Should i just restart?

[cdemoss01]

@Pvtgloss I also am having issues with hair algae but my glass is bad too what eats the algae on your glass? And what type of algae? Brown film?

 

[Pod_01]

The tank is over 2 years old. im gun shy about putting new corals in. They just get smothered. I've lost Cyphastreas, favities, trumpets, and montis. Today I have to pull out an acan and tort that lost the battle. I do have a stylocoeniella coming in that I'm going to try out.
I have a bottle of bacto-balance. I'll try it out.
I did FM Soft pellets for a while. The clownfish one.

So just my opinion, you want to get the corals you have in the tank growing. If they are not growing adding frags is not going to help.
Frags just don’t help much in stabilizing the reef tank.

Just for reference I will outline how I run my tank.
I have Red Sea reefer 250 and for filtration I use skimmer and GAC (2 tablespoons in a cup changed once every 4 weeks). I don’t have fuge, socks, GFO, floss, fleece, bio media etc…).
I add 0.2 ml of TM NP Bacto Ballance daily to feed the bacteria and this is so corals have alternative food source. When I am able to purchase I use once a week TM Reef Actif (one of those magical bottles that works well on my tank).

As mentioned I feed the fish 3 or 4 times a day with FM Multi Mix (what I used and works well), and the idea is to feed the fish so they produce what the corals need (poop and ammonia). I tried to starve the fish in the past and ended up with algae and unhappy fish.
Here are my last week NO3/PO4 values:

I am doing nothing with the values, they are just FYI for me and I know the trend.
I look at the corals if they are plum and happy, I am happy.
I do feed coral foods sparingly, twice a month.

I do 10 to 20% water change a month. I dose trace elements, TM K/A elements and am using TM original Balling method.
I used AFR in the past it works well.

I do still get hair algae on the rear wall, my plan is to grow some coral there at some point.

Good luck,

 

[jabberwock]

Sounds like you are going to start over. You are about a 10 hour drive to Tampa. I would drive down and spend the night. Head back the next day with a "local pick up" option, you reduce the shipping time of live rocks immensely. I too was a green hair algae farmer. Total reset with real ocean live rock, and I could not be happier. Skim through my tank thread for more details if you like.

Marco rock

Real ocean live rock

 

[Pvtgloss]

I run a $14 electric toothbrush on my GHA in 5 gal increments during WC, when needed (55g tank). Run the siphon through a filter sock, pump back in from the bucket and you can run all day. Kinda fun too..

I do the same with a manual toothbrush into a sock in the sump. I also put a internal filter in the tank to hopefully pick up floating algae during the scrubbing.

 

[Pvtgloss]

@Pvtgloss I also am having issues with hair algae but my glass is bad too what eats the algae on your glass? And what type of algae? Brown film?

Yeah I get a brown film. I use a tunze care magnet sometimes.
All my cuc except hermits live in my glass. Chitons, snails, and even my urchins live on the glass.

 

[Pvtgloss]

So just my opinion, you want to get the corals you have in the tank growing. If they are not growing adding frags is not going to help.
Frags just don’t help much in stabilizing the reef tank.

Just for reference I will outline how I run my tank.
I have Red Sea reefer 250 and for filtration I use skimmer and GAC (2 tablespoons in a cup changed once every 4 weeks). I don’t have fuge, socks, GFO, floss, fleece, bio media etc…).
I add 0.2 ml of TM NP Bacto Ballance daily to feed the bacteria and this is so corals have alternative food source. When I am able to purchase I use once a week TM Reef Actif (one of those magical bottles that works well on my tank).

As mentioned I feed the fish 3 or 4 times a day with FM Multi Mix (what I used and works well), and the idea is to feed the fish so they produce what the corals need (poop and ammonia). I tried to starve the fish in the past and ended up with algae and unhappy fish.
Here are my last week NO3/PO4 values:

I am doing nothing with the values, they are just FYI for me and I know the trend.
I look at the corals if they are plum and happy, I am happy.
I do feed coral foods sparingly, twice a month.

