Green hair Algae Management

[JS07032013]

I can never get rid of my green hair algae . The only thing that works for me is 12% peroxide dosing ( 3ml per 10 gallons ) I do this sometimes twice a month but works like a charm .
What other solutions have you tried

 

[tnewell]

Live Aquarias pack of Mexican turbo snails along with scrubbing with a toothbrush at the longer pieces. Gha was gone in 3 weeks

 

[JS07032013]

I do that with toothbrush too ! . My turbo snails don't last long . My Wrassee

 

[Garf]

Post a tank pic

 

[tnewell]

Bought 5 turbos 8months ago to deal with gha, they tore it up and i rehomed them and bought stomella snails. Worked like a charm

 

[Dkmoo]

Do not use h2o2, it may clean up the gha in the short term but it also absolutely destroys the macrofauna that is crucial for tank to achieve natural stqbility via nutrient competition against gha. Thats why ur GHA always comes back and ur tank seem to be stuck in a loop instead of progressing.

Excess gha is an excess nutrient issue, but that excess can either be from current feeding or accumulated nutrients that had been absorbed in sand and rock that is now leaching back out.

Only permanent long term natural solution is a mature tank where biodiversity and nutrient competition will keep your GHA in check so that cuc can manage the population. To get there you will need to just keep upnwith manual removal and good husbandry while reducing feeding.

Adding a fuge will help since it increases direct competition. Heck. You can even purposely grow gha in the fuge - it will be easier to clean out than scrubbing ur rocks.

If you also have a good grasp of the biochemical processes and the science behind how nutrient cycle travels thru your system, you can also try products like Vibrant. A solid understanding of the underlying nutrient process and how vibrant works will ensure that yiu avoid the common pitfalls of people posting bad diatom outbreaks while using vibrant.

 

[Garf]

H2O2?

Do not use p2o2, it may clean up the gha in the short term but it also absolutely destroys the macrofauna that is crucial for tank to achieve natural stqbility via nutrient competition against gha. Thats why ur GHA always comes back and ur tank seem to be stuck in a loop instead of progressing.

Excess gha is an excess nutrient issue, but that excess can either be from current feeding or accumulated nutrients that had been absorbed in sand and rock that is now leaching back out.

Only permanent long term natural solution is a mature tank where biodiversity and nutrient competition will keep your GHA in check so that cuc can manage the population. To get there you will need to just keep upnwith manual removal and good husbandry while reducing feeding.

Adding a fuge will help since it increases direct competition. Heck. You can even purposely grow gha in the fuge - it will be easier to clean out than scrubbing ur rocks.

If you also have a good grasp of the biochemical processes and the science behind how nutrient cycle travels thru your system, you can also try products like Vibrant. A solid understanding of the underlying nutrient process and how vibrant works will ensure that yiu avoid the common pitfalls of people posting bad diatom outbreaks while using vibrant.

 

[Dkmoo]

H2O2?

Yup, fixed, thx. Typing on phone is hard... lol

 

[Tastee]

I had to dose Fluconazole to get on top of mine once it got a foothold. I already had nutrients under control and a good CUC but whilst it was well established it was unkillable. A dose of Fluc knocked it down however and it never recovered. I still have small amounts of course but the CUC now keep it completely under control.

 

[JosephM]

Sea hare all the way for me, only had him for a week and he’s cleared up 80% of it and it was bad, had a whole entire back wall of lush flowing GHA. Also my nitrates and phosphates dropped to almost zero and I’m seeing some die from that too, don’t recommend as you risk dinos at that point though

 

[Gordonm]

Mini blow torch

 

[JS07032013]

Do not use h2o2, it may clean up the gha in the short term but it also absolutely destroys the macrofauna that is crucial for tank to achieve natural stqbility via nutrient competition against gha. Thats why ur GHA always comes back and ur tank seem to be stuck in a loop instead of progressing.

Excess gha is an excess nutrient issue, but that excess can either be from current feeding or accumulated nutrients that had been absorbed in sand and rock that is now leaching back out.

Only permanent long term natural solution is a mature tank where biodiversity and nutrient competition will keep your GHA in check so that cuc can manage the population. To get there you will need to just keep upnwith manual removal and good husbandry while reducing feeding.

