ID needed

[Cstar_BC]

I think I have Dino’s , and maybe something else .

I’ve tried 3 day black out, I’ve taken rocks out and scrubbed with hydrogen peroxide .

Help help help I’m tearing my hair out

 

[Rp8]

GHA! oh noooooo! do a water change and pinch and siphon as much as you can out. run a less light schedule. Check you phosphates. good luck

 

[Rp8]

the brown algae on the sand look like diatoms. get some conch snails. they will take care of them

 

[Rijodan]

What size tank?

 

[Cstar_BC]

GHA! oh noooooo! do a water change and pinch and siphon as much as you can out. run a less light schedule. Check you phosphates. good luck

I did a 3 day black out and the lights on this tank are only on for 8 hours. I have checked and my phosphates are 0 , nitrates were at 20 so I did 50% weekly changes and it’s now hovering around 5-10

the brown algae on the sand look like diatoms. get some conch snails. they will take care of them

Thanks ! I have a conch in there , it just looks like Dino’s and I’m worried I’m doing everything wrong

What size tank?

60 G cube

 

[Tired]

Phosphates being at 0 is a problem. That starves corals, and starves beneficial algaes that will compete with pest algae. You need to get that phosphate up, and keep nitrates at somewhere around 5-10. Try feeding slightly more.

Don't freak out, algae is mostly an aesthetic problem. Just make sure it doesn't grow on your corals- use a turkey baster to blow it off if it tries. Algae can be dealt with, but you have to be calm about it- making a ton of drastic changes will bother everything else, and may not do much to the algae.

Stop scrubbing your rock. One of the best things to compete algae problems is well-established rock, and scrubbing it just kills off what's trying to get established. Did you use any live rock when you started the tank, or all dry? If it was live, was it rock from the ocean, or just rock put in someone's tank for a bit?

What cleanup crew (snails, etc) do you currently have?

How old is the tank?

What light do you have?

 

[Tiki Reef Joshua]

If your tank is big enough get a tuxedo urchin. Get your phos above 0. Nitrates are high but not terrible. Manual removal is mandatory. Get vinyl tubing and zip tie it to a hard bristled toothbrush and scrub with siphon. Reduce lights but don’t eliminate. Highly doubt it’s Dino’s. Everyone thinks they have Dino’s and usually it’s just diatoms and GHA. Best of luck. You will beat it.

 

[Cstar_BC]

Phosphates being at 0 is a problem. That starves corals, and starves beneficial algaes that will compete with pest algae. You need to get that phosphate up, and keep nitrates at somewhere around 5-10. Try feeding slightly more.

Don't freak out, algae is mostly an aesthetic problem. Just make sure it doesn't grow on your corals- use a turkey baster to blow it off if it tries. Algae can be dealt with, but you have to be calm about it- making a ton of drastic changes will bother everything else, and may not do much to the algae.

Stop scrubbing your rock. One of the best things to compete algae problems is well-established rock, and scrubbing it just kills off what's trying to get established. Did you use any live rock when you started the tank, or all dry? If it was live, was it rock from the ocean, or just rock put in someone's tank for a bit?

What cleanup crew (snails, etc) do you currently have?

How old is the tank?

What light do you have?

I only have a lion fish and mandarin in there so I don’t “feed” the tank that often - copepods added for the mandarin, and live feeders for the lion .

I had a tuxedo in there but he was spending a lot of time on the glass and not really cleaning the rocks so I moved him to my bigger tank and I can see him clearing the rocks (clean lines where he’s been)

How do you up phosphates ? Is there a specific supplement you recommend ?

This rock was dry rock and we started with microbacter7 and ammonia

CUC
1 emerald crab
2 hermit crabs
4 astrea
2 turbo
5-10 bumblebee snails
1 conch
1 cerith snail

Occupants
- RBTA
-Dwarf fuzzy
- mandarin
- 2 hammers, 1 very unhappy acro

This tank is almost 2 years old I think

Light is 300w Chinese black box set to 50%

 

[Cstar_BC]

If your tank is big enough get a tuxedo urchin. Get your phos above 0. Nitrates are high but not terrible. Manual removal is mandatory. Get vinyl tubing and zip tie it to a hard bristled toothbrush and scrub with siphon. Reduce lights but don’t eliminate. Highly doubt it’s Dino’s. Everyone thinks they have Dino’s and usually it’s just diatoms and GHA. Best of luck. You will beat it.

I have dismantled the rock and scrubbed and scrubbed . Done 50% water changes , sat with a fish net and just gathered as much of the free floating algae

Nothing and I mean nothing is killing this .

Thank you for the encouragement, just tough seeing one tank so happy and one tank so ugly

 

[Spitty]

I had similar issues a while back until I purchased an algae scrubber. After running the scrubber for about 2 months, absolute 0 algae issues in my display now. No more scrubbing rocks.

 

[Tiki Reef Joshua]

I wouldn’t take the rock out. Just keep getting as much as you can with mentioned technique at WC. This is war. You must me vigilant. Adapt. And don’t keep trying everything. Add some CUC and siphon scrubbed algae. Make sure your RODI is on point. Have it tested by someone other than you (meaning your equipment not you personally). Also get a second test on params.

 

[Tiki Reef Joshua]

When I am fanatical about my RODI including monthly cleaning of RODI container my problems go away.

 

[Tired]

I would recommend not having a small fish with a lionfish.

