The_Paradox]

I don’t see Bryopsis (looks like tiny fern fronds, if you don’t know it), so fluconazole is not a good bet.

Fluconazole works on GHA.

 

[Lavey29]

How do I get the parameters where they need to be? My tests aren't working. They show very low nutrients when that's clearly not the case. Do I just ignore the tests until the algae dies down?

You can feed more to fish and dose some reef roids to corals. I had to double dose neophos and neonitro for multiple months before I got measurable numbers.

 

[saltienewb]

Paging @brandon429.
Look up rip clean method. 20 gallon should be doable pretty quickly

 

[brandon429]

Gimme short second to compile before and after jobs that resemble this challenge tank

I’m so glad to see this post because it’s salvageable and you don’t have to start over. Gimme sec to go locate the several times we’ve fixed tanks like this before brb

 

[KrisReef]

Lots of advice so I suggest that the OP take our enthusiasm as support for a winnable battle that many other people have won in their own tanks in the past. Right now it’s a trial but we have faith that you can/ will win your battle also, but probably not quickly and with out putting in some effort to remove the algae. Rip clean is the best starting point for a fast recovery. Gl.

 

[brandon429]

The reason I’m posting this is because in gha threads we get first person testimony= what worked for someone else *might* work for you but we only see their stated outcomes


In any gha work thread we can scroll, we do not see the opposite: what works for other peoples tanks. That’s what I’m wanting to show.

I want to show a method where we can’t find fails. If we go into the nuisance algae forum and click up top on the 780 page fluconazole work thread, you get tons of gha cures and you also get tons of tanks turned from gha into cyano or dinos to the point the tank is wrecked for another year by a trade off invasion. Fluc causes problems for the masses, evident in the work threads and searchable cyano conversion challenges

Rip cleaning never causes tradeoff invasions that’s why it’s best for nanos.

Rip cleaning has the same outcome for anyone, it doesn’t restart a tank because no cycle is lost and no bottle bac is used. These results are from correct cleaning as the fix mode

Any tank that is covered in gha has chosen not to apply cleaning as the fix mode, or the gha wouldn’t be there

the keeper is opting to allow full invasion until the preventative can be found, but that’s a long time as a wrecked tank nobody wants to own as the downside. Corals are smothered during this choice phase

Rip cleaners force their tank to be clean until they figure out the cause and not have to rip clean anymore, that’s opposite behavior

it’s why our after pics look so sharp in any rip clean thread. We are simply agreeing to mow the lawn vs allow the lawn to overtake the yard.


The driver for the eutrophic (plant dominant) condition in reef tanks isn’t phosphate it’s three things: too much light, stores of waste in the system as plant food, and trained allowance by the keeper. Of the three, passivity and allowance is the greater cause





Where there is coral flesh or coralline in a gha tank, gha doesn’t grow. It only grows where it’s permitted to grow.

We didn’t permit these tanks to misbehave anymore, that’s how they got fixed.

Let me ask this: if we go to a dentist and our mouths are dirty and full of plaque and cavities from literally no dental care, and they take time to detail clean our mouth, is that a new mouth?

A start over?

No, it’s the all-at-once cleanup of things we could have been doing in increments. It’s the same teeth, not new teeth, someone just took time to detail them all at once and undo the passive state that allowed total decay

When the dentist cleans and fixes our teeth, removes the accumulations, scrapes off plaque, flushes out waste from interdental regions, they’re rip cleaning a mouth.

Owning an invaded nano isn’t a matter of chemistry or biology it’s a matter solely of choice. We can choose in 24 hours to not own a wrecked nano, and we can post the pics that show that choice or we can opt to remain invaded just the same.

Here are nanos the owner agreed to bring to the reef dentist, this wasn’t luck it was sheer will.

Reefmiser, nano-reef.com before

And after, back home from dentists office

Example #2 comes from this thread from A Polythress’ tank

GHA - Losing the battle

Hey all, I have been battling GHA since August of 2022. I feel like I am losing the battle here and do not really know what else to do. little info about my current tank: 25G Innovative Marine Nuvo - 2 clown fish - 1 pink spotted goby - 1 tuxedo urchin - 3 peppermint shrimp - 1 reef glass...

www.reef2reef.com

Before the rip clean

After

These were jobs done live time, not ones I picked after the fact. They asked live time for the cure, we worked it. Look at the disassembly steps in his thread.

Next up, humu’s rip clean

His thread

GHA Has Destroyed My Passion for the Hobby

Title says it all. I've been in the fish game on and off for about 30 years now. I don't think my morale has ever been this low. I feel like my tanks are just becoming a source of stress in my life. My 20g reef (below) has been up since 2019, my FOWLR has been up since 2015, and I also...

www.reef2reef.com

Before,

After

Anyone who wants their nano fixed can have it fixed by tomorrow, it’s that simple. There is no better method for nano control in reefing, since we already know the date any tank will be fixed when the ripping begins

the number one thing we did by implication in all these jobs was take away the excuse to have a wrecked nano reef.

always work on algae preventatives, but work it solely from the clean condition and never the wrecked one. always have a clean reef, always have a clean yard, accept nothing less.

