Please advise!! Persistent light brown algea?

I had problems with that and the red slime version. I hooked up a phosphate reactor and an oversized high end skimmer, and haven't seen it since. I'm assuming you're using RODI water? If not that's your problem.


I have thought about upgrading my skimmer but 1/2 the time it's deflated like nothing to skim. Add some food or stir sand it'll skin a bit then deflate again. So seems like it would be pointless to get a bigger skimmer but I don't know. At this point I'm not sure what to do.
 
k light seems hi. Possible but I dont trust the app. Put a piece of clean printer paper on the meter sensor. It should only drop 10,000 lux/ If it drops more, thats closer to what You actually have. +10,000.
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One prob I had on first tank was not enough flow or incorrect in the DT to keep a constant stir. Went 5 months w a clean sump. changed up the flow and it was sump funk in 15 to 30. sure you thought of that
 
Ok. Any concern with invertsI'd like to order the saltwater version over the reef version of refresh since it's half he price but both have reports of killing snails. Thoughts? And prime is different by what I've read

I didnt lose anything when I dosed. I dosed 10 times to just play it safe.
 
@saltyfilmfolks

Ya I have pretty good flow. I'm running a gyre 150 at about 50%. Any more and it sandstorms and causes corals to retract. I had this same stuff in a 45 frag tank that was bare bottom! At a loss
 
Hey Reel Red, I think I have the same stuff. Keep up with the heavy water changes and scrubbing what rock You can. I had a bunch of HA and Bubble. Those slowly went away then the white stuff took over. I did pretty much what You have been doing. Cleaned out the sump run socks on all outlets . I set up an ATS, running biopellets etc. it's "slowly " going away. Keep up the good fight!
 
Does it look like this?
6e4ff684292832c43997108897876b5e.jpg
 
I finally got that issue to go away about 2 weeks ago. But then again i got about 50x the flow in my tank blowing sand all over the place so i dont even think it has time to grow algae but OP maybe try increasing the flow in the area and like salty said, take the vac to it
 
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Do these help ID it? I just wanna have a positive ID before I do anything besides WC's and vac it up. These pictures show the color the best I can get. Lights were distorting colors.
 
Man, I'll be honest. Being that you don't have any coraline algae there, I'm assuming your tank is relatively new. New tanks go through the algae cycle before they stabilize and the coraline takes over.

I think you're just in the cycle.

My tank is about 3 months young and I'm in that cycle too, close to the spot you're in. A couple of weeks ago I was convinced that I had dinos. I dosed peroxide for 4 days, killed my cleaner shrimp and lepto in the process, then realized it was just the algae cycle and I had over reacted.

In aquariums, it's easy to assume the worst and freak out, when it may just be part of the progression of your tank.

Personally, I'm letting the same issue go right now and trusting my socks, skimmer, and GFO reactor to hold it back some until it works is way through the cycle.

A year from now, if something like this pops up suddenly, that's cause for concern. Right now, it's probably progress.

Just my opinion since I'm in the same boat.
 
I suppose it could still be the uglies. Tank is 9 months old. Just figured it'd be gone since I've had it since July. I'm trying to be patient with this tank and so far I have been but this stuff sucks.
 
Tuesday was a 30g WC and rock scrubbing, then a rock work restructure due to a new condy nem that was perched in the back where I couldn't see it. Turned out to be a blessing I think. Stirred up lots of detritus and exposed more of whatever this algae stuff is which I was able to remove however I lost another 5lb of sand. No biggy just have to add some.

With a change of blades on the Gyre and its relocation.... Running vertically behind the rocks detritus settles mostly in cave in the front of the tank which I can get to pretty easily so that alone should help things in general.

I did decide to dose the Dr. Tims Re-fresh. Today was the second dose with no apparent negative side effects. Inverts looking good and corals are opening well. Even this little freebie I got a while back that has never looked good is now extending feelers which I've never seen it do in any location in the tank. In regards to the algae it appears to
have slowed growth since all the changes. I even get small pieces of algea that break off and from the flow.
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After seeing the overall improvement of the tank with all the changes I think my problem was caused by a couple factors: inadequate and misdirected flow and nutrient build up. Fixing these issues along with the Dr. Tims, I think will provide the knock out combo I'm looking for to beat what I am quite sure is brown cyano.

Found this stringy stuff in my over flow. Maybe this will confirm my ID. It's the same stuff but only gets long and stringy in low flow areas like sump or over flow.
ImageUploadedByREEF2REEF1454879298.594608.jpg
 
Well I got you. Did it appear out of nowhere or. Did it slowly and weekly start getting worse??
 
It started slowly. Initially showed up after added first corals, began on plugs and spread to rocks. Got worse after I gotta tank full of the pineapple sponges that covered anything that wasn't in direct light! Then it just continued to grow back faster, thicker and spread to the sand.
 

IF YOU HAD TO TAKE A REEFING EXAM, WOULD YOU PASS?

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