NoPox seems to be creating an algae issue?

[laezur]

I’ve had some problems with algae, I had green hair algae all up my back wall. I scraped it off and tested my water and saw that my nitrates were pretty high.

Anyway long story short I decided to start running some NoPox and skim a little wetter. Since then, I seem to have more algae. I can’t get rid of this stuff it’s driving me crazy. Should I stop artificial nitrate removal and allow my CuC to clean up or keep dosing and hope it swings the other way?

 

[vetteguy53081]

I’ve had some problems with algae, I had green hair algae all up my back wall. I scraped it off and tested my water and saw that my nitrates were pretty high.

Anyway long story short I decided to start running some NoPox and skim a little wetter. Since then, I seem to have more algae. I can’t get rid of this stuff it’s driving me crazy. Should I stop artificial nitrate removal and allow my CuC to clean up or keep dosing and hope it swings the other way?

NoPox is not the answer and often promotes DINO
For GHA, pull as much as you can by hand and reduce white light intensity and add snails such as Astrea, turbo, ninja star, cerith and even fighting conch
Pencil sea urchin and carribean blue leg hermits also help

Are you using RODI water or tap water from Faucet ?
Is Tank at or near a window?

 

[laezur]

NoPox is not the answer and often promotes DINO
For GHA, pull as much as you can by hand and reduce white light intensity and add snails such as Astrea, turbo, ninja star, cerith and even fighting conch
Pencil sea urchin and carribean blue leg hermits also help

Are you using RODI water or tap water from Faucet ?
Is Tank at or near a window?

I think you might be right with it being dinos actually… I’ll reduce white light, how about red + green? Already have turbo snails, and some blue leg hermits as well as one emerald. I’m using RODI. Tank is opposite a window, but the windows are covered 24/7 in this room

 

[vetteguy53081]

I think you might be right with it being dinos actually… I’ll reduce white light, how about red + green? Already have turbo snails, and some blue leg hermits as well as one emerald. I’m using RODI. Tank is opposite a window, but the windows are covered 24/7 in this room

UV rays are very strong and can penetrate curtains-shades-blinds
If Dino, best bet is:
Prepare by starting with a water change and blow this stuff loose with a turkey baster and siphon up loose particles.
Turn lights off (at least white and run blue at 10-15% IF you have light dependant corals) for 5 days and at night dose 1ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons for all 5 nights. If you dont have light dependent coral- turn all lights off.
During the day dose 1ml of liquid bacteria (such as bacter 7 or XLM) per 10 gallons.
Clean filters daily and DO NOT FEED CORAL FOODS OR ADD NOPOX as it is food for dinos.
Day 5,, you can start with blue lights - ramping up and work your white lights up slowly
Because yours if fairly light, you can try a 3 day and see how things look and go to 5 day if necessary

 

[laezur]

UV rays are very strong and can penetrate curtains-shades-blinds
If Dino, best bet is:
Prepare by starting with a water change and blow this stuff loose with a turkey baster and siphon up loose particles.
Turn lights off (at least white and run blue at 10-15% IF you have light dependant corals) for 5 days and at night dose 1ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons for all 5 nights. If you dont have light dependent coral- turn all lights off.
During the day dose 1ml of liquid bacteria (such as bacter 7 or XLM) per 10 gallons.
Clean filters daily and DO NOT FEED CORAL FOODS OR ADD NOPOX as it is food for dinos.
Day 5,, you can start with blue lights - ramping up and work your white lights up slowly
Because yours if fairly light, you can try a 3 day and see how things look and go to 5 day if necessary

Great thank you. I’ll stop dosing immediately and see if we can fix this manually. I did a water change today, I don’t have any hydrogen peroxide though I’ll see if I can get some of that off the internet. As for corals, I have a few so lights can be turned off but I’ve lowered red and Green to 0 and whites to 20% and maintaining only ultra violet and blues.

ll have a go at scraping off as much algae as I can and scooping it out.

