Tank trouble..

[EricksonHQI]

Not sure where to post this to have a chance of getting some input... lol!

I am not sure what to do.. algae is killing me, and my tank.. if you can bear with me I will spell it all out... any advice or questions to help me along my way would be greatly appreciated

We have a 32 Gal Biocube with stock Led lid lights.
We have been up and going for about 6 months now.. and the yay happy moments are being outnumbered by sad, at a loss, and ready to throw in the towel moments..
This is our second venture into keeping a reef tank and it has had so many ups and downs that I’m not sure what to do from here..
We have been plagued by algae, all kinds, all colors, and all trying to kill anything and everything in our tank. (At least it feels that way lol)
We set up with base rock and the purple “life rock”, live sand, and went to it... we mix our own salt water with Aquavitro Salinity and RO from our LFS.
We have a clown fish, a zebra bar dartfish, a tanagora goby, and a pajama cardinal fish. About 10-12 blue leg hermit crabs, 7 cerith snails, 2 nassarius snails, and 2 astrea snails.

After our cycle was done we had a few weeks of a happy looking tank, then we almost lost everything... the LFS we were getting our RO from had phosphates in it.. and we had a bacterial bloom that almost destroyed everything.. we luckily caught it before too much damage was done and started to run phosban in with our carbon. The rebound was a rollercoaster, we lost some corals (zoas & a Birdsnest), almost lost our zebra dartfish, had lots of mad corals that didn’t like the parameter swings, but then started to see a clearer pretty view again.
We started to cut back on the phosban and it seemed like the tank was going to be ok...
then the different algae’s started to appear, a black slime looking one on the rocks, a fuzzy brown layer on the back wall of the tank, diatoms in the sand, red/brown slime like on the rocks, and hair algae that was not just all over the rocks but seemed to be attracted to our corals.. and stringy fuzzy green algae coming out of our outflow valve.
we started to run phosban in the sock with our carbon and added a few more crabs and snails into our clean up crew.
The cerith snails have been laying eggs all over the tank, the parameters haven’t been crazy, but now corals are dying, and algae is blooming all over...
salinity: 1.025
Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0
Phosphate: 0- 0.25
Calcium: 460
Kh: 8
Ph: 8.0

I am adding some sad looking pictures, sorry for the quality.. still trying to work on that... if anyone has any IDs on the algae and how to get rid of it, any tips on how to bring my corals back to life, or any tips at all please share. I’m sad looking at our tank this morning.

 

[APX90]

anything fuzzy and white in color generally speaking is bacterial, you can try to remove it by using a bacterial agent like chemiclean. Your current algae situation may be sucking up nitrates and phosphates in the water causing them to read near 0. you can also run some activated carbon and GFO or chemipure packs in your sump to remove organics and phosphate before its consumed by your algae.
UV sterilization is also an option but highly debated, ive used it on both of my systems and it works wonders for me if the flow rates are dialed in right.

 

[Kyuss414]

On a tank that size, turkey baster & water changes will go a long way IMO.

 

[Silent]

Make sure you are not feeding too much also.

 

[dwest]

I will go against the grain a little here. I would do 10% water changes once per week and siphon out gunk and algae once per week. That’s it! Don’t add any chemicals and especially don’t use gfo (phosban). You have very low nutrients and am afraid you will end up with dinos if you don’t have them already.

I bet you will notice a big improvement over time, I mean like 6 months of time.

Also, I don’t recall seeing anything about flow in your tank. I would read up about what others use on your tank and make sure you are in the ballpark. I am also a big proponent of protein skimmers though I know there are successful tanks without them.

 

[EricksonHQI]

anything fuzzy and white in color generally speaking is bacterial, you can try to remove it by using a bacterial agent like chemiclean. Your current algae situation may be sucking up nitrates and phosphates in the water causing them to read near 0. you can also run some activated carbon and GFO or chemipure packs in your sump to remove organics and phosphate before its consumed by your algae.
UV sterilization is also an option but highly debated, ive used it on both of my systems and it works wonders for me if the flow rates are dialed in right.

We run a filter sock with BRS Lignite Carbon and BRS Granular GFO.

We have considered getting the UV sterilizer for our biocube.

Thanks!

 

[EricksonHQI]

I will go against the grain a little here. I would do 10% water changes once per week and siphon out gunk and algae once per week. That’s it! Don’t add any chemicals and especially don’t use gfo (phosban). You have very low nutrients and am afraid you will end up with dinos if you don’t have them already.

I bet you will notice a big improvement over time, I mean like 6 months of time.

Also, I don’t recall seeing anything about flow in your tank. I would read up about what others use on your tank and make sure you are in the ballpark. I am also a big proponent of protein skimmers though I know there are successful tanks without them.

We have the stock biocube pump along with a Aqamai KPS wavemaker.

We tried out the Reef Octopus Nano NS80 skimmer, but it never wanted to work right in the back of the biocube so we went back and purchased a new Biocube Protein Skimmer, it worked well in our first biocube and seems to be doing well in this one so far.

We do a 5 gal water change weekly. Scrubbing the rocks to get as much algae off as we can, turkey baster the rocks, and clean our fuge chamber with the chaeto to get any extra algae off the walls.

 

[EricksonHQI]

Make sure you are not feeding too much also.

One of the big algae blooms did happen after a over feeding of reef roids I messed that up.

I have started to cut way back on feeding amounts (size of chunk of LRF)

 

[mtdaly85]

These look like dinoflagellates. Dinos thrive in environments with near zero phosphate and nitrate with excess undissolved organic nutrients in the water column. Check out the dino thread on the nuisance algae forum. Tons of good information in there!

 

[Jenksreef]

I'm a huge fan of what Dwest said. To add a little bit about that, keep a solid maintenance. I would continue the 10% weekly water changes and clean as much algae as you can each week. On top of that I would begin the whole process with a large 50%+ water change. It sounds like a lot but you are guaranteeing removal of a majority of the nutrients the algae are feasting on. Another thing to note is keep solid track of lighting, keep it at 8 hours. Don't be afraid to start target feeding your fish either so you know you aren't overfeeding. Make sure your clean up crew aren't just dying and adding to the nutrients and growing the algae. Take it slow, be committed to clear the algae, and as bad as it sounds, give it time for your tank to stabilize.

 

[BeejReef]

Congrats on making six months, especially under difficult circumstances.

I've typed up (and deleted) my ideas three times cuz I honestly don't know.. lol.

Seems to me that on a tank that size, that young, and that lightly stocked that you might... might consider a quick teardown, scrub-up, and reset though. Only other thing is I wouldn't run phosphate at 0.

 

[jurgenph]

it looks like you started the tank from dry base rock.
frankly, 6 months is still pretty young, and your tank will go through a few of these ugly stages. it's pretty common.

without know what your stocking schedule looked like, i'm going to guess that you moved pretty fast, and fed quite a lot.

try not to overreact at this point, because it will more than likely cause more problems than it will solve.
take it slow, and over time, it will all get better.

don't run chemical media to the point it strips tha water too clean, that'll cause just as many problems.

try not to overfeed. i know, it's fun to feed your tank. skip one or two days, you don't need to feed every day.

get into a rhythm doing weekly/biweekkly/monthly water changes. find a schedule that works for you.
when doing that water change, siphon as much "crap" out as you can. every tank has a few spots where it likes to settle.

it seems like you had a problem with your LFS source water. get yourself a RODI system, it is the single most important piece of equipment a reefer needs. rather than trying to remove something from your tank, just make sure it never gets added.

ps: the pictures don't look *that* bad, i've rebounded from worse


Good luck!
J.