Stringy Stuff!

[Aslam Kavde]

I need help please.
My tank keeps producing this brown reddish stuff on the sand and now it's growing hairs, see photos attached.
I do a water change every week (5% of 220 litres) and vacuum/sift through the sand but within about 5 days those hairs keep coming back.
What could it be and how do I eradicate it?
Do I need to add No3 PO4-X if it's algea? But this may bring the Nitrate down to zero
The zoas and the Duncan seem to only half open up in the past week.
The tank is Red Sea Max C250 260L
Salinity 34 to 35 ppt
Cycling now for 126 days now
Inhabitants: Scarlet Shrimp, Turbo snail, Zoas, Duncan.
I did lose a cleaner shrimp around the 60 day cycling period.
In the last few of weeks I've lost 2 Turbo snails, Hermit crab and a Cerith snail.
I can't under stand it, do you folks think I should add a couple of fish now - may be in some way it might help with the balance of levels?
Tests show:
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 1
Amonia 0
PH 8.2 but that did go down to 7.6 a couple of weeks ago for about a week
KH 9 dkl
Temperature, I find hard to control exactly, I don't use a heater as the T5 light seem to bring the temperature up to about 82F, there's a water cooling fan within the hood and that brings the temperature down to around 79F during the daytime and at night it doesn't need it as it hovers around 80F
The lighting comes on at about 11:30 and stay on for 10 hours.

 

[Justin Cook]

Looks like diatoms. Pretty standard for the first year of a tank. Keep doing what you're doing, it's a normal part of the process. If you can't stand it, just don't do anything drastic.

 

[Aslam Kavde]

Looks like diatoms. Pretty standard for the first year of a tank. Keep doing what you're doing, it's a normal part of the process. If you can't stand it, just don't do anything drastic.

Thanks

 

[Dom]

Thank you for such a detailed post. It really helps.

I didn't see anything about the tank age, maybe I missed it. But based on Justin's post, I'm guessing it is new and you are dealing with typical new tank issues.

Manual removal is all I would do. This problem will likely self correct. Please be patient. Don't rush to the LFS and look to dump a silver bullet into the tank.

 

[Aslam Kavde]

Thank you for such a detailed post. It really helps.

I didn't see anything about the tank age, maybe I missed it. But based on Justin's post, I'm guessing it is new and you are dealing with typical new tank issues.

Manual removal is all I would do. This problem will likely self correct. Please be patient. Don't rush to the LFS and look to dump a silver bullet into the tank.

Thanks for the reassurance, yeah so I've had the tank running for about 4 months now. Do you think now is the right time to introduce a couple of Clowns?

 

[Justin Cook]

Sorry for the short post, I was on my ipad and am just too old to type much on that. At this point I think you'd be just fine adding some clowns. As a 4 month old tank, there are always cycles of stuff like hair algae, cyano and diatom. I think a lot of people consider anything under 1 yr old susceptible to "new tank syndrome." There are a lot of things you can do to eliminate diatoms but one of the main solutions is simply age. Also, are you using RODI water? I had an issue with diatoms that led me to get my own RODI unit for making saltwater. There was recently a poll on R2R that asked what the 3 most important items were for a successful reef and one of those was an RODI unit. Strip the water of everything you can so you can add just what you want.

 

[Aslam Kavde]

Thanks, I've got an Rodi unit which I use and make my own salt water, used to read 0ppm, then 11ppm tdi, I then added a carbon filter to it, then it went down to 0 ppm and now it's slowly crept up to 12 ppm tdi. What's an acceptable tdi range?

 

[Justin Cook]

Like all things, there are a lot of variables but here' what I've got going on. The water from the tap at my house is what I'd consider low, around 40 ppm TDS. I use a 90% rejection RO membrane and the water after my membrane is usually around 3 ppm. That's around where it should be given the efficiency of the membrane itself. After the RO membrane, I run the water through a DI resin and that final 3ppm gets taken down to zero. If you have a higher TDS going into the DI resin, it will be "exhausted" quicker.

I monitor the TDS at 2 points in my system. 1) After the RO membrane. If the TDS starts to climb to 4 or 5 , I'll know it's almost time to replace the membrane. 2) After the DI Resin. If that number moves off of Zero, I'll replace the resin. Honestly, I do have an old TDS monitor that measures the water coming in to the system but I've never considered that super important. In the past, I've used one of the 2 probes TDS meters and moved one of them to test all 3 points. It's not hard and once you know what you're dealing with, I monitor post-membrane and post-DI resin.

 

[Dom]

Thanks for the reassurance, yeah so I've had the tank running for about 4 months now. Do you think now is the right time to introduce a couple of Clowns?

If your tank is cycled (No ammonia or Nitrites), You can go for it. But PLEASE quarantine.

 

[Dom]

Thanks, I've got an Rodi unit which I use and make my own salt water, used to read 0ppm, then 11ppm tdi, I then added a carbon filter to it, then it went down to 0 ppm and now it's slowly crept up to 12 ppm tdi. What's an acceptable tdi range?

TDS should be ZERO.

If you are getting numbers in the 10-12 range, I would let the RODI filter run for 10 minutes before I start collecting. Sometimes you get TDS creep when you filter sits idle. If you continue to get such numbers, it may be time to change the membrane.

I change ALL filters annually, sooner if my TDS numbers come up.

 

[Aslam Kavde]

Thank you all for your input, initially i was worried about the hair algae/diatoms but all of you have put my worries to rest.
I shall look in to replacing the membranes in the filter, the carbon filter is about 2 months old so it think there's life in that yet!
I'm looking forward to adding the clowns, is about 3 to 4 weeks enough for quarantining?

Thanks again

 

[Justin Cook]

I always have some of those chlorine strips around to check my carbon. If the water that gets "rejected" by the membrane has any chlorine in it, change carbon. The strip are pretty inaccurate but to answer the question "Is their chlorine in this water?" they do a good job. At 2 months, I would imagine you're fine.

 

[Dom]

Thank you all for your input, initially i was worried about the hair algae/diatoms but all of you have put my worries to rest.
I shall look in to replacing the membranes in the filter, the carbon filter is about 2 months old so it think there's life in that yet!
I'm looking forward to adding the clowns, is about 3 to 4 weeks enough for quarantining?

Thanks again

I quarantine 12 weeks, without any signs or behavior that suggests disease. I quarantine 1 fish at a time, unless they are part of a pair.

I do not treat prophylactically, only at the first sign of trouble. There are some that would argue you've waited too long to treat a sick fish if you wait for signs and behavior of disease. I think there is a lot of merit to that point of view. But in the end, I'd rather not use medication if I don't have to.

I would change all filters on my RODI at the same time. Be sure to put the date of the filter change on a piece of tape and slap it on the RODI system. If you go on BRS, they offer replacement kits for all different stages. The replacement kit does not include the membrane, so you would have to get that one separately.

Dom