Please Help With My Algae Problem

[Waffen06]

Hi everyone Im at a loss with my algae problem and ready to tear down the tank. Ill try to keep this as short as possible. Its a Nuvo 20 I picked up in April, and it has been a battle since.

I rinsed the sand that came with it (was a nice running tank when I bought it). I used some of the live rock it came with and some from my larger tank. The battle has been with what I was thinking was cyano.

I have tried chemiclean twice, would clear it up but it would always return in a couple days. I tried a deep clean as suggested on here, removed everything, rinsed the sand till it ran clear and brushed the rocks. Tank looked good for less then a week then it returned. Ive tried a complete 3 day blackout, tank looked great for 2 days and its back. Ive dosed peroxide for weeks with no effect. Been running the nuvo UV 24/7 for a month with no help. I do a 20% water change weekly. Powerhead is on max and its even in high flow areas.

Side note have 3 smaller bubbletips that look good, same with mushrooms and a couple sps but most of my zoas and a small colony of pulsing xenia have been withering away. Test this morning nitrates read 0 (api) and phosphates read pretty much 0 (salifert).

Maybe Ive been going about this all wrong and its something else, but Id appreciate any insight.

 

[SPR1968]

Do you have a bit of a better picture of the algae. Is it hair algae I can’t tell

Id guess at raised phosphate so I would get a different low level kit and re test it

 

[SMSREEF]

Manually remove what you can by suctioning it out. You may need to suck out some of the sand it’s attached to and clean the sand with tap water outside the tank and then rinse in RODI water before putting back in tank. This will not be much sand so no need to worry about the good bacteria.

after thorough clean and water change, dose chemiclean again (as long as you didn’t have negative effects the prior times you used it).

Also, increase your clean up crew (a strawberry conch and some cerith snails for sand). Some small hermits will help too if you like crabs.

Target 10 nitrate and 0.1 phosphate.

 

[Waffen06]

Manually remove what you can by suctioning it out. You may need to suck out some of the sand it’s attached to and clean the sand with tap water outside the tank and then rinse in RODI water before putting back in tank. This will not be much sand so no need to worry about the good bacteria.

after thorough clean and water change, dose chemiclean again (as long as you didn’t have negative effects the prior times you used it).

Also, increase your clean up crew (a strawberry conch and some cerith snails for sand). Some small hermits will help too if you like crabs.

Target 10 nitrate and 0.1 phosphate.

Have tried siphoning out/water changes and also tried a deep clean where 100% of the sand was removed and cleaned. Tank has different snails in it. Think I need to manually raise my nitrates and phosphates?

 

[SMSREEF]

Have tried siphoning out/water changes and also tried a deep clean where 100% of the sand was removed and cleaned. Tank has different snails in it. Think I need to manually raise my nitrates and phosphates?

I had to with my tank. But you need a good phosphate test and nitrate test kit. I like salifert for nitrate and Hanna ULR phosphate.

my guess is that only your nitrate is low. Sometimes this causes cyano mats to grow.
But cyano can also be a problem in high nutrients.

increasing flow in the tank will help too. You can get a jebao wavemaker pretty inexpensive.

What kind of snails and how many of each do you have? You may just need some that clean and stir the sand and eat cyano.

 

[Waffen06]

I had to with my tank. But you need a good phosphate test and nitrate test kit. I like salifert for nitrate and Hanna ULR phosphate.

my guess is that only your nitrate is low. Sometimes this causes cyano mats to grow.
But cyano can also be a problem in high nutrients.

increasing flow in the tank will help too. You can get a jebao wavemaker pretty inexpensive.

What kind of snails and how many of each do you have? You may just need some that clean and stir the sand and eat cyano.

Have the split returns and a jebao in there right now. Have a couple nassarius, a turbo, two nerite, 5 astrea and a couple cerith.

 

[rkpetersen]

Here's what I'd do in this situation.

First, identify the algae under a microscope, if it's not entirely clear from eyeball inspection. Is it cyanobacteria? Or is it dinos? Treatment might be different. I can't tell from your picture, but other parts of your story suggest dinos.

Especially if it's dinos but even if it's something else, I'd then get nitrate and phosphate to where they're readable. For example, 0.06-0.10 phosphate and 2-5 nitrate. This may require dosing these chemicals, although just stopping all water changes and feeding more may get it there. Even without the algae, very low nitrate and phosphate may harm your corals.

If it's dinos, I'd then dose DinoX or RedX, start a UV sterilizer, and then do repeated water siphon/filtrations (not water changes) through a 1 micron 7" filter sock, as often as 3 times a day, until they don't come back.

If it's cyano, I'd then dose ChemiClean and do the same micron siphon/filtration.

If it's hair algae or something similar, I'd get a Sea Hare. These sweet little critters are hair algae lawnmowers. Be sure to return it, put it in a fuge, or pass it forward when all the algae is gone, or it'll starve.

My experience with other clean up crew critters, like emerald crabs and snails, is that they often don't do a thorough job of really eliminating the problem. Doesn't hurt to have them though. Snails in particular may be sensitive to some meds.

If it's bryopsis, I'd use fluconazole. The drug is truly a bryopsis miracle cure, and doesn't harm corals, inverts or fish.

 

[Uncle99]

Your nitrate should never be zero. Should be trace say 2-5ppm.

 

[I’m Batman]

From my experience, get rid of that sand... I have/ had the same crap, it’s magnetic, they had a recall on it a few years ago. I have high copper tests that have been lowering with eliminating the Hawaiian black. I’ve been siphoning out little by little and replacing with Fiji pink.

Get a bottle of NeoPhos and NeoNitro or the Fish of Hex equivalent. In my 20 gallon AIO I’m dosing 1.5ml of NeoPhos twice a day to get a detectable reading.

Does that growth disappear at night?