drunkenclown

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Hey everyone,

Need some help battling some kind of green algae or bacteria.

It varyies between lime green and dark green depending on how long it's been since I changed water and cleaned tank. It also almost disappears when lights go out. It's not clumpy nor does it seem to be matting or have filaments growing. comes off rocks and glass very easily by either brushing or blowing off with turkey baster. Sand can be stirred up and it disappears. Turns filter socks green.

I've tried changing my gfo every month, replaced all my ro filters and membrane, been doing water changes of 15-25 gallons twice weekly along with scrubbing all rocks and stirring sand. Tried changing filter socks every day.

It has killed a welso, frogspawn, unknown purple n green acro, pink pocillipora and a few purple mushrooms, it caused my bubble tip to split twice only one split survived and caused huge mass of pink palys to close recede and die what left are still closed except for maybe 10 heads near surface by overflow teeth.

Corals that are doing good are. Huge colony of fire ice zoos perfectly fine n growing. Big hunk of Purple Hearts zoas doing good a little irritated. Eagle eye and Green Bay pack zoas doing fine. Softball size Duncan's, orange crush ecinata?, green star polyps, toadstool, 4 headed candy cane turned into 8 the two heads on top grew 2 new heads, Christmas favia just ok purple mushrooms ones that are left are fine, yellow button polyps fine. Unknown rock flower anemone looking thing popped and grew two new over last 6 months. One red people eater paly 2yrs old struggling. Now the shocker purple stylo small colony doing perfectly fine if not better than ever???

Think it has also caused some fish and invert loss. Snail and hermit population seems sparse. Tried adding some newbs and doesn't seem like much left. Had purple lobster in my sump for at least a yr no problems and he died after feeding him one night was dead next morning. In the last six months I've also lost 3 female and 1 male anthia that were about 3-4 months old doing fine disappeared or dead no sign of sickness or lack of appetite same with 6 month old ruby head wrasse and most recently 2yr old blonde naso grew from about 2" to about 4-5"

Water Params n pics to follow in a minute

Kind of at my wits end feeling kinda discouraged. Don't know what to do. Want my tank to do good again and be fun again. Any and all help would be appreciated. Almost willing to let someone come Frag some stuff outta my tank in exchange for help.
 

drunkenclown

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Water params:
Salt 1.026 checked with hydrometer n refractometer
Ph 8.0
Nitrate 10-20 API test
Phosphate 0? API test
Alk 9
Cal 450
Mag- haven't tested

All API test kits pretty much same results two weeks ago and two weeks before that

It also seems as though all or most coralline algae has died or dissaperead just some on rocks none on glass since this all started

Always used I/O reef crystals
 

drunkenclown

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Last February
 

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drunkenclown

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Tank is 3yrs old

Aqueon pro flex sump, Fine socks then tlf refugite and 5 pounds rubble in middle, sicce 5.0 return pump reef octo skimmer n tlf gfo reactor

Not sure sand size just remember it was carib sea argonite live sand about 150 pounds about 2-3" deep

All geisseman bulbs about 9 months old 2 15k 4 actinic 2 super actinic blues on 10 am til 6 pm whites on 12 pm till 4 pm led moonlights on 24/7 aquatic life 72" 8 x 39w fixture
 

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drunkenclown

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thats correct meat their is nothing growing in my fuge. when first set up the tank i moved my first purple lobster a strawberry crab a ball of chaeto and some capulera the long grassy kind not the grape type. could never get the cheato to tumble and it died after the first couple of months. the capulera did very good for quite some time but eventually slowly died off. the fuge has also been home to a small yellow painted angler and most recently a purple lobster until this all happened which i'm blaming his death on he was fine then died overnight. just like my nano tang. haven't added any new coral or fish since last winter.

fuge light i think is the corallife brand light that aqueon recommends to fit on the lid for the sump when i first set up the tank i think i ordered two 6500k bulbs to replace the stock ones and i have tried all different lighting schedules 12 on 12 off, on when tank lights off, on with tank lights off with tank lights, on 24/7 and never really figured it out.

no urchins. don't really know much about them always assumed they had a low survival/high mortality rate due to not being able to provide a sustainable source of food long term kind of like a starfish?? thought some urchins could eat, damage or move corals? are they all safe to handle and have in a reef tank was afraid of the ones that can sting you how do you identify those ones?
 

theMeat

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Urchins can sting but reef safe, aside from moving smaller stuff that's not glued down. Asked because some eat coraline

Fuge light. Would do 14 hours at night when tank lights are off. Have been using grape calerpra for years, in many tanks without issue. No going sexual even in power outages, and no spreading to display ever. Cheato likes more flow.

Don't know if it's doable but after first sock chamber should go skimmer, so it has a chance at the dirtiest water before the fuge, then rock (marinepur better), then return pump. Would be a better design.

