Ready to tear it all down

[jmichaelh7]

Once that stuff gets to a certain length nothing will touch it.
Regardless of the negative press I used Vibrant twice in a forest of algae that makes your tank look like an algae lint ball and it worked and it did not harm anything in my tank including shrimp, urchin fish and corals.
It took 7 weeks the first time but after a few weeks the GHA started sloughing off in huge chunks.
But whatever the underlying problem is has to be addressed or it will return.
Here's a pic of a small portion of the grass field I had. It's been gone for 8 months or so. Hope this helps!

Holy… I’m surprised meds didn’t work.

You’ve already diagnosed the type of algae it is?

 

[Hermie]

I would stop doing treatments to remove nutrients and cut back somewhat on waterchanges. I would focus on Manuel removal and actually raise nutrients. A good general level to shoot for would be phosphates of 0.1 and nitrates of 10. I will probably take 3 weeks to a month to completely clear out but you should notice some change within 2 weeks.

Please don't carbon dose with low nutrients.

You will just cause more problems.

Completely disagree. And based on my experience and at least one other in this thread.

 

[TokenReefer]

One question I've always had with vibrant is where does it all go after it dies? Filter? Surely it all can't be filtered out. What happens once it starts to break down... Never used an algaecide.. This has always been a question in my head tho

 

[Hermie]

Increasing nutrients with that "algae" is not going to get rid of it lol, but starving the tank isn't either.

 

[Dav2996]

With my nitrate level so low, would carbon dosing drive it even lower? What nutrient levels do you maintain? Did you adjust your skimmer?

Your nitrates may be low but when you kill the algae they will spike high. I used carbon dosing but becareful of PH. It brought my PH down a lot. I like NOPOX by red sea. It will help phosphate and nitrate.

 

[Dav2996]

Increasing nutrients with that "algae" is not going to get rid of it lol, but starving the tank isn't either.

I dont think you can starve the corals. If the algae is still there that means the nitrates are still there but you cannot detect them with the test kits because they are not that good. That is why I dont care if they go to zero. When they do go that low I pull the algae and whatever i miss becomes more nitrates and phosphates causing growth. Its a winning but slow battle.

 

[Dave1993]

that's why i would never use dry rock only live rock straight out ocean

 

[92Miata]

You are creating an ecosystem. You can make one that will or wont cause algae to explode.
I have several tanks on a common sump. The same water is in all of them.

The difference here is in the lighting and flow.

Absolutely.

It drives me nuts how many mental hoops people will jump through to justify that phosphate is the problem even when phosphate is negligible. People run reeftanks with 30 times the phosphate that the OP has and don't have algae problems.

I dont think you can starve the corals. If the algae is still there that means the nitrates are still there but you cannot detect them with the test kits because they are not that good. That is why I dont care if they go to zero. When they do go that low I pull the algae and whatever i miss becomes more nitrates and phosphates causing growth. Its a winning but slow battle.

You abso-f'in-lutely can starve corals, and they'll often die before the algae does when you go the nutrient deprivation route.

His nutrients are not his problem here. I've got 50ppm nitrates and dose .05ppm PO4 /day in my sps tank and have no problems with hair algae.


His issue is one of poor surface quality and low surface competition. He needs to manually deal with the algae and encourage desirable organisms (like coralline) to outcompete it. It takes time and work. Trying to push nutrients down even further will kill the things that he needs to grow.

 

[Dav2996]

Absolutely.

It drives me nuts how many mental hoops people will jump through to justify that phosphate is the problem even when phosphate is negligible. People run reeftanks with 30 times the phosphate that the OP has and don't have algae problems.


You abso-f'in-lutely can starve corals, and they'll often die before the algae does when you go the nutrient deprivation route.

His nutrients are not his problem here. I've got 50ppm nitrates and dose .05ppm PO4 /day in my sps tank and have no problems with hair algae.


His issue is one of poor surface quality and low surface competition. He needs to manually deal with the algae and encourage desirable organisms (like coralline) to outcompete it. It takes time and work. Trying to push nutrients down even further will kill the things that he needs to grow.

Its how I got rid of the problem. I pulled the algae but I couldnt pull everything and kept it to 0. Whatever strands start floating from pulling became nitrates in 2 days. I also feed heavy. Ab+ daily and lots of fish poop for corals.

 

[Dav2996]

Absolutely.

It drives me nuts how many mental hoops people will jump through to justify that phosphate is the problem even when phosphate is negligible. People run reeftanks with 30 times the phosphate that the OP has and don't have algae problems.


You abso-f'in-lutely can starve corals, and they'll often die before the algae does when you go the nutrient deprivation route.

His nutrients are not his problem here. I've got 50ppm nitrates and dose .05ppm PO4 /day in my sps tank and have no problems with hair algae.


His issue is one of poor surface quality and low surface competition. He needs to manually deal with the algae and encourage desirable organisms (like coralline) to outcompete it. It takes time and work. Trying to push nutrients down even further will kill the things that he needs to grow.

