- Joined
- Nov 20, 2017
- Messages
- 53
- Reaction score
- 64
- Location
- Phoenix, Az
- What state or country do you live in
- Arizona
I feel strongly the experiences I had can help others with this issue: Chiefly, battling hair algae. I have a 66 gallon tank with a mix of Fiji and BRS dry rock (IMO this contribute to algae issues), I seeded with live sand and liquid bacteria. My tank was about six months old and I had only added a few corals; because, I was having to scrub my live rock weekly to prevent a take-over of algae. This went on for several months, and I was getting zero gratification from my aquarium. I turned to the web and researched. This lead to me trying, a black out period, a GFO reactor; weekly water changes; Fluconzole. Each intervention provided a small result, but the entire time my tank looked like crap, and I was becoming discouraged.
I realized I was being lazy. I tried each of these separately assuming it would work because with past tanks I had never had such an algae issue. I would over feed, was lax with water changes, and my tanks looked awesome. Sure I scraped sheets of algae off the glass every few days, but my tangs loved me. My corals and rocks looked amazing.
I was becoming so discouraged with my new tank I regrouped and realized this tank was completely different. I read till blurry-eyed on the boards, watched numerous videos and formulated a plan, a cumulative approach: I manually removed and filtered out as much algae as possible; I turned out the lights for four days; I reduced my lighting period (10hrs) and went more blue; I ran a filter sock changing it every couple days, I started GFO, again; I tuned my protein skimmer to run more wet, visible removing algae; I started adding corals; I started dosing Vibrant.
Finally- I WON! The hair algae is gone.
I do believe starting with dry rock provides limited biodiversity e.g bacteria, pods, sponges. And algae appears to fill those voids. This is just my person experience. I thought I would share because now, my tank is the awesomeness I wanted from the start. Take what you will but this worked for me.
I realized I was being lazy. I tried each of these separately assuming it would work because with past tanks I had never had such an algae issue. I would over feed, was lax with water changes, and my tanks looked awesome. Sure I scraped sheets of algae off the glass every few days, but my tangs loved me. My corals and rocks looked amazing.
I was becoming so discouraged with my new tank I regrouped and realized this tank was completely different. I read till blurry-eyed on the boards, watched numerous videos and formulated a plan, a cumulative approach: I manually removed and filtered out as much algae as possible; I turned out the lights for four days; I reduced my lighting period (10hrs) and went more blue; I ran a filter sock changing it every couple days, I started GFO, again; I tuned my protein skimmer to run more wet, visible removing algae; I started adding corals; I started dosing Vibrant.
Finally- I WON! The hair algae is gone.
I do believe starting with dry rock provides limited biodiversity e.g bacteria, pods, sponges. And algae appears to fill those voids. This is just my person experience. I thought I would share because now, my tank is the awesomeness I wanted from the start. Take what you will but this worked for me.