Adding a fuge will help since it increases direct competition. Heck. You can even purposely grow gha in the fuge - it will be easier to clean out than scrubbing ur rocks.

If you also have a good grasp of the biochemical processes and the science behind how nutrient cycle travels thru your system, you can also try products like Vibrant. A solid understanding of the underlying nutrient process and how vibrant works will ensure that yiu avoid the common pitfalls of people posting bad diatom outbreaks while using vibrant.

Thanks for the advice .I have had my tank from little over a year . What would you consider excessive feeding for a 50 gallon ( not including sump) 2 clowns 1 wrasse and a blue tang . I feed a pinch of dry food (nyos) every other day and once a week a mix of frozen w/ pinch of reefroid)

 

[Dkmoo]

Thanks for the advice .I have had my tank from little over a year . What would you consider excessive feeding for a 50 gallon ( not including sump) 2 clowns 1 wrasse and a blue tang . I feed a pinch of dry food (nyos) every other day and once a week a mix of frozen w/ pinch of reefroid)

the amount of dry food sounds fine. How much of the frozen is fed per week? Also how much corals do you have and how much cuc/filter feeders do you have. I think we will have to look at your biomass in aggregate to see if you are feeding too much. remember that fish pee/poop is actually coral food too so if you don't have a lot of corals yet, the frozen/roid may not be necessary.

excess nutrient can also come from just the accumulated detritus/waste in sand and rock pores so adjusting how much you feed currently may not move the needle much and other solutions are needed.

Can you please post a pic of your tank and give us a bit more information on the below questions:
1) how much CUC/Detrivores/filterfeeders do you have. detritivores are any worms (bristle or spegetti, for ex) or copapods that's in your substrate, filterfeeders are the vermetids, sponges, featherdusters on your rocks. i know it's hard to count then so just give us a general idea - ie, do you see them covering ur rocks, when you feed do you seen a lot of pods and worms come out, esp at night. I want to get an idea of how much left over food is being absorbed by this army vs letting rot to turn into no3 for the algae
2) current tank parameters
3) what's your sand bed and how have you been cleaning it in the past year (maybe a cross section pic too against the glass).
4) what's your total filtration setup.

 

[JS07032013]

1. I have 1 coral banded shrimp approx. 3 emerald crabs 1 conch 1 recently added white starfish . 4-5 hermit crabs and aprox 6 snails ( troch , nass.. i keep losing to the wrasse) . I have not seen any worms. I know pic is hard but for sand but there is red and little green coloration that comes after
2. PH: 8.4
ALK :10
NH3: 0.25
NO2 : 0
No3 : 20
PO4 : 0.023
CA: 460
MG: 1360
3. Sand bed : Approx. 2 inch I usually vacuum top or use scooper to clean against glass and debris on top. ( I do not do water changes often every 1.5 - 2 months )
3. Filtration : Carbon, Sock, Poly Filter , additional rock in sump, UV filter. I also have pump in sump for water movement

 

[Dkmoo]

1. I have 1 coral banded shrimp approx. 3 emerald crabs 1 conch 1 recently added white starfish . 4-5 hermit crabs and aprox 6 snails ( troch , nass.. i keep losing to the wrasse) . I have not seen any worms. I know pic is hard but for sand but there is red and little green coloration that comes after
2. PH: 8.4
ALK :10
NH3: 0.25
NO2 : 0
No3 : 20
PO4 : 0.023
CA: 460
MG: 1360
3. Sand bed : Approx. 2 inch I usually vacuum top or use scooper to clean against glass and debris on top. ( I do not do water changes often every 1.5 - 2 months )
3. Filtration : Carbon, Sock, Poly Filter , additional rock in sump, UV filter. I also have pump in sump for water movement

Thanks for the additional info - i have a few thoughts to these:

TLDR version: seems to me your GHA issue is only partially related to current feeding, and partially accumulated waste in sand/rock pores. For the current feeding portion - i would reduce the portion of the weekly frozen + reefroid. it doesn't look like you have a lot of corals, so the fish poop/pee should be enough to keep your corals fed (esp from your tang and wrasse). For the accumulated waste - despite it looks like your system has very beefy and advanced filtration system, there are limits to what it filters out (see the long version explanation below) and it's this limitation that's resulting in waste accumulating in sand/rocks. Based on how you described your sand husbandry, i would actually recommend a rip clean soon. I've never done a rip clean myself but @brandon429 is our resident expert on this so please check out his posts on this matter. Basically, unlike the tradition view of "live sand" acting like a biological compost bin that processes waste, due to all the fancy outside filtration we now have installed in the tank, most tank's sand bed is actually acting like a diaper, and your tanks diaper is very full right now. here's the official thread on this. Once you get your current issue stabilized, i have two recommendations on how to move forward (see the long version explanation below)

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

@brandon429 - please see OP's problem above, would you agree a rip clean is in order?