I do 10 to 20% water change a month. I dose trace elements, TM K/A elements and am using TM original Balling method.
I used AFR in the past it works well.

I do still get hair algae on the rear wall, my plan is to grow some coral there at some point.

Good luck,

How do you dose such low amounts of bacto-balance?
I dose .2ml of ELIMA-NP. I use an old salifert syringe and film it up to 1ml and every day squirt .2ml. I melted the tip closed to make a cap.

 

[Pvtgloss]

Sounds like you are going to start over. You are about a 10 hour drive to Tampa. I would drive down and spend the night. Head back the next day with a "local pick up" option, you reduce the shipping time of live rocks immensely. I too was a green hair algae farmer. Total reset with real ocean live rock, and I could not be happier. Skim through my tank thread for more details if you like.

Marco rock

Real ocean live rock

Your right about the shipping. Great idea.

What did you do with your old corals?
Where you able to pick out specific rocks in Tampa?
The way I feel about this algae and how nothing eats it, I'm convinced it's not just hair algae like my other tank has. I hate to lose all the corals I'm attached to but I don't want to transfer anything during the reset.

The struggle is real!!!

 

[Double monti 61]

I have not read all the other answers to your questions but the one that said that your system does not look bad is right I think more invertebrate bio-diversity would help these are photos of my 15 gallon tank at 6 years.

 

[Pvtgloss]

I have not read all the other answers to your questions but the one that said that your system does not look bad is right I think more invertebrate bio-diversity would help these are photos of my 15 gallon tank at 6 years.

I've bought so many inverts and they all starve or live on the glass. My latest causality is the lettuce nudibranch. I've starved 2 sea hares that refused to eat the algae. 7 Mexican turbos. Dwarf and Florida Ceriths. Margaritas didn't last long at all. The nerites lasted a while but they just lived at the water line on the glass. The I feel like it would be irresponsible to put more inverts in the tank. Although, the trochus and astreas seem to survive on the glass along with the urchins.
I don't think there's a cuc I haven't tried. If there is I would be glad to buy it. But I don't want to put anything else that I've already tried in there.

 

[justdeb1107]

This exact thing happened to me when I started back in the hobby with a 32 gallon biocube. I bought live rock from an established tank someone was tearing down. Probably quite neglected, but at the time I was blissfully ignorant. It had hair algae on it, but I didn't think what that could mean.

First, that rock was likely saturated in phosphate. The GHA started going berserk in my tank. Like you, I tried dang near everything. I thought I had it tamed down every now and then, but it would then grow back in spades. It was engulfing my coral.

Finally, I'd had enough. I moved everything over to my 210 gallon (every fish, every coral). I took out over 50% of my rock, putting it into a 5 gallon bucket with a PH and heater. The rest I turned upside down, so the algae was on the bottom instead of facing the light. This wasn't intentional, I just wanted a different aquascape. I did a 30% water change.

Next day, my phos had dropped from .22 to .04. Overnight. The water change couldn't account for that big a drop. The drop was a direct result of taking the phos saturated LR out. I'm betting your rock, while it started out clean enough, harbors lots of nutrients, keeping your GHA alive.

I've kept the tank running now as a place to acclimate new fish and stick a couple of frag racks. I mostly ignore it, with the exception of a 10% water change every couple of weeks. I barely scrape the glass.

Of all the GHA I had before, only one clump lived. It's the only one on the top. The rest is completely gone. I've had a gem tang in there for the last 2 weeks (in observation). He hasn't taken a single bite out of the algae. I also have an urchin in there. It ignores the GHA and is, instead, busily stripping the coralline off the back wall. Same for snail and hermit inhabitants. I'm tempted to break off the piece of rock holding the last clump of that stupid algae and be done with it forever. I also stopped running the super bright channel 1 lights, and ran way less white and extra actinic.

