Need some advice/encouragement

[Sdoutreefer]

Yesterday I found AEFW on a few of my frags and also a mother colony that I thought was dying of RTN. I believe the source was off of that colony. I dipped them all and lost all but 1 of the frags due to Coral Revive. I'm gonna go ahead and say I didn't get all of them but don't see any other acros showing signs of stress. I've also been dealing with a GHA problem for months. During the beginning stages of my tank, I battled byropsis and won. After that the tank was thriving and it was time to go out of town for work for a while. I got home to my tank and lost a lot of livestock.

I was ready to tear down my tank and get out of the hobby for awhile but I'm not a quitter and need to be checked into rehab for my reef addiction... I gave everything I had into overhauling my tank to make it enjoyable again. It was for awhile until GHA started sprouting. I've beaten GHA in the past in other tanks and figured I could do it again. So, I busted out the GFO in hopes of it destroying the GHA. Well, no luck.

I read into carbon dosing and decided to give Red Sea NoPox a try. I've been dosing 2.5ml/day in my 50g system and have been for around 2 months? or so, maybe longer. I thought it was going to work because the algae started turning white within a week of dosing. Then the GHA came back with a vengeance and long story short, it is dominating my tank.

So, between a seemingly immortal GHA and now AEFW, it's safe to say I've become completely discouraged and do not enjoy my reef any longer. I'm not debating if I want to keep my system going or tear down and either take a break, or completely restart.

I honestly don't think I'll be able to take a break from reefing, but revamping my system will be quite an effort. My sump needs redesigned, I'll have to re plumb everything and wait until all the GHA dies off as well as the AEFW.

I need some advice/encouragement from all of you on Reef2Reef. I don't want to be defeated because I completely hate losing no matter what the scenario.

 

[TheSaint216]

Honestly part of the fun of this hobby is overcoming the problems and turning it around for the better. Buy 8 Turbo snails and let them work on the GHA, they will destroy it.

Here's an Article for your AEFW Melevsreef.com - AEFW | Acropora Eating Flatworms There's other ways of fixing it to just keep trying.

 

[MrDJeep123]

How long have you been in?

 

[Sdoutreefer]

Honestly part of the fun of this hobby is overcoming the problems and turning it around for the better. Buy 8 Turbo snails and let them work on the GHA, they will destroy it.

Here's an Article for your AEFW Melevsreef.com - AEFW | Acropora Eating Flatworms There's other ways of fixing it to just keep trying.

Thanks for the link. I have 4 turbos and 8 magaritas, I heard they eat the stuff too. I tried out a seahare, and my peppermint shrimp tore him up the first night I put it in...

 

[Sdoutreefer]

How long have you been in?

Since my Junior year of highschool... Sooo about 8 years. Took a 2 year break my first couple years of college.

 

[Sdoutreefer]

Another option could be to get rid of all Acros and die off the AEFW. If I do go that route, I'll most likely be taking all corals out and going complete darkness for awhile... Idk if that will completely solve my algae issue or not tho. Anyone else have some advice?

 

[Bad Company]

Try a waterfall algae scrubber. You can DIY them for less than $50. I run one on my cube:

 

[Sdoutreefer]

Try a waterfall algae scrubber. You can DIY them for less than $50. I run one on my cube:

Ive been considering some sort of scrubber. I just have hardly any room in my sump. That is another reason im not completely enjoying my tank. If i do decide to tear down and revamp, I will most likely have an algae scrubber.. There is just a lot of things I would have done differently when it comes to my sump.

 

[Sdoutreefer]

Figured I might as well share my tank since I hardly have on this site.
Beggining of the tank

This was right before I had to go out of town for work.

Here it is at the beginning of my algae problem.

Current FTS Taken today

 

[Sdoutreefer]

 

[Sdoutreefer]

I decided to keep trying and rid of the GHA. As about a week or two ago I started scrubbing the rock inside my tank, yes I know it's a bad idea to do that, but right now I have nothing to lose. I blow my rocks off with a turkey baster when I get hom from work and scrub a rock every night before bed. A couple rocks I haven't touched and plan to prolly just remove them because I don't like them in my scape. So far it seems to be working. I have noticed a large increase of GHA in my sump that I will be cleaning out this afternoon. I have been dosing NoPox for awhile everyday and thought the bacteria will be mature enough to consume whatever the scrubbed off algae does, making it difficult for the GHA to seed..

I decided that life without a tank would be kind of dull. Hopefully with time and a lot of labor I'll finally get a grip on the algae.