Live rock and rubble is good for biological but over time starts to release nitrates. Would take half the rock in your sump out and replace with marinepur or new live rock. Then a coupla months later do the other half. Or better yet replace with algae scrubber or more fuge. Would suspect, after learning that your smallish water changes are leaving the nitrates #s pretty much where they are, that this is what's causing your algae. With the right wavelength for algae to grow, the macros in your sump should out compete the algae in the display over time.

9 mos on bulbs is getting close to the end of their lifespan, and once you get this algae under control would up some of your blue closer to 12-13 hours a day.
 
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drunkenclown

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a little more history about my tank and more info:

150-175 pounds live rock
150 pounds live sand

6ft 125 set-up march 1 2014 used about 30-40 pounds live rock and 30-40 pounds sand from 1yr old 55/g first tank i ever had. added 2 50 pound boxes dry base rock and 1 25 pound box dry rock pieces rinsed not cured. and 120 pounds new live sand. let tank cycle for about two weeks transferred all fish and live stock everything was doing fine for a long time.

tank has been through a cyano out break which i think i ended up curing using chemi-clean and lights out or just chemi clean lights normal or just lights out forget what worked finally and hope i never go through that again. pretty sure it happened after a welsh i purchased died in the tank.

tank as also been though a 90+ temperature spike after a heater accident learned why it is best to keep the temp sensor secured inside the sump not the tank the hard way. lost almost every fish invert and coral. cried like a little girl too

after that had the brilliant idea of trying to add several tangs at once a purple, nano, japonicas, blue eye kole at once to replace the fish i lost and leaned about tangs and why you should quarantine or buy from another reefer wiped out every fish only thing that survived was purple tang nano tang and one of the first damsels i ever bought when i didn't know about quarantine.

tried one time to set-up quarantine for yellow eye kole he lived in there for about 2 weeks never really ate good water params seemed fine no signs of sickness but thought maybe my quarantine setup wasn't good or i was doing something wrong and making the fish stressed or unhappy and was afraid to treat not knowing how with what or for what so added him to display and didn't make it but think the other too tangs were just too aggressive.

wasn't able to add any more fish for long time because of purple tang being pretty nasty.
eventually was able to sneak in med size gold bar maroon w/ bubble tip and a yellow watchman goby from lfs straight to tank no dip or quarantine. no mirrors no acclimation box.

added two dotty backs a purple one(the one with blue around the eye not the line) and the yellow one with the purple stripe on its back they did ok with the large damsel and tangs for a while the clown and yellow goby paid them no attention. eventually the purple one disappeared to be found in my overflow about a year later fat and healthy. yellow one hung around for a while but got harassed by damsel once purple one went missing and then disappeared.

after all the chasing and fighting and deaths i didn't buy any more fish for a long time until last winter/spring made my own egg crate/plexi acclimation box purchased some mirrors and added a coral beauty angel and about a month later a genicanthus melaspinolos female to the tank from different lfs a lot of others on this forum seem to really like but about 45 mins away so hard to get to often. no quarantine or dips then finally a little while later added a ruby head wrasse 1 male and 3 female lyretails and all were fine this time no mirrors or boxes pretty much typical behavior no real problems.


will admit summer of 2015 was kind of getting lazy only down 10-15 gallons water changes maybe 2-3 times a month if that kinda felt like my tank was running on auto-pilot everything looked good no color problems nothing.

last fall 2015 i got a little ill and wasn't taking proper care of my tank only topping off, adding aqua vitro 8.4 calc and ions hoping to compensate for lack of water changes and was only able to do 2 or 3 10 gallon water changes over tho course of three or four months noticed coralline started to die off

finally got better and got things on back on track around the holidays and new years 2015/2016 was doing regular water changes 10-15 gallons every week.

mid winter my dog became ill and passed after two months so again i wasn't really in the fish tank mood and slacked with my water changes about the same time i got the coral beauty and the genicanthus angel, wrasse and anthias and found dotty back in overflow.

tank was still looking pretty good no real problems or anything started getting back into things and changing water again late spring early summer 2016 but all coralline pretty much gone from rocks glass at this point. I'm sure i replaced my bulbs some time between when i started getting fish and the begging of summer because i remember i used tax refund money to pay for them and i know that was mid february.

summer 2016

this is where it goes downhill fast still no coralline new or old really. first coral to go south and die off was a welso started to kinda shrink but thought i could feed it and save it at the same time noticed the pink plays i have growing on my overflow weren't opening at all but every other coral looked fine. since then i started getting this green all over my tank first on the sand near the welso and at one end of my tank where the overflow is slower than the other side thats how i found the dotty back. then it spread slowly towards the middle where the welso was and finally the entire and then it started getting on the rocks.
then i started loosing heads of branching hammer one at a time 12 in all i was able to count the dead ones and a few purple mushrooms shriveled up and died.

some things I've done since this all started; replaced my power heads with two brand new, tried brs high capacity gfo for one month and changed it after a month, then went back to tlf phosban media been using 1 small tub 150g and changing it every month been changing water like crazy nothing works lights out for a day helped a little but chickened out.