As for the sand, should I use the turkey baster to give it a little bit of a shuffle round, pick it up and move the sand a bit to disturb the dino’s? I’ve heard that helps. Don’t want to cover them under the sand and cause myself problems though

 

[CaptPatrick]

I had major hair algae after fighting Dino’s, had a good amount of snails and crabs that didn’t seem to do much. Added an urchin and noticed a slight difference, following weekend added another and within a week noticed a huge impact, they were like lawn mowers, hardly did any manual removal. Since then I have gotten rid of one because they clean the rocks so well I worried one would starve. Sorry to hear it sounds like you may have Dino’s, if you still have hair algae after the battle I would definitely recommend an urchin, worked great for my tank. Good luck with Dino’s, hope it’s quick.

 

[laezur]

I had major hair algae after fighting Dino’s, had a good amount of snails and crabs that didn’t seem to do much. Added an urchin and noticed a slight difference, following weekend added another and within a week noticed a huge impact, they were like lawn mowers, hardly did any manual removal. Since then I have gotten rid of one because they clean the rocks so well I worried one would starve. Sorry to hear it sounds like you may have Dino’s, if you still have hair algae after the battle I would definitely recommend an urchin, worked great for my tank. Good luck with Dino’s, hope it’s quick.

Thanks! Always thought about urchins but worried about some of my more soft corals that may get poked and prodded to death

 

[CaptPatrick]

Thanks! Always thought about urchins but worried about some of my more soft corals that may get poked and prodded to death

Yea they will take things for a ride, but for as good a job they did I don’t mind. Currently mine has an empty snail shell, a frag plug with a dead sps frag, and some how a single zoa from a large colony.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Great thank you. I’ll stop dosing immediately and see if we can fix this manually. I did a water change today, I don’t have any hydrogen peroxide though I’ll see if I can get some of that off the internet. As for corals, I have a few so lights can be turned off but I’ve lowered red and Green to 0 and whites to 20% and maintaining only ultra violet and blues.

ll have a go at scraping off as much algae as I can and scooping it out.

As for the sand, should I use the turkey baster to give it a little bit of a shuffle round, pick it up and move the sand a bit to disturb the dino’s? I’ve heard that helps. Don’t want to cover them under the sand and cause myself problems though

I would not blow the sand as it will spread further. Siphon sand. peroxide can usulayy be found in grocery storesm pharamcies and walmart if available in your localk area of country

 

[Uncle99]

Measured and consistent use of Nopox will reduce nitrates but I might think your issue is more phosphate and light.
Deprive GHA of of excessive phosphate through the use of a GFO and reduce whites intensity. Scrub and pull regularly. Use snails but continually redirect their efforts to affected areas.
Maintain strong water chemistry and balanced nutrient availability if less than one year, say nitrate 10ppm and phosphate 0.03-.1ppm max. If more than a year mature you can run higher.
I found peroxide reduces all algaes including the good guys and can be counterproductive.
Simple close maintenance of nutrient loads are vital in the first 8-12months while the good guys population increases.
At this point, they overrun the bad guys and algae just disappears.

 

[Spare time]

Light is never the "cause" of pest algae per se. If you have corals growing, you have a tank designed to grow algae. All proper reef lights at their ideal settings should be able to grow algae. Zooxanthellae=algae. All pest algae will thrive with the blue light we provide, and intensity matters way more than color in 99% of cases. "White" light is arguable worse for growing many algaes compared to blue light. Go look at the graph of the most common photopigments and see what wavelegnths excite them the most. Its almost always the blue/violet range, with a tad bit of red. What most likely limits algae is predation and competition. With dinos, we don't know what causes them, only that they often correlate with 0.00 phosphate.

If you have dinos, keep the phosphates in the proper range. If I have dinos, like to add pns probio, wasteaway+ecobalance, or similar while maintaining nitrate and phosphates at the right levels. Ime, most of the time dinos go away in a week or two after dosing phosphates.

 

[laezur]

Measured and consistent use of Nopox will reduce nitrates but I might think your issue is more phosphate and light.
Deprive GHA of of excessive phosphate through the use of a GFO and reduce whites intensity. Scrub and pull regularly. Use snails but continually redirect their efforts to affected areas.
Maintain strong water chemistry and balanced nutrient availability if less than one year, say nitrate 10ppm and phosphate 0.03-.1ppm max. If more than a year mature you can run higher.
I found peroxide reduces all algaes including the good guys and can be counterproductive.
Simple close maintenance of nutrient loads are vital in the first 8-12months while the good guys population increases.
At this point, they overrun the bad guys and algae just disappears.