Long explanation version:

In case you are unfamiliar, when we talk about "excess nutrient" it's not just the final No3/Po4 reading but its actually everything in this complex nutrient cycle from the moment you put food into the tank to ultimately the absorption/removal of NO3/po4 at the end. Simplistically you can think if it as happening in 3 stages - 1) the solid food you put into the tank, absorbed by fish and corals. 2) dissolved organics from fish/coral waste, uneaten food that broken down by other processes. and 3) finally these further break down by additional processes into NO3/Po4.

Your GHA issue is a result of how your current filtration interacts with this complex web of cause and effects that created an environment where your GHA does not have any direct nutrient competition to keep it in line. To explain:

1) your floss/sock takes out the uneaten food from stage 1)
2) your skimmer takes out the unabsorbed nutrient from stage 2)
3) despite having these fancy filtrations, total filtration from these two thing is not close to 100% - think about it this way - it's not like all of your unabsorbed nutrient from stage 1 and 2 all line up neatly to go into your overflow, into your sump, into the skimmer/flosser, and get caught up in it. At any time in your tank, only a portion of the waste from the DT goes into the sump, a portion of that flows into your flosser/sump, and a "cleaner" water is pumped back into the DT, which now has a lower concentration of waste, so even less % of the waste goes back into the sump. As this is happening and additional waste is produced, a natural balance is reached where a fixed % of nutrient/waste always remain in the water. This % is either processed by bacteria immediately into NO3/Po4 that the GHA consumes. or settle down in your rock pore/sand to be processed by bacteria later and release NO3/Po4 into the water later.
4) nothing in your current filtration directly absorbs No3/po4. The other primary absorbers of No3/Po4 is bacteria, but your system actively sterilizes this population by your UV. this is why GHA is a problem - there is nothing that competes with the absorption of this stage 3 nutrient against GHA.

This is why i suggested rip cleaning - to clean the waste that's settled into your sand. do not try to stir up your sand now b/c there will be trapped waste/toxins in those sand layers that if not properly handled, could crash your tank. instead please follow brandon's rip clean method. This, plus reduced feeding, will reduce the source that's fueling the the stage 3 nutrient. Couple that with manual removal of gha and you should see the stage 3 nutrient reduce and GHA reduce gradually.

As for direct no3/po4 absorption to help filter the "stage 3" nutrient to control GHA, you will need to set up a fuge or algae scrubber.

Once you tackle this current issue, there are two separate paths to move forward to prevent this problem from coming back:

the natural way:
1) introduce more biodiversity to control the excess nutrient from all three stages. Because currently you are relying on external controls for this, your microfauna has no chance to establish in your tank to act as biological control - this is why you have no worms, very little filter feeders, etc.. The food chain for this microsystem starts with bacteria (which your UV eliminates), that feed planktons (which is further starved by your flosser/skimmer), that feeds the filter feeders and worms (which is also starved by your flosser). The worm in turn also turns over your sandbed, preventing toxic buildup and turning it into a true waste compost. (stirring the sandbed periodically help too - but the requisit here is you have to start with a clean sandbed that doesn't already have toxic buildup).
2) Pros: will result in a much more stable and naturally mature tank
3) Con: will take very long and a lot of hard work to achieve, need to remove at least the flosser and UV - will go thru many more "ugly phases" as the different organism establish themselves to get to balance.

the rip clean way:
1) keep your current set up but will need to understand that your tank is on a diaper that needs to be changed out periodically.
2) pro: keep your current set up the same - less change, less work,
3) con: you'll have the same underlying problem that I described - so will need to repeat rip clean periodically to maintain.

 

[Uncle99]

I’ve used 3% H202 at 1ml per gallon for months with no discernible effect on anything, other than the green and the Cyano and they are both gone.