So, yeah, not sure how easily it would be for you to do what I did, but it worked. Goodbye, good riddance, and I hope to never see that stupid algae again. It's enough to make someone quit.

Anyway, do a hard reset if you can without starting over. Just putting the algae on the bottom of the structure will do wonders. Temporarily, or even permanently, get rid of some of the LR to see if that helps. I wouldn't have even thought of trying this, but I was darn near ~over~ it. Good luck.

Pics are: way the tank used to be (immediately after hand picking and trimming the algae, but everywhere green became a jungle again in less than a week). Then FTS of it now as frag tank, and last is a closeup of the sole algae left.

 

[Pvtgloss]

This exact thing happened to me when I started back in the hobby with a 32 gallon biocube. I bought live rock from an established tank someone was tearing down. Probably quite neglected, but at the time I was blissfully ignorant. It had hair algae on it, but I didn't think what that could mean.

First, that rock was likely saturated in phosphate. The GHA started going berserk in my tank. Like you, I tried dang near everything. I thought I had it tamed down every now and then, but it would then grow back in spades. It was engulfing my coral.

Finally, I'd had enough. I moved everything over to my 210 gallon (every fish, every coral). I took out over 50% of my rock, putting it into a 5 gallon bucket with a PH and heater. The rest I turned upside down, so the algae was on the bottom instead of facing the light. This wasn't intentional, I just wanted a different aquascape. I did a 30% water change.

Next day, my phos had dropped from .22 to .04. Overnight. The water change couldn't account for that big a drop. The drop was a direct result of taking the phos saturated LR out. I'm betting your rock, while it started out clean enough, harbors lots of nutrients, keeping your GHA alive.

I've kept the tank running now as a place to acclimate new fish and stick a couple of frag racks. I mostly ignore it, with the exception of a 10% water change every couple of weeks. I barely scrape the glass.

Of all the GHA I had before, only one clump lived. It's the only one on the top. The rest is completely gone. I've had a gem tang in there for the last 2 weeks (in observation). He hasn't taken a single bite out of the algae. I also have an urchin in there. It ignores the GHA and is, instead, busily stripping the coralline off the back wall. Same for snail and hermit inhabitants. I'm tempted to break off the piece of rock holding the last clump of that stupid algae and be done with it forever. I also stopped running the super bright channel 1 lights, and ran way less white and extra actinic.

So, yeah, not sure how easily it would be for you to do what I did, but it worked. Goodbye, good riddance, and I hope to never see that stupid algae again. It's enough to make someone quit.

Anyway, do a hard reset if you can without starting over. Just putting the algae on the bottom of the structure will do wonders. Temporarily, or even permanently, get rid of some of the LR to see if that helps. I wouldn't have even thought of trying this, but I was darn near ~over~ it. Good luck.

Pics are: way the tank used to be (immediately after hand picking and trimming the algae, but everywhere green became a jungle again in less than a week). Then FTS of it now as frag tank, and last is a closeup of the sole algae left.

Did you ever identified the algae?
Im going to hit the tank hard with vibrant before I reset. Last ditch effort. After that I'm not going to use any rock or corals. I'm too paranoid the algae is going to pop back up. I have no idea what to do with the corals. I really do love them. I'm definitely attached. But I can't resart just to carry the algae back into the system.

 

[justdeb1107]

P.S. Though I cleaned off as much of the GHA I could on the corals I transferred, some was still on them. Guess what? ZERO GHA in the other tank since doing all this. It is completely gone now from the ones that had it. It did not start the bad stuff growing in the new tank. In the new tank, I'm battling cyano instead. I'll take that any day of the week over this miserable green stuff. Anyway, I didn't bleach my rock, and I didn't have to re-cycle the old tank. Hope this helps.

