My Troubled 75 gallon FOWLR

HumuhumuFan · Sep 20, 2018

Seeking some help with my tank is what prompted me to join this forum. The tank has been up for 3 years, but last year I had a runaway aiptasia problem and opted to nuke the tank. I moved the fish to quarantine, bleached all the live rock, and then ran straight RO/DI in the display tank for a few weeks before draining it and refilling and re-cycling it. In the process I lost my rectangle trigger and some pieces of live rock that were covered with gorgeous coraline. My LFS didn't think the freshwater would kill the aiptasia but I haven't seen any (knock on wood). What I gained unfortunately was a bad algae problem.

ndrwater · Sep 20, 2018

When you "nuked" the tank, you basically reset the whole process. Looks like you get to experience the new tank uglies all over again.
Stay on top of things like Phosphate with GFO or similar. Make sure your source water is as good as it can be as well.
Best of luck, you'll get through it

HumuhumuFan · Sep 20, 2018

ndrwater said:
When you "nuked" the tank, you basically reset the whole process. Looks like you get to experience the new tank uglies all over again.
Stay on top of things like Phosphate with GFO or similar. Make sure your source water is as good as it can be as well.
Best of luck, you'll get through it

Thanks. After I bleached the live rock, I cycled it in a trash can with pure ammonia so it would be ready to handle the load when everything went back in the display tank. It was weird, things progressed as normal, diatoms first, etc. Then after the diatoms, the blue-green algae appeared with the green hairy stuff. I have my lights down to 5 hours a day and my nitrate is constantly at zero. At this point my tank has looked like this and tested clean for 7 months.

Another member suggested that too little nitrate might be the problem so I pulled the Purigen out of my filter tonight. We'll see if that helps.

HumuhumuFan · Sep 21, 2018

Happier times.

KrisReef · Sep 21, 2018

Stay the course and this tank will look beautiful again. The live rock is likely leaching nutrients that the algae will thrive on. Keep exporting and manage your measurable levels and soon enough the uglies will pass. Best thing to do is relax and keep your hands out of the tank as much as possible, and wait this stage out.

I am really more concerned that your LFS thought aptasia would survive fresh water.

HumuhumuFan · Sep 22, 2018

The beginning of the problem. "Hey, I don't have any corals to worry about, besides this thing is pretty cool. I'm just going to leave it alone."

HumuhumuFan · Sep 22, 2018

I shall call him, The Sarlacc! Hey wait a minute, where did those little ones come from?

HumuhumuFan · Sep 22, 2018

And this is how bad it was a few weeks later when I pulled the live rock out. There were hundreds of them in the tank. Maybe a thousand including all the really small ones in the live rock. Leading up to this I went through 4 bottles of Aiptasia-X.

HumuhumuFan · Sep 22, 2018

KrisReef said:
Stay the course and this tank will look beautiful again. The live rock is likely leaching nutrients that the algae will thrive on. Keep exporting and manage your measurable levels and soon enough the uglies will pass. Best thing to do is relax and keep your hands out of the tank as much as possible, and wait this stage out.

I am really more concerned that your LFS thought aptasia would survive fresh water.

To be fair, it was just one guy there and I don't think he works there anymore. His theory was that aiptasia "spores" for lack of a better word, would be able to go dormant and/or survive in pockets of higher salinity in the substrate and then re-emerge when I added saltwater back to it. Given how tough those little suckers are it isn't the craziest theory I've ever heard but I'm glad it was wrong. Knock on wood haha.