JoeSchmo45
Community Member
Hello Reefers!
Here is a quick rundown of my algae issues. My tank is a year and a half old. I do regular water changes with RODI water (weekly or biweekly) and test often (every few days). It began several months ago with an outbreak of bubble algae. I believe this came in on a frag. I ended up dosing the tank with Vibrant, which killed all the bubble algae in a few weeks. My emerald crabs wouldn't touch the stuff! This was followed by a slow, but bad outbreak of bryopsis algae. My parameters through all of this hardly changed at all, which is why I can't figure out what the deal is. I ended up dosing ReefFlux, which took care of all the bryopsis quickly. While I'd rather not be dosing things in the tank for algae issues, I don't know what else to do. My parameters SEEM to be where they should be. Bryopsis was then followed by a huge outbreak of cyano. Keep in mind, I do as much manual removal as I possibly can with each water change (the byropsis was pretty much impossible to remove manually). The cyano was overtaking my entire tank - rocks, sand, everything. I finally did a round of chemiclean, following the instructions to a T. A few days later, my tank was as spotless as it's ever been. I actually got to enjoy the looks of it for about a week. A little over a week of having a clean aquarium, a new algae started blooming. I don't know if it's cyano, hair algae, dinos, or what. I'm going to attach a couple pictures showing before and what it looks like now. I honestly don't know where to go from here. My parameters are, and have been, as follows:
Temp: 78
Cal: 420
Mag: 1400
Alk: 9.0-9.3
Nitrates: 2.5-5
Phos: .03 - .05
pH: 8.3
Sal: 1.026
The one thing I notice is that my nitrates do drop slowly if I bring them up to 5 or 10. Phosphates seem to always be in that .03-.05 range. I can dose either of those if needed. I'm wondering what this current algae is and if there are any recommendations about how to get rid of it. My corals have been doing quite well through all of this, thankfully. I would appreciate any help you could offer!
Thank you!
Joe (The Frustrated Reefer)
Here is a quick rundown of my algae issues. My tank is a year and a half old. I do regular water changes with RODI water (weekly or biweekly) and test often (every few days). It began several months ago with an outbreak of bubble algae. I believe this came in on a frag. I ended up dosing the tank with Vibrant, which killed all the bubble algae in a few weeks. My emerald crabs wouldn't touch the stuff! This was followed by a slow, but bad outbreak of bryopsis algae. My parameters through all of this hardly changed at all, which is why I can't figure out what the deal is. I ended up dosing ReefFlux, which took care of all the bryopsis quickly. While I'd rather not be dosing things in the tank for algae issues, I don't know what else to do. My parameters SEEM to be where they should be. Bryopsis was then followed by a huge outbreak of cyano. Keep in mind, I do as much manual removal as I possibly can with each water change (the byropsis was pretty much impossible to remove manually). The cyano was overtaking my entire tank - rocks, sand, everything. I finally did a round of chemiclean, following the instructions to a T. A few days later, my tank was as spotless as it's ever been. I actually got to enjoy the looks of it for about a week. A little over a week of having a clean aquarium, a new algae started blooming. I don't know if it's cyano, hair algae, dinos, or what. I'm going to attach a couple pictures showing before and what it looks like now. I honestly don't know where to go from here. My parameters are, and have been, as follows:
Temp: 78
Cal: 420
Mag: 1400
Alk: 9.0-9.3
Nitrates: 2.5-5
Phos: .03 - .05
pH: 8.3
Sal: 1.026
The one thing I notice is that my nitrates do drop slowly if I bring them up to 5 or 10. Phosphates seem to always be in that .03-.05 range. I can dose either of those if needed. I'm wondering what this current algae is and if there are any recommendations about how to get rid of it. My corals have been doing quite well through all of this, thankfully. I would appreciate any help you could offer!
Thank you!
Joe (The Frustrated Reefer)