 

[Pvtgloss]

P.S. Though I cleaned off as much of the GHA I could on the corals I transferred, some was still on them. Guess what? ZERO GHA in the other tank since doing all this. It is completely gone now from the ones that had it. It did not start the bad stuff growing in the new tank. In the new tank, I'm battling cyano instead. I'll take that any day of the week over this miserable green stuff. Anyway, I didn't bleach my rock, and I didn't have to re-cycle the old tank. Hope this helps.

Definitely helps. Thank you

 

[justdeb1107]

Did you ever identified the algae?
Im going to hit the tank hard with vibrant before I reset. Last ditch effort. After that I'm not going to use any rock or corals. I'm too paranoid the algae is going to pop back up. I have no idea what to do with the corals. I really do love them. I'm definitely attached. But I can't resart just to carry the algae back into the system.

I assume briopsis, but IDK. Please read my P.S. post. No nasty green algae grew in the tank I sent the coral to. None. The remnants on them died off, never to be seen again.

 

[justdeb1107]

Here is a shot of some of the hammers I had in the algae tank. Most had the algae on their bases. The two top ones were overgrown with it. Nothing grew back. PTL!

 

[slingfox]

Yeah I get a brown film. I use a tunze care magnet sometimes.
All my cuc except hermits live in my glass. Chitons, snails, and even my urchins live on the glass.

Have you tried scrubbing your class every day to ensure it does not generate enough algae to feed your CUC? That should hopefully encourage them to spend time on the rocks.

 

[Pvtgloss]

Have you tried scrubbing your class every day to ensure it does not generate enough algae to feed your CUC? That should hopefully encourage them to spend time on the rocks.

I did. After a few weeks at a pretty big die off of snails.

 

[slingfox]

I did. After a few weeks at a pretty big die off of snails.

The problem seems to be you cannot maintain a CUC that doesn't primary job of keeping the rocks clean. If you believe the rock is cursed then you may want to bite the bullet and restart with mostly or 100% live rock.

 

[jabberwock]

Your right about the shipping. Great idea.

What did you do with your old corals?
Where you able to pick out specific rocks in Tampa?
The way I feel about this algae and how nothing eats it, I'm convinced it's not just hair algae like my other tank has. I hate to lose all the corals I'm attached to but I don't want to transfer anything during the reset.

The struggle is real!!!

That's funny. Did you buy the same toilet brush or is that some clever photo shopping?

I had a four year hiatus due to a catastrophic tank failure. I surrendered ALL of my livestock as refugees to my LFS. They were great to take them in.

The fine folks at TBS and I had great email exchanges where I described my tank, goals, and dreams with them. They absolutely nailed it in my order. I totally suggest you start a dialog with them. You cannot go to their storage facility and hand pick rocks. It is not a retail facility. Probably for insurance stuff???

For your situation, I might order a TBS "Treasure Chest" to start a 10 or 15 gallon half way house. I like this package for this purpose: https://tbsaltwater.com/shop/pico-package/

Temporarily supplement with some ceramic media if you need more space for bacteria.

Scrub and transfer corals and what other livestock you can into the halfway house and then totally decon and clean your display. Slowly move rocks, corals and livestock back into the display, and plan the trip to Tampa for 20 to 30 pounds of premium live rock. Don't add sand until you have had a couple month to hunt and remove undesirable hitch hikers.

I know you are concerned about seeding the bad algae in the new tank, but I believe the reality is that real ocean live rock does not have available real estate for nuisance algae to take hold. See how it grows on the cord of my wave maker, but no where else?

I really wish you the best of luck. Go slow. Let me know if I can help...

 

[Pod_01]

How do you dose such low amounts of bacto-balance?
I dose .2ml of ELIMA-NP. I use an old salifert syringe and film it up to 1ml and every day squirt .2ml. I melted the tip closed to make a cap.

I use GHL Doser 2.1 and dose 0.1ml twice daily.

Bit of overkill but it does work …