 

[brandon429]

I have to admit this reef doesn't look bad above, that peroxide zapping is making up for lack of a matched grazer in the system, not sure what would work, large snails seem commonly recommended and Ive seen them clear swaths. I like rip cleans too but this sandbed isn't covered in invasions yet, mainly rocks so holding course and trying some animal experiments isn't harmful, you're riding out the bell curve as we speak.

when you do want the sand totally clean as mentioned above we sure can, and have many on file for the before and afters. *the degree of live rock work you have now is common though even after a rip clean, until coralline fills in these live rocks select for plants a little while. its lucky you've found any cheat that works, some cant

fluconazole really might beat that algae back

and the tradeoff is sped-up sandbed incursion of dead algae waste, tipping that eventually but its not a big deal because a rip clean is a total sandbed reset.

here are two rip cleans on file. Gator's is the last, he still has growback to maintain

but he does not have cyano, dinos, and gha, he has minor gha work and no coralline yet, so this is expected.

this shows simply how to force an upper hand when wanted.

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

in my opinion the best way to employ the accessibility of a nano is to try all other methods to stave off direct cleaning, and then right when you see it really building up just do a rip clean and try harder next time.


its never been about starting over, or losses. we didn't know how to regenerate eutrophic reef tanks back in the day so rocks got tossed

but now all the fun is the restoration just like the history channel shows, only with reefs.



we have ways to just reset our tanks over and over but keeping everything, not as a loss reset.

the price is four hours of cleaning, that's all. after full sandbed rinse you'd scrape off the rocks with a knife outside tank back to clean, then apply peroxide on the actual surface which burns it 100x better than through the water as a gateway. but until coralline sets in thick to reject algae some gha will be selected for here.

totally preferable to many other invasions, the tank already looks fine and sharp

 

[JS07032013]

Thanks for the additional info - i have a few thoughts to these:

TLDR version: seems to me your GHA issue is only partially related to current feeding, and partially accumulated waste in sand/rock pores. For the current feeding portion - i would reduce the portion of the weekly frozen + reefroid. it doesn't look like you have a lot of corals, so the fish poop/pee should be enough to keep your corals fed (esp from your tang and wrasse). For the accumulated waste - despite it looks like your system has very beefy and advanced filtration system, there are limits to what it filters out (see the long version explanation below) and it's this limitation that's resulting in waste accumulating in sand/rocks. Based on how you described your sand husbandry, i would actually recommend a rip clean soon. I've never done a rip clean myself but @brandon429 is our resident expert on this so please check out his posts on this matter. Basically, unlike the tradition view of "live sand" acting like a biological compost bin that processes waste, due to all the fancy outside filtration we now have installed in the tank, most tank's sand bed is actually acting like a diaper, and your tanks diaper is very full right now. here's the official thread on this. Once you get your current issue stabilized, i have two recommendations on how to move forward (see the long version explanation below)

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

@brandon429 - please see OP's problem above, would you agree a rip clean is in order?

Long explanation version:

In case you are unfamiliar, when we talk about "excess nutrient" it's not just the final No3/Po4 reading but its actually everything in this complex nutrient cycle from the moment you put food into the tank to ultimately the absorption/removal of NO3/po4 at the end. Simplistically you can think if it as happening in 3 stages - 1) the solid food you put into the tank, absorbed by fish and corals. 2) dissolved organics from fish/coral waste, uneaten food that broken down by other processes. and 3) finally these further break down by additional processes into NO3/Po4.

Your GHA issue is a result of how your current filtration interacts with this complex web of cause and effects that created an environment where your GHA does not have any direct nutrient competition to keep it in line. To explain:

1) your floss/sock takes out the uneaten food from stage 1)
2) your skimmer takes out the unabsorbed nutrient from stage 2)
3) despite having these fancy filtrations, total filtration from these two thing is not close to 100% - think about it this way - it's not like all of your unabsorbed nutrient from stage 1 and 2 all line up neatly to go into your overflow, into your sump, into the skimmer/flosser, and get caught up in it. At any time in your tank, only a portion of the waste from the DT goes into the sump, a portion of that flows into your flosser/sump, and a "cleaner" water is pumped back into the DT, which now has a lower concentration of waste, so even less % of the waste goes back into the sump. As this is happening and additional waste is produced, a natural balance is reached where a fixed % of nutrient/waste always remain in the water. This % is either processed by bacteria immediately into NO3/Po4 that the GHA consumes. or settle down in your rock pore/sand to be processed by bacteria later and release NO3/Po4 into the water later.
4) nothing in your current filtration directly absorbs No3/po4. The other primary absorbers of No3/Po4 is bacteria, but your system actively sterilizes this population by your UV. this is why GHA is a problem - there is nothing that competes with the absorption of this stage 3 nutrient against GHA.

