madducks42
Active Member
- Joined
- May 3, 2017
- Messages
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Our 90 gallon reef tank has been up and running for a few months now and we're having some algae woes. Green algae covers almost all the live rock and grows on the glass as well. The glass is easy enough to clean but even if I was inclined to scrub the live rock with a toothbrush (probably not that dedicated) it doesn't come off the rock. Even if I scratch it with my nail it doesn't budge. We have a decent CUC, 4 Mexican turbo snails, 6 blue legged crabs, 2 emerald crabs, roughly a dozen other snails - mix of trochus, nassarius, cerith. And also 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 fire blood shrimp, and a Scarlett skunk cleaner shrimp.
The only fish in the tank are a pair of clownfish and a royal gramma. We also added a small orange/green polyp frag. Because it's a relatively new tank we test the water fairly often but it's been stable the last 4 weeks.
Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - Between 5-10
We're pretty careful about how much we feed which is mostly frozen brine shrimp. We only feed once a day and anything the fish don't eat is rapidly devoured by the shrimp. For lighting we have 2 Hydra FiftyTwo's on the following schedule:
8am-9am: ramp up to 40% blue, 5% white
1pm: ramp up to 50% white, 50% blue, 20% uv
6pm: ramp down to 20% blue, 20% white
9pm-12am: lunar mode, 5% blue
12am-8am: lights are off
This lighting schedule has only been in place for about 2 weeks and it's only in the last few days that the percentages have been this high. We were letting the coral adjust so we've been upping the lights for the last two weeks. The coral has been looking really good the last few days...unfortunately the green algae seems to be enjoying the lights as much as the coral : )
Any suggestions? I've thought about picking up a few more snails but they don't seem to be making a dent in the algae. When we had brown algae they would clean it all off the rock, but I can't even scrap this stuff off with my nail.
The only fish in the tank are a pair of clownfish and a royal gramma. We also added a small orange/green polyp frag. Because it's a relatively new tank we test the water fairly often but it's been stable the last 4 weeks.
Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - Between 5-10
We're pretty careful about how much we feed which is mostly frozen brine shrimp. We only feed once a day and anything the fish don't eat is rapidly devoured by the shrimp. For lighting we have 2 Hydra FiftyTwo's on the following schedule:
8am-9am: ramp up to 40% blue, 5% white
1pm: ramp up to 50% white, 50% blue, 20% uv
6pm: ramp down to 20% blue, 20% white
9pm-12am: lunar mode, 5% blue
12am-8am: lights are off
This lighting schedule has only been in place for about 2 weeks and it's only in the last few days that the percentages have been this high. We were letting the coral adjust so we've been upping the lights for the last two weeks. The coral has been looking really good the last few days...unfortunately the green algae seems to be enjoying the lights as much as the coral : )
Any suggestions? I've thought about picking up a few more snails but they don't seem to be making a dent in the algae. When we had brown algae they would clean it all off the rock, but I can't even scrap this stuff off with my nail.