I also got to say I do not do water changes either. Gone 5 months no water changes. 1.3 years since started tank. I beat all the algae except cyano but I use wave makers for that and happy tank.

 

[Hermie]

You abso-f'in-lutely can starve corals, and they'll often die before the algae does when you go the nutrient deprivation route.

His nutrients are not his problem here. I've got 50ppm nitrates and dose .05ppm PO4 /day in my sps tank and have no problems with hair algae.


His issue is one of poor surface quality and low surface competition. He needs to manually deal with the algae and encourage desirable organisms (like coralline) to outcompete it. It takes time and work. Trying to push nutrients down even further will kill the things that he needs to grow.

Agreed about starving corals, however it's not starving the tank to carbon dose. The purpose is to outcompete it.

I also agree about surface competition and manual removal.

 

[92Miata]

I also got to say I do not do water changes either. Gone 5 months no water changes. 1.3 years since started tank. I beat all the algae except cyano but I use wave makers for that and happy tank.

You didn't beat anything by driving the nutrients down - you just shifted your issue to a different edge consumer. The cyano is a direct result of your attempts to drive nutrients down in a nutrient poor system. Keep doing it and you'll get yourself some dinoflagellates too.

Pulling out the algae is what's fixing the problem for you - not the nutrient deprivation. You're handicapping the algae while other consumers grow and compete - it's like pulling weeds in a garden. You do it for a while and then there's no place for them to grow.

 

[Aquadude1]

Completely disagree. And based on my experience and at least one other in this thread.

Yeah that makes sense what your saying, but from my experience cyano along with hair algae is a major indicator for a imbalanced tank. Often raising nutrients especially by heavy amino acid dosing will feed "beneficial bacteria" helping them to beat out the other.

 

[Dav2996]

You didn't beat anything by driving the nutrients down - you just shifted your issue to a different edge consumer. The cyano is a direct result of your attempts to drive nutrients down in a nutrient poor system. Keep doing it and you'll get yourself some dinoflagellates too.

Pulling out the algae is what's fixing the problem for you - not the nutrient deprivation. You're handicapping the algae while other consumers grow and compete - it's like pulling weeds in a garden. You do it for a while and then there's no place for them to grow.

UV kills dinos its non exsistent. I have tiny patches of cyano. I keep my nitrates at 5. When I fight GHA or somthingelse I do take the 0 nitrate approach because I know it will form into more nitrate and phosphate. Also when you feed food it decomposes to nitrate and phosphate. Fish poop nitrate phosphate. Plenty of it to go around no water changes.

 

[Aquadude1]

Just to be clear I am not a huge fan of nitrogen and phosphorus dosing. But increased organics (including heavy amino dosing) in the tank usually does the trick. Most of these eukaryotes are always present in tanks, but when opportunities and imbalances show up they explode in population

 

[Jwise]

You should do chemiclean again but this time cover up the tank to make sure no light gets in for three days straight then on the third day take off the cover and it should have cleaned up your problem. I know because i to had it so bad that nothing worked even doing chemiclean myself until i talk to my buddy who owns a lfs that's awesome told me to cover the tank for three days and make sure no light get into the tank at all even turn off your lights for the time as well. I though that he was just talking crap until i did it with the chemiclean and to my surprise it worked.

 

[ReeferCPA]

I recently went through the same thing with my 150g that was about the same age. I think my issue was turf algae.

What worked for me was taking my SPS and LPS out and moving them to a coral QT of sorts to attempt to preserve them.

Then I started nuking my tank with Vibrant. It took about 5-6 weeks. I scrubbed the rock/did manual removal about every week, before re-dosing Vibrant. Gave it 4 or so hours and swapped the socks.

Funny, I swore that I never would use Vibrant ever again after that fiasco, but now that I know what it actually is, it actually served a purpose.

 

[keithw283]

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%.

how long are your lights at your max setting? what's your ramp up and ramp down like? Turn off everything but your blues. Your phosphates and nitrates are higher than what you are reading as your algae is consuming them. I'm battling the same thing right now. My nitrates and phosphates are 0 but I know they are higher and the algae is consuming them. I turned off my whites, reds and greens completely and have been doing larger water changes along with manual removal and it's starting to go away.

 

[Aquadude1]

You should do chemiclean again but this time cover up the tank to make sure no light gets in for three days straight then on the third day take off the cover and it should have cleaned up your problem. I know because i to had it so bad that nothing worked even doing chemiclean myself until i talk to my buddy who owns a lfs that's awesome told me to cover the tank for three days and make sure no light get into the tank at all even turn off your lights for the time as well. I though that he was just talking crap until i did it with the chemiclean and to my surprise it worked.

For me, where I have worked. We have had great success with chemi clean but only if the underlying problem was addressed. To me it's like the final step of the process. I think of it as advanced manual removal.

 

[Dav2996]

For me, where I have worked. We have had great success with chemi clean but only if the underlying problem was addressed. To me it's like the final step of the process. I think of it as advanced manual removal.

I used chemiclean but the stuff comes back I do not like stuff like this because it doesnt prevent it. Nitrates and phosphates lead to algae growth of GHA and Bubble