MAJOR algae...EVERYWHERE! Please help it’s horrendous!

[brandon429]

if you use dosers or params to kill that, you plug up all your filtration pores with waste.

rip clean the tank, like these two:

 

[brandon429]

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

see how they initially had algae, and then in two hours they didn't


after your mass is removed, you then blue up the lights and reduce the whites bigtime. params are not your issue. by letting it take over, one cleaning isn't going to get you off scott free you'll have to manually garden it a few rounds, using no water dosers at all. don't buy any, simply command it back into shape like a boot camp. in two hours or maybe five if its a large reef, either way, take back your investment. by force not coercion

I didn't want to flood your post with rip clean examples, we have hundreds. those two alone are our best merchants for the practice though, copy away.

 

[brandon429]

Beginner in need of help with a picoreef

Hello Hello everyone, I need help. About year ago an acquaintance gave me his old, well established pico reef and didn't really explain much. I do well with freshwater but I know almost nothing about saltwater. For a couple of months I did no water changes (he said topping off with RODI was...

www.reef2reef.com

ok last one. that one was ran about 4 days ago its very recent/pertinent.

see how at the end, each system can have its sand disturbed and nothing clouds

or the rocks lifted up, for gardening in the future, and nothing clouds?

any doser you pick or animal cannot do that, they compound the waste. even if the system is big, compounding the waste in a big system wont help you'll get cyano as tradeoffs from those dosers if the dead mass is left to collect and sink

we do rip cleans on 120/200 gallon systems all the time so don't let a lil work stop you from literally taking back all ground by dinner time tonite.

 

[landlubber]

Strange that it isn't dying back with nitrates at zero and running phosban, so I assume phosphates at 0. Maybe kill the lights a bit and cut back on feeding the tank? Have to believe it will burn itself out at some point if there's nothing for it to eat.

to be honest it isn't strange at all.
when you have an outbreak like this all available PO4 and NO3 are immediately taken in by the algae leaving the water column devoid of any measurable nutrients. This is exactly why corals in a system like this will eventually starve out if the algae itself isn't removed either manually or chemically.
Snails and most CUC will not effectively work through this either as it is too long and they'll just work a small patch over instead of mowing through the majority of it.
I had this exact situation for my entire first year reefing so i can attest to the frustration.

 

[>>klong<<]

My foxface cleared out my 75g full of hair algae within a day of adding it to the tank.

Afterward came dinos and cyano. But three months later at the 6 month mark, I think I’m finally getting toward the end of the uglies :knock wood:

 

[brandon429]

In large tanks it's truly hard to deep clean agreed. Nice balance approaching there you'll like the cruise control phase vs the farming out growths phase

 

[jeffchapok]

Been there, done that. I dislike dosing anything and would rather use natural methods of control, although I did try H2O2 (it ended badly!).

Here's how I *finally* got mine under control:

1) Remove as much as you can by hand. I found starting a hose siphoning into my filter sock in the sump, then pinching the algae between my finger and the end of the hose to pull it off most effective.

2) Bring some RODI or tank water to a boil and shoot it with a turkey baster into the crevices where you can't reach by hand to kill it there. Shut off all circulation in the tank first so the hot water stays in contact longer. The algae will turn bright green and then die in a day or so. Your fish and snails will also attack it in earnest.

3) Add 1 or 2 turbo snails or an urchin to help keep it under control. They won't eat the long stuff, which is why you have to remove that by hand first.

4) If you can, add a refugium to your sump with some chaeto to lower nutrients. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. I just used a cheap isolation chamber for fish to hold the chaeto in place and hung a cheap grow light from Amazon over it.

Repeat 1 thru 3 as needed until it's gone. Keep in mind this can take a few months, but once mine disappeared it's never come back.

 

[Miami Reef]

I checked my phosphate and it’s 0.015 with Hannah checker.

I still have algae and I’ve been dosing vibrant for 2 weeks at double dose. I had a little bit of red slime algae but now it’s a bit worse.

What nutrients is fueling my algae bloom? I have 0 nitrates and some phosphates. All this happened when I added new rocks.

 

[rueric]

I checked my phosphate and it’s 0.015 with Hannah checker.

I still have algae and I’ve been dosing vibrant for 2 weeks at double dose. I had a little bit of red slime algae but now it’s a bit worse.

What nutrients is fueling my algae bloom? I have 0 nitrates and some phosphates. All this happened when I added new rocks.

how did this end up?

 

[GarrettT]

If you had the room, I would run algae underneath in a refugium and cut back on the lights in the main tank. Id imagine an ATS would be the better option.

Manual Ordering – Turbo's Aquatics

www.turbosaquatics.com

Be sure to scrap as much GHA off the glass as you can and then remove with your filter socks promptly. If not, the nutrients will just go back into the water. Doubt you would be able to remove any from your rocks.

 

[Miami Reef]

Guys, this thread is over a year old in a tank that doesn’t exist anymore. That tank was 20+ years old and I basically inherited it. I was such a newb back then (using API lol).

To be honest I’m not sure how I resolved it. I think I did a rip clean.

If I experienced this again I would do black outs and suck out the long strands of algae and add urchins and keep lights at minimum until I can add biodiversity.

Those rocks where really bad. It somehow caused a chain reaction of algae. Not sure what exactly? Maybe an ammonia spike from decaying organics and minimal diversity which lead to an uncontrollable algae bloom? Not sure.