 

[Zakary2003]

The reason I’m posting this is because in gha threads we get first person testimony= what worked for someone else *might* work for you but we only see their stated outcomes


In any gha work thread we can scroll, we do not see the opposite: what works for other peoples tanks. That’s what I’m wanting to show.

I want to show a method where we can’t find fails. If we go into the nuisance algae forum and click up top on the 780 page fluconazole work thread, you get tons of gha cures and you also get tons of tanks turned from gha into cyano or dinos to the point the tank is wrecked for another year by a trade off invasion. Fluc causes problems for the masses, evident in the work threads and searchable cyano conversion challenges

Rip cleaning never causes tradeoff invasions that’s why it’s best for nanos.

Rip cleaning has the same outcome for anyone, it doesn’t restart a tank because no cycle is lost and no bottle bac is used. These results are from correct cleaning as the fix mode

Any tank that is covered in gha has chosen not to apply cleaning as the fix mode, or the gha wouldn’t be there

the keeper is opting to allow full invasion until the preventative can be found, but that’s a long time as a wrecked tank nobody wants to own as the downside. Corals are smothered during this choice phase

Rip cleaners force their tank to be clean until they figure out the cause and not have to rip clean anymore, that’s opposite behavior

it’s why our after pics look so sharp in any rip clean thread. We are simply agreeing to mow the lawn vs allow the lawn to overtake the yard.


The driver for the eutrophic (plant dominant) condition in reef tanks isn’t phosphate it’s three things: too much light, stores of waste in the system as plant food, and trained allowance by the keeper. Of the three, passivity and allowance is the greater cause





Where there is coral flesh or coralline in a gha tank, gha doesn’t grow. It only grows where it’s permitted to grow.

We didn’t permit these tanks to misbehave anymore, that’s how they got fixed.

Let me ask this: if we go to a dentist and our mouths are dirty and full of plaque and cavities from literally no dental care, and they take time to detail clean our mouth, is that a new mouth?

A start over?

No, it’s the all-at-once cleanup of things we could have been doing in increments. It’s the same teeth, not new teeth, someone just took time to detail them all at once and undo the passive state that allowed total decay

When the dentist cleans and fixes our teeth, removes the accumulations, scrapes off plaque, flushes out waste from interdental regions, they’re rip cleaning a mouth.

Owning an invaded nano isn’t a matter of chemistry or biology it’s a matter solely of choice. We can choose in 24 hours to not own a wrecked nano, and we can post the pics that show that choice or we can opt to remain invaded just the same.

Here are nanos the owner agreed to bring to the reef dentist, this wasn’t luck it was sheer will.

Reefmiser, nano-reef.com before

And after, back home from dentists office

Example #2 comes from this thread from A Polythress’ tank

GHA - Losing the battle

Hey all, I have been battling GHA since August of 2022. I feel like I am losing the battle here and do not really know what else to do. little info about my current tank: 25G Innovative Marine Nuvo - 2 clown fish - 1 pink spotted goby - 1 tuxedo urchin - 3 peppermint shrimp - 1 reef glass...

www.reef2reef.com

Before the rip clean

After

These were jobs done live time, not ones I picked after the fact. They asked live time for the cure, we worked it. Look at the disassembly steps in his thread.

Next up, humu’s rip clean

His thread

GHA Has Destroyed My Passion for the Hobby

Title says it all. I've been in the fish game on and off for about 30 years now. I don't think my morale has ever been this low. I feel like my tanks are just becoming a source of stress in my life. My 20g reef (below) has been up since 2019, my FOWLR has been up since 2015, and I also...

www.reef2reef.com

Before,

After

Anyone who wants their nano fixed can have it fixed by tomorrow, it’s that simple. There is no better method for nano control in reefing, since we already know the date any tank will be fixed when the ripping begins

the number one thing we did by implication in all these jobs was take away the excuse to have a wrecked nano reef.

always work on algae preventatives, but work it solely from the clean condition and never the wrecked one. always have a clean reef, always have a clean yard, accept nothing less.

That's a lot of info. I spent about an hour reading about that topic and watching videos after seeing your response, but I do have a few questions. How do I clean around encrusted soft corals? I have zoas, cloves, GSP, and xenia encrusted onto the rocks. Do I just clean around them and leave the rock in between clusters or polyps dirty? What about the nem? Do I let him stay on the rock while it is out of the tank being scrubbed, or do I remove him somehow? I like this option a lot. Also, most of my structure is glued together because of the urchin causing chaos. Do I break then apart for cleaning or can I take most of the structure out at once?