Struggling and need some advice.

deepsynth · Jan 22, 2023

Hey guys hope you are well.
I just can’t seem to come right with my tank. I have cleaned the algae almost daily but cannot control it.

I have read that eventually it will die out but anything I do has no affect and it literally comes back over night.

my parameters are all good. No ammonia and tank is stable from stock and feeding perspective

is there anything I can do to end this nightmare.

brandon429 · Jan 22, 2023

Reduce that lighting by 50% intensity, nothing needs that bright but invasions

use mainly blue spectrum, almost no whites.

remove all top growth by hand siphoning until no more matting exists do a series of small water change siphon runs

when clean, install a UV sterilizer and run it until you don’t need to

work it in this exact order, it’s not a series of tests I mentioned it’s a series of actions on your part for the honest win. You starting with all dry rock makes you need a UV, the other option was to start with coralline cured live rock and not need one

easy fix though, the cheap jebao filters on Amazon are $130 for one that can filter a fifteen hundred gallon pond, and it’s tiny. Get that one.

deepsynth · Jan 22, 2023

I did try run with out lights completely but the fish didn’t seem to like it at all.

I can set it for no whites.

so I should get rid of most of it before I put on a uv steriliser I can I put one on now.

so literally do small siphons with a top up untill it’s gone.

brandon429 · Jan 22, 2023

Yes in that order because the UV won’t pull it off the bottom

you need to pre reduce that mass -99.9 to give the uv even a chance to work

but no joke with less lighting and total cleaning, hard work day cleaning, before a large UV is installed is 9/10 likely to do what you want. There’s non UV ways, it’s just such a handy cheat for what’s coming as well as the tank matures. Of course it has accessory stuff to buy like a pump or hose connection setup, maybe get one of the turbo twist large drop in ones if $ allow, any step up like that will reduce your maintenance rates in my opinion. Gotta install it on a low invasion mass tank, not a high invasion mass one. thats leaving too many cells you hope to pass through the small device, remove what you can

deepsynth · Jan 22, 2023

brandon429 said:
Yes in that order because the UV won’t pull it off the bottom

you need to pre reduce that mass -99.9 to give the uv even a chance to work

but no joke with less lighting and total cleaning, hard work day cleaning, before a large UV is installed is 9/10 likely to do what you want. There’s non UV ways, it’s just such a handy cheat for what’s coming as well as the tank matures. Of course it has accessory stuff to buy like a pump or hose connection setup, maybe get one of the turbo twist large drop in ones if $ allow, any step up like that will reduce your maintenance rates in my opinion. Gotta install it on a low invasion mass tank, not a high invasion mass one. thats leaving too many cells you hope to pass through the small device, remove what you can

Yeah I get what you mean in the sense that it kills algae that is in the water coulomb I’m in South Africa so the only uv systems we have are geared towards ponds but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

but thank you I wouldn’t have put this process together on my own.

Donjmia305 · Jan 22, 2023

What type of filter are you using? And for how long has your tank been running for? I’m going on 3 months with this 10 gallon and ran into green hair algae and Cyanobacteria. I had to pull all of my live rock out and clean them with peroxide which killed a few animals that were living on the rock but I scrubbed all of the algae I could and then with a siphon tried to pull out the rest of the Cyanobacteria and algae off the glass and sand. After I was sure of everything being cleaned off I did a 30% water change and then ran it for 15 minutes and I added beneficial bacteria from Microbe-Lift Special Blend to out-compete the algae and Cyanobacteria. I think the beneficial bacteria is doing it’s job