Having a hard time getting my tank back on track since beating chrysophytes, help!

[Ober_Reef]

Hello Everyone,

Since I moved passed what I thought was Dinos but ended up being Chrysophytes I have had a real hard time getting my tank back on track. Initially I had a tough time getting my skimmer to run properly after dosing different chemicals for chrysophytes(vibrant turned out to be the cure for me). I have been staying on top of my water changes but obviously after almost two months of no skimmer my nutrients were pretty high. They are starting to trend downward now but just wanted to see if anyone had insight on anything else I could be missing. As of a few days ago my nitrates were 4.6 and my phosphates were .05, obviously they could be a bit higher due to uptake by the algae. I’m doing my normal maintenance today so I will be doing a 20% change with a filter floss swap. Attached are photos of what I am dealing with currently, looks like GHA and cyano. I would say the growth on the rock is more fuzzy than hairy.

Also I am still dosing vibrant weekly.

 

[randalli]

Oh boy, I can feel your pain. I had some pests that took me up to two years to get fully rid of. Not what you want to hear, right? Sorry.
I have never hat chrysoprase’s (thanks god) so I cannot comment on them. But I have some remarks.

For starters .05 PO and 4.6 NO sounds okay to me.

How much flow do you have? On the pictures it looks like there is no flow. But it might very well be that pumps are just off. Flow wise I would aim for as much as possible that keeps your corals open and happy.
How often do you do water changes and how much do you change? Too many wanter changes or too much might change other parameters in an unpreferred way.

All in all patience and stable values are your best friend. If you see your water levels stabilize, then you are on a good way. KH 8, Ca 450, NO3 5, PO4 0.05 is great guidelines to keep stable. Other values I would control with ICP tests. I do them monthly. Also keep in mind: whatever you do today will be visible in 2-4 weeks in my experience. So when you think that things are working great. Think about what you did 2-4 weeks ago. Having a journal here helps a bunch.

Your tank seems relatively young, right? Start with fast growing softies, get many snails, hermits and probably an urchin to eat off the algae. Don’t put too many products in your tank. Most things will go away on their own after some time. Also with that lack of corals to take up any nutrients you introduce more problems than you solve.

If it is just GHA and you want to accelerate things I have had lots of success with the following: a hard toothbrush and filtering through socks. I just brush the algea off. The sock will catch it. The other thing brushing off does is that it shortens the algae in a way so that snails and a Tripneustes Gratilla start eating them again. I hope you have enough snails and probably an urchin?
Also a soft long haired paint brush can help to brush off algae from corals and cyanosis from stones.
Some UV might help as well getting rid of unwanted bacteria.

 

[Ober_Reef]

Oh boy, I can feel your pain. I had some pests that took me up to two years to get fully rid of. Not what you want to hear, right? Sorry.
I have never hat chrysoprase’s (thanks god) so I cannot comment on them. But I have some remarks.

For starters .05 PO and 4.6 NO sounds okay to me.

How much flow do you have? On the pictures it looks like there is no flow. But it might very well be that pumps are just off. Flow wise I would aim for as much as possible that keeps your corals open and happy.
How often do you do water changes and how much do you change? Too many wanter changes or too much might change other parameters in an unpreferred way.

All in all patience and stable values are your best friend. If you see your water levels stabilize, then you are on a good way. KH 8, Ca 450, NO3 5, PO4 0.05 is great guidelines to keep stable. Other values I would control with ICP tests. I do them monthly. Also keep in mind: whatever you do today will be visible in 2-4 weeks in my experience. So when you think that things are working great. Think about what you did 2-4 weeks ago. Having a journal here helps a bunch.

Your tank seems relatively young, right? Start with fast growing softies, get many snails, hermits and probably an urchin to eat off the algae. Don’t put too many products in your tank. Most things will go away on their own after some time. Also with that lack of corals to take up any nutrients you introduce more problems than you solve.

If it is just GHA and you want to accelerate things I have had lots of success with the following: a hard toothbrush and filtering through socks. I just brush the algea off. The sock will catch it. The other thing brushing off does is that it shortens the algae in a way so that snails and a Tripneustes Gratilla start eating them again. I hope you have enough snails and probably an urchin?
Also a soft long haired paint brush can help to brush off algae from corals and cyanosis from stones.
Some UV might help as well getting rid of unwanted bacteria.

Thanks for this full response I appreciate it! I agree my nutrients aren’t crazy high but that also one of the reason I’m so curious as to what’s going on. I also think they could be showing lower due to uptake from the algae but I’m not sure.

As for flow I have two mp40s on the nutrient uptake setting at 50%. At this point I am not sure how high I should have them.

I do my water changes weekly at 10-20%, so either 5 or 10 gallons. Most recently 10 gallons per week. I also normally test after my changes every week. It’s been a month or two since I did an ICP test so that’s something I can probably run again.

I have also been thinking my clean up crew may be lacking, I honestly don’t remember but I have maybe 10-15 large nassarius, 15-20 Astrea, 10-15 decent sized hermits, and probably roughly 10 bumble bees snails. I would love suggestions on how I can improve on this and have never thought of an urchin worrying it would knock a lot of coral around.

Thanks again !