Bumblebee snails mostly eat small inverts like worms, they aren't good against algae. No need for so many. Or any, really, they're just eating your detritivores.

Add more algae-eating snails. Check out ReefCleaners.com for some ideas, and potentially to order- great stuff.

One way to increase phosphates is just to feed more, maybe to your corals, and cut down on water changes a bit. There are supplements you can use, but I haven't tried them. You may not see much of an increase at first, the hair algae will suck that up- which is why you need cleaners, to tackle it. Manual removal, in the form of pinching/siphoning it out, is good but may not be required depending on what cleaners you have.

Stop trying to kill algae. You can't. Even if you erased all this pest algae from your tank, it would get re-added on something else, and the same conditions would let it go wild again. The way to beat this stuff is through competition, encouraging other types of algae to grow that will compete with it. A system with any available nutrients, but not enough for most algaes to grow, is prime for pest algae to go wild. So you need to make it more hospitable to other algae, kinds which will just turn your rock green and purple and won't smother your corals, which is done by upping nutrients and introducing said other algae.
Your rock looks incredibly bare for 2 years. Do you scrub it often? Did it have more color before peroxide? Again, stop doing that- nothing does that to wild reefs, and corals there grow perfectly fine without being overgrown by algae. Scrubbing just distributes it into the water column and disrupts all the non-pest algae that can't handle it as well.
Have you ever had any coraline algae? On anything?

The key to preventing infestations of almost anything is biodiversity and a balanced system. Do you happen to have a LFS near you that sells really nice live rock, like the ocean stuff? A pound or two of that will add all sorts of helpful critters, and crank up your biodiversity and types of non-pest algae very nicely. Or maybe you know someone with an established tank, who can give you a handful of empty shells or frag plugs that are covered in lots of algae.
Dry rock seems nice in that it doesn't come with pests, but it takes it years to get to the sort of maturity that live rock has, and you have to artificially add in all that biodiversity. All the scavengers, detritivores, filter-feeders, algae, all that good stuff. Biodiversity is your best friend in a healthy reef tank, and that includes all the little creepy-crawlies.

 

[Tiki Reef Joshua]

I started my first tank with dry rock and never will again. Having said that, this tank is not new so something is off. Could be a wack spectrum on the black box? But that’s a WAG.

I have done 2 3 tanks and in 2 of them I had a GHA phase. Manual removal and and dialing in my lights, mixed with patience made them look like glass after a while. Again, I think even 1Tds in RODI is unacceptable for me. Holding tanks get cleaned monthly. I pay more attention to my RODI than my tank haha. I think it’s super important. When I am vigilant my tank looks unbelievable... and I don’t have to work on it! Clean your RO stuff maybe? I dunno. I can’t think of anything else but stay the course.

 

[Tired]

Oh, that is a good guess. But my bet, looking at the color of the rocks, is straight-up lack of biodiversity. The tank has three corals and a handful of snails, so not many opportunities for anything to get into the tank. Though the coral color does make me wonder about lighting- they're kinda brown.

TDS in the water could contribute, depending on what that TDS is.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Use a turkey baster to break this all up and siphon well.
reduce white light intensity a little and add some snails: turbo, nassarius, astrea and nerite plus a few blue leg hermits

 

[Cstar_BC]

Oh, that is a good guess. But my bet, looking at the color of the rocks, is straight-up lack of biodiversity. The tank has three corals and a handful of snails, so not many opportunities for anything to get into the tank. Though the coral color does make me wonder about lighting- they're kinda brown.

TDS in the water could contribute, depending on what that TDS is.

I’ve been trying to turn this into my seahorse tank. So have been playing around with placement and rehoming my 10 bta (I started with three) and this was my clownfish tank . However I upgraded my clowns to a bigger tank and wanted a change .

I got my fuzzy at about 2 inches so wanted something small I could watch him in and feed easily.

I definitely think moving my btas and scrubbing the rocks has done some damage to the system .

The corals are under 100% white light as I wanted you to be able to see without the blue making it harder - but the corals are not happy

I would need to look into getting my tds measured but thanks ! A good thing to look into

 

[Tired]

If you keep a reef aquarium, you should get a TDS meter to use on the water you get for topoffs and water changes. They're like $10, and are important to use to make sure your RODI water is good.

Were the bubble tips splitting at a small size? Nems that split while little are usually doing it out of stress. Healthy nems don't split until they're big.

 

[Cstar_BC]

If you keep a reef aquarium, you should get a TDS meter to use on the water you get for topoffs and water changes. They're like $10, and are important to use to make sure your RODI water is good.

Were the bubble tips splitting at a small size? Nems that split while little are usually doing it out of stress. Healthy nems don't split until they're big.

No I bought three that were quiet large from a fellow reefer , they were over growing his tank.

They were all healthy and happy , eating silversides and brine weekly . I had them for a few months before they split . Then I bought different colour nems and they eventually split . So no signs of distress coral wise .

The one hammer Coral that is in there has been super healthy , the other one is bleached and recovering, and the sps is new and I have not been having success with my sps but LPS are thriving

 

[Snoopdog]

I think I have Dino’s , and maybe something else .

I’ve tried 3 day black out, I’ve taken rocks out and scrubbed with hydrogen peroxide .

Help help help I’m tearing my hair out

Sterilizing your rocks basically made your tank start back to day one, do not do that. As you can see it did not help anyway. You need life in your tank, not death. Start feeding more than normal and at least get one live rock to seed your tank, then be patient, very patient.