Ready to tear it all down

[chimbo84]

I’m fed up. My wife is fed up. Even my five year old daughter is telling me the tank looks gross. Can’t say I blame her.

I have been battling this infestation of filamentous algae or whatever for three months now. Starving didn’t work, Chemiclean didn’t work, fluconazole seemed to work but only at a dose and duration that had negative affects on my coral. The second I did a water change to remove the fluconazole, it just came back with a vengeance. Nothing touches the stuff - urchins, Foxface, tangs, snails, and emerald crabs all avoid it.
It has smothered and killed about $1000 in corals.

Is this common GHA? I am really starting to question things because nothing seems to work.

PO4 : 0.06ppm
NO3 : 2.5ppm
Alk : 8.3
Ca : 410
Mg : 1420

 

[Lavey29]

So you have low nitrates along with GHA and cyanobacteria. How old is the tank? What is your current cleaning crew? What is your light schedule? Do you do daily manual removal and weekly water changes?

 

[stephanjupillat]

I used fritz algae clean out. Works slowly and completely rid my tank of almost all algae. You dose it every 3 or 4 days, can’t remember, and overtime it’ll kill all algae in there. I stopped at 4 weeks as all that was left was some bubble algae and I didn’t want to kill my 3 urchins and all the snails due to absolutely no algae. I also tried everything and decided to try this. Glad I did. There are a few other brands but some work too quickly and can hurt coral. I found no issues with fritz. Just check po4 and no3 frequently in the beginning due to algae dying. My tank looks great now. No algae.

 

[doubleshot00]

Ill be honest if my tank looked like that I would make one of two choices 1. screw this hobby (which i to am close) or 2. just order new live rock and bleach that current rock. You don’t have much rock.

 

[paintman]

Not GHA! Its Lynbya. My 200 gal was full of this. You can beat it, but not with clean up crews or fish. You have to get of fyour **** and do somw work
Tooth brush
turkey baster
run power filter after blowing tank at least 8 hours

Every day for at least 2-3 weeks

 

[chimbo84]

So you have low nitrates along with GHA and cyanobacteria. How old is the tank? What is your current cleaning crew? What is your light schedule? Do you do daily manual removal and weekly water changes?

The tank is seven months old but was started with rock from my two-year old tank that I upgraded from. My cleaning crew is a bunch of trochus, four tiger conchs, nassarius snails, three urchins, three emerald crabs, and I added micro stars and bristle worms from IPSF (haven’t seen them in a while though).

light schedule is 10am to 8pm. I do get in there every few days and manually remove it but I’m getting tired of that. I do daily auto water changes of 1%.

 

[Devan Patel]

I used fritz algae clean out. Works slowly and completely rid my tank of almost all algae. You dose it every 3 or 4 days, can’t remember, and overtime it’ll kill all algae in there. I stopped at 4 weeks as all that was left was some bubble algae and I didn’t want to kill my 3 urchins and all the snails due to absolutely no algae. I also tried everything and decided to try this. Glad I did. There are a few other brands but some work too quickly and can hurt coral. I found no issues with fritz. Just check po4 and no3 frequently in the beginning due to algae dying. My tank looks great now. No algae.

Did this have a negative affect on your corals?

 

[stephanjupillat]

Did this have a negative affect on your corals?

None. No change in coral. Just watch nutrient levels. Mine didn’t change much but I run gfo and heavy bacteria and carbon dosing. I have everything except acropora. 60 gallons or so. Almost 2 years old. You continue using it until the tank looks the way you want it. Nothing else changes. Doesn’t make your skimmer go crazy. Nothing. I also installed a uv sterilizer after the dosing was complete which should help keep it that way.

 

[Lavey29]

The tank is seven months old but was started with rock from my two-year old tank that I upgraded from. My cleaning crew is a bunch of trochus, four tiger conchs, nassarius snails, three urchins, three emerald crabs, and I added micro stars and bristle worms from IPSF (haven’t seen them in a while though).

light schedule is 10am to 8pm. I do get in there every few days and manually remove it but I’m getting tired of that. I do daily auto water changes of 1%.

I went through similar around the 7 month mark. Your tank is going though an evolutionary process. Raise nitrates to 10. Cut light to 6 hours with blue and uv only no whites. Raise magnesium to 1500. Daily manual removal to help cleaners get ahead. It will eventually be replaced with tons of coraline but not an overnight process. Give it 2 months.

 

[stephanjupillat]

If your take the algacide method like fritz it’ll take a while though. 2 to 4 weeks for gha. Longer for bubble algae or turf. I had gha and bubble everywhere. I used a bubble scraper when I did water changes and didn’t worry about popping them as it would get sucked out of the tube, but any left in tank would be killed anyway with fritz. Go read the reviews on Amazon. Good luck!