Thank you I’m going to stop NoPox and reduce my white lights all the way down to 30% and just scrub my glass and back panels every day. Hopefully my snails can take care of the rest, and then this problem will slowly resolve itself. The tank is about 8 months old at this point, things have definitely been up and down recently which is annoying

 

[Uncle99]

Thank you I’m going to stop NoPox and reduce my white lights all the way down to 30% and just scrub my glass and back panels every day. Hopefully my snails can take care of the rest, and then this problem will slowly resolve itself. The tank is about 8 months old at this point, things have definitely been up and down recently which is annoying

At 8 months, your just at the end of uglies more or less.
Keep everything absolutely as stable and unchanging as possible, this speeds maturity.
It will just go away.

 

[laezur]

So I've just ran a quick test and I'm at 0.25 ppm phosphates (or there about, I don't have a hanna checker) but definitely more than 0.01-0.03. That'll be why I'm running into algae problems. Nitrates are around 5ppm.

I don't have any GFO, or a refugium (these red sea 170 sumps are tiny) so... I guess it's down to watcher changes?

 

[Uncle99]

So I've just ran a quick test and I'm at 0.25 ppm phosphates (or there about, I don't have a hanna checker) but definitely more than 0.01-0.03. That'll be why I'm running into algae problems. Nitrates are around 5ppm.

I don't have any GFO, or a refugium (these red sea 170 sumps are tiny) so... I guess it's down to watcher changes?

You could, but that will lower nitrates as well. Your nitrates are fine at 5ppm in my mind.
Rowaphos is a GFO (there are many others) comes with a small media bag which should fit somewhere in flow? No?
If not I might run a bag in a cheap HOB to mop up that organic, you don’t run it continuously so once its say 0.05ppm, you can pull that HOB off….
Just make sure nitrate doesn’t fall beyond 2ppm and phosphate not lower than 0.03ppm or corals and biodiversity starve.

 

[laezur]

You could, but that will lower nitrates as well. Your nitrates are fine at 5ppm in my mind.
Rowaphos is a GFO (there are many others) comes with a small media bag which should fit somewhere in flow? No?
If not I might run a bag in a cheap HOB to mop up that organic, you don’t run it continuously so once its say 0.05ppm, you can pull that HOB off….
Just make sure nitrate doesn’t fall beyond 2ppm and phosphate not lower than 0.03ppm or corals and biodiversity starve.

I’ll still have a look into GFO, I just know I can’t get a proper refugium setup with my current setup; I either need to mod my sump or get an external reactor or something.

I’ve turned my skimmer down (I’ve been running it wet for a long time), and may even turn it off for a few days to try and get my nitrates up a little bit to use up some of the phosphates??? Not sure if that’s possible, I remember reading it somewhere

 

[Uncle99]

I’ll still have a look into GFO, I just know I can’t get a proper refugium setup with my current setup; I either need to mod my sump or get an external reactor or something.

I’ve turned my skimmer down (I’ve been running it wet for a long time), and may even turn it off for a few days to try and get my nitrates up a little bit to use up some of the phosphates??? Not sure if that’s possible, I remember reading it somewhere

I would want my skimmer to run a bit dry, to pull out the a deep green skimmate, this will reduce your phosphate.
Your nitrate is fine IMM.

My phosphate has been .1ppm for years now and I have no refuge, just rock. No GFO, just rock and sand.

It takes a good 12-18 months of stable parameters to really notice the difference in the system, but in this range, parameters are rock solid and good guy algae, pods and other diversity are much populated and available for coral consumption.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I'm not sure that NOPOX or any carbon dosing is going to be responsible for boosting the growth of green algae. If there is an effect in a given tank, it may be just from the pH lowering giving more available CO2 for algae.

 

[laezur]

I'm not sure that NOPOX or any carbon dosing is going to be responsible for boosting the growth of green algae. If there is an effect in a given tank, it may be just from the pH lowering giving more available CO2 for algae.

I did a test last night and found my nitrates to be around 5ppm and my phosphates were running quite high at somewhere around 0.25ppm so I believe that to be my issue

 

[desertrat505]

I'm not sure that NOPOX or any carbon dosing is going to be responsible for boosting the growth of green algae. If there is an effect in a given tank, it may be just from the pH lowering giving more available CO2 for algae.

Thanks for the info. I think this is the issue I am having with GHA.