Another Problem Algae Thread (w/pic)

[64Ivy]

Can anyone here even begin to name all of the types of pest algae surrounding my little friend Ollie here? Yes, I am using RO/DI water and yes, I do change it frequently (up to about 40% weekly now). Yes, I do change the cartridges once the TDS reaches 0.01ppm, yes I do skim aggressively, and yes I also employ both gac and gfo, manually remove detritus about once a week, and try not to overfeed. Nevertheless, about 15% of the rockwork surface looks pretty much like this and has for the last 6 months or so. Manual removal requires taking out the rock and scrubbing hard with a brush as trying to simply vacuum or blow it off does not work at all. I'm thinking it came in on the Astrea shells of my clean up crew. Is that possible? Is there something I'm overlooking?

 

[krazime]

how long do you leave your lights on for?

 

[64Ivy]

12-14 hours.

 

[afernandez]

What are your phospates at?

 

[64Ivy]

Depending on which kit or meter I use (I have 4) my PO4 usually seems to always come in below 0.05ppm. Salifert and Deltec always reads 0 and my Hannas never read the same twice.

 

[afernandez]

humm.. i would try the fallowing since i dont think those po4 reading are bad at all..

knock the light cycle down to 7-8 hrs max for a week or so see if that helps

then pulling out the rock scrubing it down and do a Lathium cloride treatment.. po4 can by leaching out from those rocks..

do you have a clean up crew?

 

[yesjenks]

Do you have coral in the tank? If so, how much and what kind? SPS, LPS . . . etc.

 

[64Ivy]

Yeah I do. SPS and LPS. The SPS are primarily frags but there are tons of 'em. This is a 500g tank, btw.

I also have a clean up crew and as I mentioned before, I am beginning to think that some them (the Astreas) may be partially to blame for this. Been noticing that several of their shells are very heavily infested with this algae as as most of the rock was new and partially treated...:scratchch

 

[reefer4eva]

How long has the tank been setup?

 

[yesjenks]

That's a big tank! If me, I would definitely shorten the light time to 4-5 hours for a week or to. Is your GFO running in a reactor? You're running enough for the tank size?

Like reef4eva asked, how long has it been up?

 

[rookie07]

I think expanding your cleanup crew would help. More snails (various snails) and more hermits. I bet you're not running enough gfo and carbon.

 

[64Ivy]

In this incarnation (I'm just getting over a crash), the tank has been set up a little over a year. Both the GFO and GAC are running in separate but mated reactors from BRS [the Jumbo reactors]. I'm also changing out the media once every couple weeks! Perhaps it is time to try shortening the photo period.

 

[rookie07]

Def shorten the photoperiod. Main lights should be on for 6-8 hours, and any supplemental lighting (actinics, blue leds) can be on for up to 14 hours.

But do not change overnight. Do a gradual shortening over a corse of 4-8 weeks.

 

[64Ivy]

Have there been any first hand testimonials as to what effects the of shortening of a photoperiod like that may have on SPS frags?

 

[nyshoots]

I had a massive algae outbreak that lasted almost a year. I've finaly got things almost totaly under control, there is no more algae on the rock but it is still growing on the back wall for some reason.

What worked for me was as follows

Reduce daytime lights to 6 hours,
Feed every other day small amounts of pellet food no more frozen foods,
Fixed my low ph problem and got it up to 8.2, added a ton of Halloween hermit crabs, pulled out rock and scrubed it clean every two weeks, pulled out as much as I could by hand daily, dipped frag racks, pumps, etc in peroxide every two weeks, used a lot of filter floss to catch every last bit of the stuff that went into my overflow, blow rock with turkey baster daily, get as much gunk and and garbage out of the tank as I can at water changes.

After 6 months of this I'm finally winning the battle. I do run gfo in a reactor and purigen in the fillter as well

 

[nyshoots]

I feel like things really turned around once I got my ph up. It was always really low before