Glass going green minutes after cleaning?

Richie Lloyd · Feb 4, 2017

OK this is doing my head in
I clean the front glass, nice and clean and within 5 minutes you can see the white film building up with in 2- 3 hours it's starting to go green again?

I have no other algae issues in the tank.
Hanna Phosphorous meter reading of 18 (0.05) and nitrates there is a very slight colour change so around 5 at most.
You can hardly see it after 2 days and I've not had this issue in the past so I know it's an issue I should be able to fix.
Would a bacteria dosing regime help clean the water up maybe? Something simple like vodka?

Any ideas or an answer would be great!

saltyhog · Feb 4, 2017

Are you saying it's back within minutes but gone again in 2 days? How old is the tank? Are you carbon dosing? Is the film white or green? White may suggest a bacterial bloom, green is most likely algae.

I've had similar problems with film algae in the past with new tanks and it eventually went away.

sa6hir · Feb 4, 2017

What kind of flow do you have?!

Humblefish · Feb 4, 2017

saltyhog said:
I've had similar problems with film algae in the past with new tanks and it eventually went away.

^^ This; all part of "the uglies" many new tanks go through until they stabilize. In almost every tank I've setup, I've had a 2-3 week period where the green film algae comes back within hours of wiping down the glass.

Richie Lloyd · Feb 5, 2017

Thanks for all the replies.
Tanks been running 5 years now with lots of ups and downs.
Im mainly happy with it now SPS grow very quickly, so chemistry is good. No algae anywhere else just the glass. However I also have an issue with the sand which has a brown algae on it, I stir the top layer every Saturday as it looks crap otherwise. Im wondering if the two are connected. I was thinking of running GAC, Silica remover and something standard bacteria dosing like vodka to see if it made a difference.
It is green algae and honestly I clean the glass and 5 mins later you can see it regrowing so Ive no idea what is causing it to grow so fast?!
Tank is 6ft x 2.5 high by 2ft front to back. 2 Mp40's and 2 Large Tunzes. 5x AI Hydras

Richie Lloyd · Feb 10, 2017

Any Ideas Guys

BlueCursor · Feb 10, 2017

Silica remover definitely won't help with the green algae. It is highly unlikely to help with the brown algae on the substrate. I get diatoms on my substrate when my diamondback gobi goes on strike, yet I have no detectable silica in my tank.

White film on the glass is typically bacteria. I suspect the bacteria count in your tank is high already due to the fast forming white film on the glass. Is your skimmer producing lots of crud? If you do have lots of bacteria already, there is no point in adding vodka. It will only make the white film grow on the glass faster.

A green film in 5 hours is confusing. That is fast. GAC may help with that because it would bind phosphate before it gets sucked up my algae, but it will also impact SPS and growth there. 0.05 for phosphate is not bad in my book. Certainly not enough to cause outrageous algae growth.

I think you need to stop stirring the substrate. This is definitely going to release phosphate into the water column. A couple sand sifting stars will help move the substrate around without stirring it as much as you are. A diamondback gobi will also move the substrate around but they will stir it more than stars. I love diamondbacks for keeping the substrate white, but they do stir things up some.

Nitrates at 5 is high for SPS. Not high for LPS. If you are happy with the SPS don't worry about it. You may want to get a different test kit that gives better low readings. The Red Sea Nitrate does a better job for lower readings.

Are your lights in the front, middle, or back? Is your flow pointed right at the front glass? I had two MP 10s on the back wall of my 100 gal tank and I always got a lot more green algae on the front glass than anywhere else. When I ditched them and went to a Gyre pushing water the length of the tank, that problem went away. Maybe run flow from left to right and right to left, not from back to front if you are currently doing it this way.

Algae grows because there are nutrients. A heavy stocked tank produces lots of poop that gets used before it even gets to nitrates. Try lowering your feeding for a couple weeks, consider possible flow changes, stop stirring your gravel for two weeks. See what happens.

Reefing Madness · Feb 10, 2017

Are your lights hitting the front glass directly?

cbutkos · Feb 10, 2017

Richie Lloyd said:
Any Ideas Guys

Do you have a sump where you can grow Chaeto? Rather than try to fight the algae with only gfo or other media, you may have luck using macro to outcompete the micro algae, or a combination of gfo and chaeto.

mtraylor · Feb 10, 2017

Richie Lloyd said:
Thanks for all the replies.
Tanks been running 5 years now with lots of ups and downs.
Im mainly happy with it now SPS grow very quickly, so chemistry is good. No algae anywhere else just the glass. However I also have an issue with the sand which has a brown algae on it, I stir the top layer every Saturday as it looks crap otherwise. Im wondering if the two are connected. I was thinking of running GAC, Silica remover and something standard bacteria dosing like vodka to see if it made a difference.
It is green algae and honestly I clean the glass and 5 mins later you can see it regrowing so Ive no idea what is causing it to grow so fast?!
Tank is 6ft x 2.5 high by 2ft front to back. 2 Mp40's and 2 Large Tunzes. 5x AI Hydras

First and upmost. You may have a bit more phosphates/nutrients you may not be aware of. You need to get them down a bit. Not much. Around .03 to .04. I use the Hanna test kits as well. When I first started using them I would loose allot of the powder when trying to get it in the val. Not saying you do, but if you have the same problem try the following method. Dump the powder onto a sheet of paper. Then crease the paper to get all the reagent in the valve to get a more accurate reading. I'm currently looking for a very tiny funnel but havn't found one.

Moving on from there. This is the quickest way to get rid of your issue. It will make your aquarium pretty messy for a couple hours but get bacteria going again. Give all your pumps in the aquarium a good cleaning. Just to ensure they are giving you optimum flow. If you are getting brown algae in the sand, it has probably not been turned over much in the last year outside your stirring lately. If your sand level is where you like it. Peel off the first 1/2-1" inch of sand that you have into a bucket or moved to a section in the aquarium. This is where most of your critters live so you don't want to get rid of it. Remove another 1-2 inches below of sand depending on your sand bed and thoroughly wash or replace. Replacement is the easiest method. Get you a bag of say arag-live and replace what you took out ensuring that you mix the top layer of sand that you sat aside with it. This is messy and will cloud the water for a couple of hours. If you sand bed is depleted a bit and needs topped off this is much easier to top off sand with new arag-live and stir it in with existing sand.

If you have chaeto or algea growing in the sump it most likely has clumped together and has red cyano algae growing on it. If so break it up and wash algae. Reduce the algae by removing all bad parts. Also Ensure your lighting in this area is working properly, you may need to change a bulb. You may also want to add a small semicured live rock to your refugium if you have an area for this about 2 weeks after performing this cleaning. You will get new bacteria growing and have a small unnoticeable cycle to re-establish everything.

Get you some nice nassarious snails or whatever you like to keep stirring up the sand. This should get you on your way. My reef is well established and before I started adding bacteria and keeping sand stirred up, I had to use the following method before that works well.