I'm done, please help

[Jeeperz]

Ok. I can't Id this stuff and it's really taken off after trying to control it manually. I've been dosing peroxide at 1ml per 10 gallons and it has not slowed a bit, almost seems like it's spreading faster.

ALK at 8dkh(Hanna checker), no3 is 0, po4 is .12(red sea). Not sure on mag but last test was 1380 awhile back. Salinity/iorc salt. Spectrapure rodi.

I assume no3 is zero due to algae growing everywhere. Does not seem to bother any corals other than covering them.

Tank is roughly 3 years old but has been moved twice, last was hundreds of miles. The sandbed was removed during last move. No algae issues before last move. Have 4 fish, 2 clowns, tailspot blenny, yellow watchman goby. Tuxedo urchin. Various snails like cerith, trochus, and unfortunately nassarius snails with a small bin of sand. Some red leg and scarlet crabs, 1 Halloween crab. Tank has been up for around 6 months after last move. Gets no sunlight. Coral seem to be doing ok. My blenny does randomly pick at the algae.

I tried removing a piece of rock and scrubbing it, algae came back just as strong after a week or two.

 

[Jeeperz]

I will try to get a pic once lights go off. It's a red sea Max nano tank. Pulling all rock to do a so called rip clean is not an option as I have micro brittle stars in the rock, sps attached to rock along with zoa's and hammers, and a large rbta. I guess it could be an option but it didn't put a dent in it on the one rock I did do, when this started, before it spread.

 

[Megability]

Looks like GHA -green hair algae- to me, super fine and soft, pulls right off the rock, yeah?

I’ve battled it myself for years in a BioCube29

Things that have helped is to reduce nutrients if you can, like reduced food and/or media bags or similar, poly floss, then manual removal at water changes, and believe it or not running higher-than-normal Kent Marine’s Magnesium -apparently there’s an impurity in there that doesn’t hurt anything except algae, and it does help to just melt it away...

good luck!

 

[Jeeperz]

It pulls easily with fingers, not so much with turkey baster. It also has large bubbles in it. I stopped feeding frozen as there was so much of it that is so small the fish ignore it. I feed hikari marine pellets, nls pellets, and tdo pellets. I also give reef nutrition brine shrimp and roe maybe once a week or less. I mix it up. Only feed what they eat every other day or two.

I do get long streamers of some type of algae or? Hard to get pics of it.

Will raising mag kill my snails?

 

[Hemmdog]

It pulls easily with fingers, not so much with turkey baster. It also has large bubbles in it. I stopped feeding frozen as there was so much of it that is so small the fish ignore it. I feed hikari marine pellets, nls pellets, and tdo pellets. I also give reef nutrition brine shrimp and roe maybe once a week or less. I mix it up. Only feed what they eat every other day or two.

I do get long streamers of some type of algae or? Hard to get pics of it.

Will raising mag kill my snails?

Frozen mysis is what gives you nitrates though. Pellets are full of phosphates. That would explain your nutrient imbalance.

 

[Jeeperz]

I figured the imbalance was due to the massive GHA? outbreak I'm having. I feed about the same as I have for 3 years except maybe less now. Before the GHA outbreak my nitrates were always above 15 or so.

 

[Jeeperz]

Is there any way to eliminate the small pieces in frozen food? 90% of it doesn't get eaten and just flys around the tank, settling on the rocks creating detritus that I then have to kick up with a turkey baster before my weekly water change.

 

[Hemmdog]

Is there any way to eliminate the small pieces in frozen food? 90% of it doesn't get eaten and just flys around the tank, settling on the rocks creating detritus that I then have to kick up with a turkey baster before my weekly water change.

There should be enough flow in your tank that food and other stuff can’t settle on rocks. It should be in the water column constantly and eventually flow into your overflow to be filtered.

 

[Megability]

The increased algae would reduce the nutrients though, as they are using them...

Yeah when I read your post it sounded like a ton of feeding to me.

How old are your lights?
Sometimes they reduce intensity and shift more into the reds, which algae also likes...

 

[Jeeperz]

I don't feed much, just a huge variety. With frozen it's a slice off a small cube, less than 1/4 of the small cubes. Pellets, maybe a dozen or so. I don't feed daily so one feeding is pellets, one feeding frozen, one feeding reef nutrition brine/roe which is a couple drops each. I feed every other day at the most, usually every other two days.

Lights are ai prime hd's. One is original 3 years old, other one is about 2 years old.

Flow is original return pump with vca random flow generator and two current eflux 660 wave makers set on full blast. Detritus definitely settles out on rocks, I blow them off once or twice a week and before water changes.

