@mcarroll not sure why I hadn't thought of that...maybe that's what I should do. Is there any reason the lights couldn't be on from say 2:00pm to 10:00pm? Then I could feed when I get home at 5:30pm and again at say 9:30pm? Is that too soon before lights-out to feed?
You can set up the lights so that they come on exactly right so that it's feeding time when you get home.
(And I don't think there's a wrong time of day to feed, unless your fish are asleep. Nothing so "wrong" that it appears to make a difference, anyway.)
Some whisps of GHA are back on the rocks again, but it looks distinctly browner than before. It used to be bright green and now it looks like a much dingier brown. Any idea what this means?
Probably that the algae isn't healthy enough to ward off epiphytes – that's what makes the green hair algae look brown in most cases. (could be diatoms, dinos, etc....those are probably the most common
visible epiphytes)
Keep doing what you're doing.
And don't panic. There's no advantage to short-cutting anything in this hobby.
Remember that this was likely brought on by depleted nutrients – this means that your tank is still going through it's growth phases, which include the uglies.
Zapping the tank with carbon dosing, nutrient removing media or other questionable new-tank treatments and you don'y accomplish anything except setting back the tank's maturity by an unknown amount.
Given that dino's are one of the more common things to come out of a tank started like this and in this condition, I would not be playing it very very safe, and very, very conservative from here on.
BRS recommended switching to frozen as it's less nutrient-dense. I'm also rinsing in RO before adding to the tank.
Did you get this advice directly from someone at BRS? (Sounds more like general advice that's given around the forums is why I ask....does not sound tailored to your situation.)
IMO there are clear advantages to both types of feed. It's unfortunate they didn't recommend live or other non-frozen food (i.e. fish eggs), as that's the best option by a huge margin. NO problems with cell integrity or nutrient balance.
There is probably a better frozen item you could have picked for the switch too...mysis is more of a supplement or picky-eater food IMO.
For their staple food, select something
with color (orange, like them, is a good one) that is also
from the ocean. If you let me know what brands your store carries I can recommend specifics....but you may get the idea already.
but now I'm just leaving it, because the toothbrush was just putting all the GHA up in the water column, and I think that's how it seeded all over the substrate.
This is a direct indication of two things: 1) how immature your tank still is if algae was able seed that much, that quickly from that one event and 2) how
you are still favoring the algae by the
lack of nutrients in the water.
It's literally retarding the maturation of your tank – and the algae are capitalizing on it. That leaves
all the cleanup work to you and your snails as long as it's allowed to continue. Yuk!
I'd probably double your CUC if it still doesn't look like they're making a dent after you do a cleanup.....you have to do something like this every time you see an expansion of algae in the tank.
You might even have to double their numbers again if the first doubling still doesn't seem make a dent.
I have to guess (tell me if it seems right), but it sounds like the amount of area they have to cover has probably more than tripled, so you may even need to double your own efforts in the short term to stay ahead of this.
- I manually scooped out all of the substrate that had algae on it, about 25% of it. I'm soaking what I removed in hydrogen peroxide so that I can hopefully put it back in the future.
- On Friday, I took out two small rocks I have, each with one coral (a favia and a GSP), which were both overrun with GHA. I very carefully dripped hydrogen peroxide on the rock where the GHA was, avoiding getting any on the coral. I then rinsed the hydrogen peroxide off with RO water before returning the rocks to the tank. These rocks are now so clean it's not even funny, but I think this also may have killed the corals. They both looked pretty white and closed up when I left on Friday. I'm away until Monday, but we'll see if they come back or are dead when I get home.
Noooooooooooooooooo!
Definitely one of the most damaging/disruptive ways to use peroxide. It was a great test if you had any doubts about the killing power of peroxide! But not a very good way to handle algae in a new tank. Using a
flamethrower would have gotten similar results. Okay, more charring.
If you want to direct peroxide against algae, try it more like this:
Algae Cure!! Spot Treating Algae With Peroxide
Especially around corals.
Also, as I mentioned last time, my alkalinity uptake has slowed. I think is mostly due to reducing my photoperiod by ~20% and all but eliminating everything but the blues.
Cutting the photoperiod down is all I would do – restore normal colors to your lighting ASAP.
Reduced alk consumption is probably a combination of the lack of phosphates and the stress from the light change.