This is why i suggested rip cleaning - to clean the waste that's settled into your sand. do not try to stir up your sand now b/c there will be trapped waste/toxins in those sand layers that if not properly handled, could crash your tank. instead please follow brandon's rip clean method. This, plus reduced feeding, will reduce the source that's fueling the the stage 3 nutrient. Couple that with manual removal of gha and you should see the stage 3 nutrient reduce and GHA reduce gradually.

As for direct no3/po4 absorption to help filter the "stage 3" nutrient to control GHA, you will need to set up a fuge or algae scrubber.

Once you tackle this current issue, there are two separate paths to move forward to prevent this problem from coming back:

the natural way:
1) introduce more biodiversity to control the excess nutrient from all three stages. Because currently you are relying on external controls for this, your microfauna has no chance to establish in your tank to act as biological control - this is why you have no worms, very little filter feeders, etc.. The food chain for this microsystem starts with bacteria (which your UV eliminates), that feed planktons (which is further starved by your flosser/skimmer), that feeds the filter feeders and worms (which is also starved by your flosser). The worm in turn also turns over your sandbed, preventing toxic buildup and turning it into a true waste compost. (stirring the sandbed periodically help too - but the requisit here is you have to start with a clean sandbed that doesn't already have toxic buildup).
2) Pros: will result in a much more stable and naturally mature tank
3) Con: will take very long and a lot of hard work to achieve, need to remove at least the flosser and UV - will go thru many more "ugly phases" as the different organism establish themselves to get to balance.

the rip clean way:
1) keep your current set up but will need to understand that your tank is on a diaper that needs to be changed out periodically.
2) pro: keep your current set up the same - less change, less work,
3) con: you'll have the same underlying problem that I described - so will need to repeat rip clean periodically to maintain.

thank you sooo much ! Im going to go the natural way .. feel less risk to fish and coral . By flosser you mean skimmer correct ? .. I have no problem turning these off. For bio diversity what do you have in mind ?

he natural way:
1) introduce more biodiversity to control the excess nutrient from all three stages. Because currently you are relying on external controls for this, your microfauna has no chance to establish in your tank to act as biological control - this is why you have no worms, very little filter feeders, etc.. The food chain for this microsystem starts with bacteria (which your UV eliminates), that feed planktons (which is further starved by your flosser/skimmer), that feeds the filter feeders and worms (which is also starved by your flosser). The worm in turn also turns over your sandbed, preventing toxic buildup and turning it into a true waste compost. (stirring the sandbed periodically help too - but the requisit here is you have to start with a clean sandbed that doesn't already have toxic buildup).
2) Pros: will result in a much more stable and naturally mature tank
3) Con: will take very long and a lot of hard work to achieve, need to remove at least the flosser and UV - will go thru many more "ugly phases" as the different organism establish themselves to get to balance.

 

[Dkmoo]

thank you sooo much ! Im going to go the natural way .. feel less risk to fish and coral . By flosser you mean skimmer correct ? .. I have no problem turning these off. For bio diversity what do you have in mind ?

he natural way:
1) introduce more biodiversity to control the excess nutrient from all three stages. Because currently you are relying on external controls for this, your microfauna has no chance to establish in your tank to act as biological control - this is why you have no worms, very little filter feeders, etc.. The food chain for this microsystem starts with bacteria (which your UV eliminates), that feed planktons (which is further starved by your flosser/skimmer), that feeds the filter feeders and worms (which is also starved by your flosser). The worm in turn also turns over your sandbed, preventing toxic buildup and turning it into a true waste compost. (stirring the sandbed periodically help too - but the requisit here is you have to start with a clean sandbed that doesn't already have toxic buildup).
2) Pros: will result in a much more stable and naturally mature tank
3) Con: will take very long and a lot of hard work to achieve, need to remove at least the flosser and UV - will go thru many more "ugly phases" as the different organism establish themselves to get to balance.

