Green algae/light settings. What should i do?!

[Miemaes]

Hi everyone, I’ve recently bought a fluval Wing Nano Marine for my 6g tank. I’ve been away for three weeks and my husband has been doing the water changes as instructed plus the light schedule is automatic. I came back and everything looks green! On the rocks, sand… it looks awful. The white light was at 7%, red turned to 0% and the others to 100%. I turned the white light all the way down now. Anyone has any idea how I can fix this? It’s about 3 months old the aquarium. My corals seem to be very happy though… I have one turbo snail which doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. I’ve added a pic of my light schedule. Any suggestions? Thanks

 

[Uncle99]

Husband doing water changes. There’s the prob.
Doesn’t look bad for a few months.
Water changes should not be mandatory, but help to manage nutrient levels, essential to develop a robust micro cleaning crew.
The tank is new ish, what are your nutrients running at?
Do you dose live phytoplankton and pods?
Is this light replacing something else?

 

[The_Paradox]

Looks normal to me for a new tank. What you’re seeing is pretty much to be expected when you have white rock.

 

[thedon986]

Looks like a new setup with low light corals. You can turn down your overall intensity by 30% or so and leave it there and see how corals react. Do you have a clean up crew? Snails and hermits? All part of the new setup ugly stage.

 

[Miemaes]

Husband doing water changes. There’s the prob.
The tank is new ish, what are your nutrients running at?
Do you dose live phytoplankton and pods?
Is this light replacing

Husband doing water changes. There’s the prob.
Doesn’t look bad for a few months.
Water changes should not be mandatory, but help to manage nutrient levels, essential to develop a robust micro cleaning crew.
The tank is new ish, what are your nutrients running at?
Do you dose live phytoplankton and pods?
Is this light replacing something else?

I’ll take my measurements today (nitrate/phosphate) as I’ll do a water change. Just got back home Phosphate was slightly raised before I left… but my candy cane looked poor when I added Phosguard to my filter. I have not added any pods, just zooplankton supplement which I stopped adding a while ago. I had a light before this one that didn’t seem to perform as well. My corals do much better with the new one but the algae started to appear.

 

[Miemaes]

Looks normal to me for a new tank. What you’re seeing is pretty much to be expected when you have white rock.

Thanks for your reply. It started to appear on the sand as well. The algae growth on the glass is very though. I got a scraper to get rid of that.

 

[Miemaes]

Looks like a new setup with low light corals. You can turn down your overall intensity by 30% or so and leave it there and see how corals react. Do you have a clean up crew? Snails and hermits? All part of the new setup ugly stage.

I’ll give that a shot. I only have a turbo snail but no hermit. My tank is pretty small and I’ve read that it’s not suited for a hermit?

 

[The_Paradox]

I’ll give that a shot. I only have a turbo snail but no hermit. My tank is pretty small and I’ve read that it’s not suited for a hermit?

Blue Leg hermits will do fine. More so than the Turbo Snail actually. No matter what you do though it’s always rough until the rocks fully cure. You’re about to be really good friends with a toothbrush for at least the next couple months.

 

[Miemaes]

Blue Leg hermits will do fine. More so than the Turbo Snail actually. No matter what you do though it’s always rough until the rocks fully cure. You’re about to be really good friends with a toothbrush for at least the next couple months.

Yeah… I’ve been already scrubbing like mad Will see how much I get off. I’ll look into adding a blue leg hermit. Thanks for that

 

[Uncle99]

Yup, let’s get the current levels of both first.
Phosguard as you know lowers available phosphate, and fast, some corals sense that, and don’t like it.

A true 0 in both or either is bad place, so don’t get there. No nutrients starved everything and opens the door for all the pest stuff.

Target running phosphate in the 0.05-.15ppm range and nitrate in the 5-15ppm range and only use water changes to keep them stable. If they are not trending up or down, no water changes are required, but, if your keeping hard corals, you’ll need to maintain Alk, CA, and MG through a dose.

If you keep your numbers in the zone, and little flux, the stuff you can’t see will build, outcompete the bad, and keep rocks and sand clean, without the need for any CUC.

 

[Miemaes]

Yup, let’s get the current levels of both first.
Phosguard as you know lowers available phosphate, and fast, some corals sense that, and don’t like it.

A true 0 in both or either is bad place, so don’t get there. No nutrients starved everything and opens the door for all the pest stuff.

