Help cleaning up my cesspool

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

Lets start this by saying I'm the kind of person that likes to figure out things on my own and rarely ask for help, but am more then willing to give advice if I know the answer.

Ok where to begin... I've had a reef tank for going on 20 years now on and off. More off then on as I took a 10 year break due to loosing an entire tank when I lost power for 6 days.

Anyways, got back into the hobby about 7 years ago with a biocube, everything was great, everything grew, fish were happy, etc. Decided to up my game and get a bigger tank.

Fast forward a couple years and I have had nothing but problems with this tank. Started off with everything dry. Dry rock, dry sand, new tank, etc. Ran a year or 2 and I could not keep algae at bay. It even got so bad it killed all my coral!

So after everything died I rebooted the tank with some quality live rock I got from a fellow reefer that was selling their setup and getting out. So I rebooted the tank with new dry sand, and the new LR.

Been going great for a while now, with the exception of algae! I just cannot get rid of this stuff! I realize some algae is a good thing, but when I put frags on my rack, in 3 days they are covered in GHA!

Now for the details....
80G DT
30G sump
BM curve 5 elite skimmer
DIY algae scrubber
ATI sunpower 6 bulb T5
2 vortech mp10's
2 jebao pp8's
1 gyre xf250

Parameter.....
ALK rock stable at 8DKH
CAL 420
MG 1440
NO3 4
PO4 .03
Salinity 1.026
temp 78.6

Maintenance...
Weekly 10G WC's
Manual removal off all algae that I can
weekly vacuuming my sandbed

I have done an ICP test and nothing comes back out of the ordinary.

Any and all help is appreciated. I'll post some pics in another post as it's easier from tapatalk then my computer.

Anyone needs some more info, I'm more then happy to provide it. And don't worry about being to harsh, I'm a big boy and can take it.

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

Pics from tapatalk

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

Forgot to mention....

Everything was chugging along quite nicely till I had a bryopsis outbreak! Rasied nutrients to combat that, which I did win out on, but all this other algae took over.

Auquanut · May 4, 2019

Regardless of your issues, you have a beautiful tank! Would you consider a cole tang? Mine is a character and NEVER stops cleaning.

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

I have a yellow eye kole, and got him specifically for algae eradication.

And thank you. To me it looks like a cesspool!

Auquanut · May 4, 2019

Maybe the #ReefSquad can help.

redfishbluefish · May 4, 2019

I'll start off by stating that I've seen a whole lot worse than what you have!

A couple more questions:

Water source: tap, RO, RO/DI, LFS purchase?

Lights: type, duration, percentages, etc.?

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

Lights above ^^ but I'll restate... ATI sunpower 6 bulb t5 so simple off and on, with 2 reefbrite XHO supplement. I use 3 blue +, 1 purple +, 1 coral +, and 1 true actinic. They turn on with just 1 blue +, and true actinics, starting at 8am, then the rest come on at 9. They turn off around 6pm. So only 9 hours total time.

And totally forgot you guys would want what water I was using.... RO/DI BRS 4 stage water saver plus with 0 TDS. I use regular old purple box IO and have for nearly all of my reefing life. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

Thank you guys for the time.

redfishbluefish · May 4, 2019

OK, T5 user....sorry I missed it in the OP.....frequency of changing bulbs?

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

12 months on the button. I know they could last longer, but old habits die hard.

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

Have a build thread back on RC, just have no idea how to convert it over to here.

Lukas75 · May 4, 2019

What is in there in the way of a CuC. Any tangs or foxface/rabbits?

redfishbluefish · May 4, 2019

homer1475 said:
Have a build thread back on RC, just have no idea how to convert it over to here.

Yes, start typing!

I did the same thing a number of years ago and more or less made the new build here a Reader's Digest version, skipping all the little nonsense.

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

yellow eye kole, starry blenny. CUC is about 10 or so nessarious(sp?) snails, 2 mexican turbo's, 2 bumblee bee(these things are about 10 years old lol and I only see them once in a great while so I know they are alive). Think thats about it on the CUC. I know I should probably have more, just have no idea what to get either as most snails just eventually die.

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

redfishbluefish said:
Yes, start typing! I did the same thing a number of years ago and more or less made the new build here a Reader's Digest version, skipping all the little nonsense.

Yeah, thats why I haven't done it. It's about 50 pages long and over 1k posts. More work then I want to do. lol

Suppose copy/paste would work also, but I think I would have to reupload all the pics. Meh I'll work on it sometime, lets get back to my issue.

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

One other thing I find odd, I get very little coralline growth. Not that I'm complaining about it, just odd and of notice.

Lukas75 · May 4, 2019

homer1475 said:
yellow eye kole, starry blenny. CUC is about 10 or so nessarious(sp?) snails, 2 mexican turbo's, 2 bumblee bee(these things are about 10 years old lol and I only see them once in a great while so I know they are alive). Think thats about it on the CUC. I know I should probably have more, just have no idea what to get either as most snails just eventually die.

Astreas love to eat hair algae, I'd add maybe a half dozen and see if it makes a difference. That having been said they likely won't do much at that length. I'd fire your blenny! And the Kole wouldn't touch the stuff, they like film algae which is probably why you have GHA and not film, lol. A yellow tang or a one spot foxface might chew it down and let the astreas get in and clean up the rest. just be aware that with foxface you need to keep it well fed or it might start to nip at corals.

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

Tank is too small for any other tang to my knowledge? And I do not want to "borrow" a tang to only have to take it down the road when it gets too big.

I know there are other solutions then a tang or foxface, believe me I've considered those already.

RJinPV · May 4, 2019

I'm going to follow along here. I have a persistent GHA problem too. But I am wondering if the sand is a factor. A lot of your GHA is near the substrate

homer1475 · May 4, 2019

I will admit I did not vacuum my sandbed last week. My maintenance day is sunday and we left for vaca on saturday, so I did not want to do anything too drastic before leaving. But if I do vacuum it weekly during my weekly routine, I can keep it algae free.