NP - by flosser i mean your polyfilter. Can keep skimmer online, esp since you have no fuge. we'd want to do things slowly. Taking everything offline all at once is not good for your tank stability either.

Biodiversity starts bottom up with laying bottom layer of the food chain first so would focus on bacteria and pod population. If you do not plan on introducing any new fish and do not have a high risk of parasites in your tank, i'd consider reducing the UV first. There are commercially available "pod seeds" and "bacterial seeds" you can buy to start supplementing but i'd first just see what your tank already has and give them a chance to multiply. Do this for a couple of months and see if you will notice more pods crawling out at night, After pods, more worms should show up (assuming you at least have a little bit now thats seeding). Filter feeders that pull from the water is the last piece - sponges, feather dusters, vemetid snails. Removing the polyfilter will give them a chance. feather dusters and sponges can be bought from LFS specifically.

Taking the polyfilter off now vs later can help accelerate the process but in the short term will mean more waste left in your system to convert to no3/po4 that'll fuel a bigger algae problems before your filter feeder army can replace what your polyfilter is doing. So, it'll be up to you if you want to deal with that.

if you can source a real diver acquired live rock, that would help seed your system too

All this is predicated on keeping the sand clean and turned over (diaper problem is still a diaper problem) - ideally worms do it, but your tank doesn't have it yet. based on what brandon said above it looks like it's not as bad as I assumed? maybe you can start deep vaccing a small section of it at at time to prevent toxic layer build up if you don't want to rip clean it now.

how you deal with the GHA in the short term is up to you, - whether you want to start on the nature path directly, or trying something else to first get rid of it and "reset" your tank to an cleaner state before going on the more nature path. What others suggested here do work very effectively in the short term - whether that's the H2O2, fluconizole, or Vibrant. My whole POV is just to point out the source of out of control GHA. W/o addressing the source, issues will come back when treatment stops. Natural method is not "complete eradication". GHA an important piece of the puzzle - if they get out of control that's my first sign that I'm doing something wrong to upset the balance.

Whatever you decide - go slow, i cannot emphasize that enough - you already have a very beautiful tank. There's still a lot of the biochemical interactions that's happening in our tank that either we cannot directly measure, or we do not understand (unless you are a marine biologist). Last thing we want to do is rush into things and make your tank worse. If going with bottle treatment, please just make sure you follow instructions to a T and research on what it is that the treatment is really doing to your tank biology so you can anticipate its short term and long term effects.

Like i said this path is not going to be easy - My tank is 4 years into this method and i went thru a LOT of trials and tribulations before it got to where it is now. Right now i run fuge and skimmer only and i'm still learning about my tank and paying attention to every new thing that happens to. At least my approach thru research gives me a better chance to correctly resolve issues.

There is a time and place where additional external controls are appropriate - key is to understand what that external control is doing and how that affects your tank. For example - about 1/2 year ago I decided to increase my feeding to help my corals grow and recover faster. My corals did better, but the excess nutrient triggered excess GHA growth + an out of control bryopsis that nothing in my CUC touched. So, i decided to give Vibrant and Fluconazole a try. By understanding that vibrant is a bacteria based solution, i know what to expect - basically upcycling the no3/po4 that's absorbed by GHA back into dissolved organics (stage 2) will promote filter feeder/coral nutrient absorption, and lack of GHA as competition means bloom of other bacteria/diatom. Fluconazole will kill byospsis and turn it to dead waste so i'd also expect it to bring up my "stage 3" nutrient that will feed into the Vibrant upcycle. Sure enough, shortly after doing these treatments, i had an explosion of "bad filter feeders" (hydroids) and a small diatom/cyano out break. The diatom/cyano oubreak I know will go away on its own with the help of my my sand beasts. For the hydriod problem, as a filter feeder, i know reducing water born nutrient will help. Since i already had skimmer, i added a filtersock to the equation. After a month of that, hydroids are gone and I stopped using socks. So as you can see, within the 6 months period, I introduced 3 temporary external controls into my system to rebalance it. All forms of control offer some benefits to your tank - key is knowing when to use what to form your own solution to the problem.

Good luck!