Target running phosphate in the 0.05-.15ppm range and nitrate in the 5-15ppm range and only use water changes to keep them stable. If they are not trending up or down, no water changes are required, but, if your keeping hard corals, you’ll need to maintain Alk, CA, and MG through a dose.

If you keep your numbers in the zone, and little flux, the stuff you can’t see will build, outcompete the bad, and keep rocks and sand clean, without the need for any CUC.

Yup, let’s get the current levels of both first.
Phosguard as you know lowers available phosphate, and fast, some corals sense that, and don’t like it.

A true 0 in both or either is bad place, so don’t get there. No nutrients starved everything and opens the door for all the pest stuff.

Target running phosphate in the 0.05-.15ppm range and nitrate in the 5-15ppm range and only use water changes to keep them stable. If they are not trending up or down, no water changes are required, but, if your keeping hard corals, you’ll need to maintain Alk, CA, and MG through a dose.

If you keep your numbers in the zone, and little flux, the stuff you can’t see will build, outcompete the bad, and keep rocks and sand clean, without the need for any CUC.

I have a API test kit. Nitrate and phosphate were in the middle of the two top color readings in the charts I’ve added. No idea what the precise reading is. I’ve started to invest in salifert for Alk and CA.

 

[Uncle99]

API tests are ballpark at best, there’s a huge difference between 0 and 0.25ppm. Both those numbers can lead to problems. Nitrate lower than 5ppm is just on the lower end of the range, many reefers use in a mixed reef setting.

You said it’s in the middle and if that’s true then phosphate is already in the right place. API is just not a test that works with phosphate as there is so, so little of that in the water.

I have only been successful to accurately and consistently measure phosphate with the Hanna UL Phosphorus checker.

CA while important, is very secondary to Alk, again, the only accurate readings I get are with the Hanna, as well as being very easy.

Salifert is great with CA and MG, same with Aquaforest.

Back to nutrients. In order to make adjustments, we need a measure every second day for a week, ensuring we make no other changes during that time.

This will tell us the “trend”.

Are they going up consistently?
Going down consistently?

Or holding at a value less than say .15ppm but greater than 0.05ppm.

While I hate spending cash on tests, unfortunately they were the key to great water chemistry, the cornerstone of a successful reef….or at least…IMM

 

[Miemaes]

API tests are ballpark at best, there’s a huge difference between 0 and 0.25ppm. Both those numbers can lead to problems. Nitrate lower than 5ppm is just on the lower end of the range, many reefers use in a mixed reef setting.

You said it’s in the middle and if that’s true then phosphate is already in the right place. API is just not a test that works with phosphate as there is so, so little of that in the water.

I have only been successful to accurately and consistently measure phosphate with the Hanna UL Phosphorus checker.

CA while important, is very secondary to Alk, again, the only accurate readings I get are with the Hanna, as well as being very easy.

Salifert is great with CA and MG, same with Aquaforest.

Back to nutrients. In order to make adjustments, we need a measure every second day for a week, ensuring we make no other changes during that time.

This will tell us the “trend”.

Are they going up consistently?
Going down consistently?

Or holding at a value less than say .15ppm but greater than 0.05ppm.

While I hate spending cash on tests, unfortunately they were the key to great water chemistry, the cornerstone of a successful reef….or at least…IMM

Thanks so much for the information. I didn’t invest in the more pricey test kits as I wasn’t sure if salt water was for me. But since I enjoy it a lot a will switch to the higher end test kits because I do start to get the importance of it. Will follow your advice along with lowering my light intensity for a bit and see what effect that has.

 

[Uncle99]

Thanks so much for the information. I didn’t invest in the more pricey test kits as I wasn’t sure if salt water was for me. But since I enjoy it a lot a will switch to the higher end test kits because I do start to get the importance of it. Will follow your advice along with lowering my light intensity for a bit and see what effect that has.

You have a nice looking DT.
That’s worth the extra.

This is my go to list for tests.

Alk, Hanna, easy, fast and accurate.
Nitrate, Hanna HR checker or Salifert
Phosphate, Hanna UL Phosphorus, found nothing else.
MG, Salifert or Aquaforest, both great and not expensive.
CA, Salifert, again not complicated like others. Colour change is easy for the eye to read.

You can accelerate the development of good guy algae and bacteria by a weekly dose of live phyto.