Tank has been up 3 years pretty much how it looks. Never an algae problem until I moved states and at the same time removed the sandbed.

I will cut feeding back from 3 times a week to 2. Anything else I can do to remove this GHA? I will attempt to remove top 2 rocks and scrub and peroxide treat. And manual removal of the rest the best I can.

I change about 6-7 gallons of water each week. I may up that to double. I just don't want to start other issues with nutrients bottomed out

 

[Megability]

How do you make your water?

When I was between RO/DI units I was getting distilled water from Walgreens, I thought distilled was clean enough, it wasn’t... I tested, and I had a lot of algae until I went back to RO/DI and making my own with fresh filters...

 

[Jeeperz]

Spectrapure 180gpd megamax cap rodi system. New 6 months ago. Flush before/after making water. 0 ppm out of membrane, 0 ppm into and out of di resin which is mega Max cap and Enduro. On well so no chlorine.

 

[Hemmdog]

I don't feed much, just a huge variety. With frozen it's a slice off a small cube, less than 1/4 of the small cubes. Pellets, maybe a dozen or so. I don't feed daily so one feeding is pellets, one feeding frozen, one feeding reef nutrition brine/roe which is a couple drops each. I feed every other day at the most, usually every other two days.

Lights are ai prime hd's. One is original 3 years old, other one is about 2 years old.

Flow is original return pump with vca random flow generator and two current eflux 660 wave makers set on full blast. Detritus definitely settles out on rocks, I blow them off once or twice a week and before water changes.

Tank has been up 3 years pretty much how it looks. Never an algae problem until I moved states and at the same time removed the sandbed.

I will cut feeding back from 3 times a week to 2. Anything else I can do to remove this GHA? I will attempt to remove top 2 rocks and scrub and peroxide treat. And manual removal of the rest the best I can.

I change about 6-7 gallons of water each week. I may up that to double. I just don't want to start other issues with nutrients bottomed out

Whoa whoa whoa, don’t cut back on feeding. Just stop feeding the pellets until your phosphates are back to acceptable levels. Saltwater fish, reef fish specifically, need to be fed daily, if not multiple times daily. I feed my tanks 3-5 times daily, small meals like you are feeding. You need nitrate.
When is the last time you cleaned your powerheads really good? Flow will also help to get rid of the GHA.

 

[Jeeperz]

They were cleaned last week. I have to clean these every month or they lose all their flow. I am going to try to put my icecap gyre 1k back in but I couldn't get the flow low enough with it before so I went back to what I had.

I will cut out pellets. My clowns will not be happy. They love the hikari and tdo chromaboost pellets more than any other food.

Won't adding nitrate rich food fuel more GHA algae? What about adding phyto to compete with it? I'm starting phyto cultures to eventually feed copepods to feed to the tank. My girlfriend has a biota Mandarin so we need pods(it eats frozen though too)

 

[Hemmdog]

They were cleaned last week. I have to clean these every month or they lose all their flow. I am going to try to put my icecap gyre 1k back in but I couldn't get the flow low enough with it before so I went back to what I had.

I will cut out pellets. My clowns will not be happy. They love the hikari and tdo chromaboost pellets more than any other food.

Won't adding nitrate rich food fuel more GHA algae? What about adding phyto to compete with it? I'm starting phyto cultures to eventually feed copepods to feed to the tank. My girlfriend has a biota Mandarin so we need pods(it eats frozen though too)

Gha is mainly fueled by phosphate in my experience.

 

[Hemmdog]

They were cleaned last week. I have to clean these every month or they lose all their flow. I am going to try to put my icecap gyre 1k back in but I couldn't get the flow low enough with it before so I went back to what I had.

I will cut out pellets. My clowns will not be happy. They love the hikari and tdo chromaboost pellets more than any other food.

Won't adding nitrate rich food fuel more GHA algae? What about adding phyto to compete with it? I'm starting phyto cultures to eventually feed copepods to feed to the tank. My girlfriend has a biota Mandarin so we need pods(it eats frozen though too)

Gha is mainly fueled by phosphate in my experience.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Ive has success with use of liquid Vibrant in getting rid of GHA

 

[Jeeperz]

Better pics. It has spread to all to rocks now

 

[vetteguy53081]

Try liquid vibrant and reduce lights and white brightness.
In the mean time. you can pull as much as you can by hand. Margarita snails will help devour this BUT they do require cooler water temps (75-76 degrees) or even cooler.

 

[Jeeperz]

I'll reduce photoperiod and cut whites a bit, they are already pretty low though