 

[dieselkeeper]

Have you tested your RO water for phosphates? Your phosphates is low due to the hair algae is consuming phosphates. That is why it seems to get worse with a water change. If you are getting saltwater or RO water from your LFS, I would definitely test it. Some stores don't keep up with their filter replacement.

 

[Hermie]

Dude it doesnt look that bad

But honestly I had a very similar looking, if not the same, algae.

I started carbon dosing vinegar in my kalkwasser and added a bunch of snails.

I was trying to remove it by hand like insanely working my rocks but dude it was the carbon dosing and adding grazers that really got rid of it. Be sure to vacuum it out after it dies.

 

[chimbo84]

Have you tested your RO water for phosphates? Your phosphates is low due to the hair algae is consuming phosphates. That is why it seems to get worse with a water change. If you are getting saltwater or RO water from your LFS, I would definitely test it. Some stores don't keep up with their filter replacement.

My RODI is perfect. I just did an ICP test on my RO to make sure it wasn’t the source of anything. I thought my phosphate level was actually pretty good… everything I’ve seen has suggested 0.06 to 0.1ppm.

 

[Hermie]

tooth brush and siphon does work but ultimately you need to lower the water nutrients and export them.

Its a 2 pronged approach. Then once its dead your grazers will keep it from growing back.

 

[Hermie]

You could also install an oversized algae turf scrubber it would compete with the nuisance algae.

check out Reefer James on youtube, his setup probably wont work for you but you can see that he had the same stuff and he got rid of it by adding a competitor for water column nutrients (ATS).

 

[Dav2996]

I’m fed up. My wife is fed up. Even my five year old daughter is telling me the tank looks gross. Can’t say I blame her.

I have been battling this infestation of filamentous algae or whatever for three months now. Starving didn’t work, Chemiclean didn’t work, fluconazole seemed to work but only at a dose and duration that had negative affects on my coral. The second I did a water change to remove the fluconazole, it just came back with a vengeance. Nothing touches the stuff - urchins, Foxface, tangs, snails, and emerald crabs all avoid it.
It has smothered and killed about $1000 in corals.

Is this common GHA? I am really starting to question things because nothing seems to work.

PO4 : 0.06ppm
NO3 : 2.5ppm
Alk : 8.3
Ca : 410
Mg : 1420

I recommend using brightwell phosphate remover if tanks phosphate really well. Then pull it keep dosing the brightwell phosphate remover until it’s gone. Phosphate remover makes the GHA weak. Also I would get a refugium or stronger skimmer setup.

 

[Dav2996]

I’m fed up. My wife is fed up. Even my five year old daughter is telling me the tank looks gross. Can’t say I blame her.

I have been battling this infestation of filamentous algae or whatever for three months now. Starving didn’t work, Chemiclean didn’t work, fluconazole seemed to work but only at a dose and duration that had negative affects on my coral. The second I did a water change to remove the fluconazole, it just came back with a vengeance. Nothing touches the stuff - urchins, Foxface, tangs, snails, and emerald crabs all avoid it.
It has smothered and killed about $1000 in corals.

Is this common GHA? I am really starting to question things because nothing seems to work.

PO4 : 0.06ppm
NO3 : 2.5ppm
Alk : 8.3
Ca : 410
Mg : 1420

Also people don’t buy coral until 6 months mark because there is an ugly phase in the maturation of the rock at 6 month mark.

 

[xCry0x]

Fritz Algae Clean Out is the same active ingredient as Algaefix - an algaecide.

So just keep that in mind.

Your build thread mentioned a 12g tank and this being a 120g tank. Did you take the rock from the 12g? If so, assuming you put in a ton of new (dry?) rock to fill the space.

What does your clean up crew actually look like? Any sense of quantity of inverts? You mentioned tang(s) - how many?

My, opinion, is that using an algaecide isn't the end of the world. But you need to have something in place to prevent the algae from growing back -- so a healthy clean up crew, bacterial load, etc.

Reefcleaners would recommend a CUC sized like this for a 120 -> https://www.reefcleaners.org/store/all-algae-crew-120-long-detail. The owner is also a great resource if you ping him and ask for suggestions.

 

[Hermie]

Also people don’t buy coral until 6 months mark because there is an ugly phase in the maturation of the rock at 6 month mark.

That was not really applicable in my case and I dont think its really helpful.

This stuff does not die off by itself like an "ugly phase"

It stays as long as its allowed to.

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Turn off your red and green lights, manually remove as much as you can.