New to reefing experience with battling gha

[Simple reef]

I have been battling GHA for the past 4 weeks. I have a 50g acrylic tank with a 20g long sump with a total water volume of gallons. the system has been up and running since May 1st. I ghost fed the tank 1 or 2 cubes a week. has been fully cycled since the beginning of June. I continued to ghost feed until I added a pair of clowns and some easy soft corals on June 21st. At this point I had a bid of algae because I kept the lights on during cycle. I have added an algae blenny, dottyback, wrasse, and 2 cardinals over the course of the past Month.
My Parameters and Maintenance scheduled.
5gl water change every week (considering changing this to every other day for a few weeks to see if this would help) I Manually remove as much hair algae as possible during the water change each week. It takes almost a full week to get bad.
Nitrates are hovering around 10 they have been has high as 15 and as low as 5 depending on week at this point they seem to be trending down
Phosphates are at 0 they were as high as .16 but for the past 2 weeks they have been 0.

sump/filter set up.
I have a very deep sump about 10" I set up a single large chamber about 18" wide with central divider to keep macro algae contained. I initially intended using a drop.6x algae scrubber, since many years ago I had great success with an algae scrubber. I put the scrubber in from the start however it never grew inside. I also put a tunze 9004 skimmer; which has been skimming very well. This past weekend I decided to switch out the useless scrubber for a refugium with macro algae. I added some macro algae and a grow led light. (I am considering adding miracle mud as well) I also have a bag of chemi pure blue, about 5lbs live rock, about dozen marine pure spheres, and some pond matrix.


I want to know everyone's experiences as well as suggestions.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[Simple reef]

 

[Simple reef]

This is before I Manually removed algae this past weekend.

 

[KMench]

What are you using to check your phosphates? I recently added three more fish to my tank and got a bit of the uglies going on again, can't quite decide if it's dinos or what.

 

[Simple reef]

I use a hanna checker

 

[KrisReef]

Not precisely sure if this applies to your situation, but I had acquired some used live rock that I washed and tossed in a bucket to cycle. Months later I went to use it, but on a whim I tested the bucket water and phosphate was off the chart. (Numbers so big you wouldn't believe it! I tested twice cause I also doubted those results. )

Your algae appears normal for a new tank set up that has phosphates coming from the substrate, or possibly from over feeding, but certainly from somewhere, no matter what your test measurements have shown. I would lean towards the substrate because the algae is growing on top of it, while your fuge algae is starving apparently.

lots of folks have dealt with algae like this. Time, water changes, GFO or another Phosphate exporting method should fix this issue over time. Try not to stress about it, I swear algae thrives on stress. GL

 

[Simple reef]

Did a big clean and 5gal water change my nitrates were at 5. Before water change. I did bleach cure about 7lbs ofthe Pukani rock which was the last rock to have any algae on it. The reef saver rock on the other hand was dry. I’ll keep up with the maintenance and see what happens.

 

[Ron Reefman]

First let me say that after your tank is cycled, it's still very much in a juvenile stage. And like kids growing up, the tank will have some regular struggles. It takes a minimum of about 6 months to over a year for most new systems to stabilize and become mature. The algae bloom is not a surprise at all. Continue to remove it manually and do the other things you are doing. You are headed in the right direction, it just takes times (i.e. weeks... sometime many weeks).

What kind of lighting are you using? That is, MH, t5, leds a hybrid? If you have MH or t5, what kind of bulbs are you running? If it's leds, that fixture and what power levels to each channel (blue & white)?

Most algae is like terrestrial plants and likes red/yellow spectrum to do photosynthesis and grow. If you can go more blue or cool white in your lighting, it will help slow the algae growth. I set up a new tank, but I had good LR and live sand and lots of corals from another tank. I suffered some algae issues at about 2 months in as well. Some reefers will recommend going 2 or 3 days with all the lights turned off to get rid of the algae. This probably isn't a good idea for you. Your tank has to reach a balance and the algae will continue to grow until it has used up the food that's available. Killing it by running no lights will just slow down the process of reaching a balance. I ran all blue leds for a week and my algae went away (the corals stayed happy with the blue light as that's what they use for photosynthesis). But in just a few days after the white lights were back on, so was the growth of new algae.

The lights out or the all blue light tricks will work better once your tank is mature. But for now, IMHO, you are probably better off to deal with it the way you are.

 

[Retro Reefer]

I don’t see a clean up crew.. you need at least 25-50 mixed snails and a dozen or more hermits in that tank, manually remove what you can during water changes and as mentioned run 80-90% blues and maybe cut back your light cycle until your tank stabilizes.

 

[Super Fly]

Did a big clean and 5gal water change my nitrates were at 5. Before water change. I did bleach cure about 7lbs ofthe Pukani rock which was the last rock to have any algae on it.

Bleaching the rocks will also kill the beneficial bacteria on the rocks and then it'll have to cure again, instead I would've just brushed off the GHA (using a clean toothbrush) during water change. I would also slow down on adding more livestock while tank matures and beneficial bacteria has caught up and stabilized to handle the additional bioloads.

 

[Ron Reefman]

If I could pull a rock with algae on it I'd use a small wire brush and do it under the faucet in the sink. I think the bacteria can survive that, but I'm not 100% sure. But I had lots of LR so it wasn't an issue either way.

Good luck.

 

[Simple reef]

Just wanted to post an update. Algae is all but gone. I believe it was new tank syndrome. At the 3 month mark it all but disappeared. I just kept up with weekly 10-20% water changes. Nitrate and phosphate hovering around 10 and phosphate around.2