corals lost;

branching hammer
welso
rbta split twice only one piece survived
purple acro with green tips was doing ok till green stuff got on it
some purple mushrooms from a colony on a piece of rock
pink poccilpora but think was mostly overrun by pink palys
pink palys just barely got a couple hanging on

fish and inverts lost-don't know if an algae or bacteria would cause that but;
1-anthias slowly one by one
2 wrasse
within the last several weeks
purple lobster in my sump
blonde naso
 

drunkenclown

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current livestock oldest to newest
yellowtail blue damsel
purple tang
goldbar maroon
yellow watchman
purple dotty back
coral beauty
genicanthus melaspinolos female

corals- no color bleaching or fading but not much growth
candy canes-doing amazing have grown since this started hadn't been before
purple stylo- never been so bushy and think the polyps have really good color if not better
orange crush echinata?-no noticeable changes mouths green nice and orange with plenty of purple.
duncans-seem fine opening closing good might have lost some color
toadstool-nothing noticeable
starpolyps-nothing noticeable
yellow button polyps-nothing
rock flower anemones- seem fine one single turned into three
zoas-fine mostly except colony highest up nearest faster overflow getting some green and irritation

some other corals also listed above in earlier posts that aren't doing well also

inverts:

about 10 trochus snails
some small nassuris
1 speckled big nassuris? sand burying snail
3 conch
various size blue hermits possibly 15-20 not many left
big nassuris snails-super tongan maybe 2 or 3
had some scarlet hermits but haven't seen any lately
1 big mexican snail

tried adding some cleaners about a month ago but don't think many survived acclimated them all the same as i always did.
 

drunkenclown

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is it possible this is dynos, green cyano, phyto bloom,bacteria or surface micro algae/osteobium?

I've considered, trying cheato n capulera again,bio pellets, vodka, vinegar, peroxide, no pox, algae turf scrubber, ceram media, vibrant aquarium cleaner, chemi-pure, pax bellum or like a zeo-vit or similar type system

open to suggestions.

trying to figure out what caused this and what not to do again and how to stop this and fix it.
 

drunkenclown

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will do on the fuge light. thanks

was thinking if asking if anyone near me had some cheato/ capulera. does the cheato need to actually roll around and tumble or just allot of flow? could i put a small powerhead in with it? should i make sure i have 6500k bulbs in the fuge light? does the capulera need to be buried in the sand or rubber banded to some rubble?

can't move my skimmer to mid chamber unfortunately the proflex design isn't that good and it won't fit.

was thinking of adding marine pure or something similar how much of it do you suggest? do i need to add anything to seed it or anything like that? and also just start removing little bits of the rubble from the sump until its just marine pure? how long will that last before i need to replace it? cubes spheres or blocks? can i put some chunks in overflows to? is their a thing as too much?

kind of was thinking along those lines had a big jar of seachem matrix and two old mesh bags from jars of phosban so threw that in the sump last week.

should i be changing more water I've been changing no less than 15 gallons if not 20 for the last two months twice every week. usually 15 or 20 on saturday or sunday and another 15 or 20 again on Wednesday gone through an entire box of salt since the beginning of october.

was afraid my bulbs are getting old
 
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theMeat

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Wow, quite a few 3 years.

For me have been throu lotsa stuff over the decades. Tech and equipment has gotten very good over the last decade. Used to run socks, and gfo, and water changes all the time, and carbon, and more water changes, and trying new products to no avail because still needed water changes, and still had lingering algae from time to time. How's that for a run on sentence.
Now i'm all about big fuge, skimmer, and alga,e scrubber. Been 15 months without a need for water change yet. Gotta keep your eye on magnesium because macros consume it. As well as replenish mud and/or trace elements to keep the water coral friendly. No more socks, carbon, gfo, or water changes, and no more algae in display.
 

theMeat

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Cheatu just needs hi flow, some say it grows better if tumbling

Wouldn't do any quick fixes like chem pure or whatever. Makes things yo yo and doesn't fix underlying issues.

Seachem matrix is good, marinepure is better. Marinepure... Think 2 or 3 boxes would be good. It's no magic bullet but buy it once and done, and if you can get a block in low flow area it helps much with nitrates. Buy one box a every moth or two so you don't shock things

Think small frequent water changes are not helping to smack down the nutrients. Would do 30-40% water changes every week or two until you get the nitrates down near 5. Mix up the sand bed a bit and blow of the rocks, and the bottom of your sump right before your water changes.

Could also mix things up to get debris floating. and run a siphon down throu a sock in your sump once or twice a week. Then clean socks the next day.
 

B.BASH

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All of the above is very good advise however I have used chemical clean with great success in the past. Cyano can be difficult to get under control. If you decide to go that route make sure you follow the directions to a T
 

drunkenclown

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There is a bacteria product called "Vibrant liquid aquarium cleaner" that may help you. It is a mix or bacteria that help reduce nitrate and eat various kind of algae. You can read more about it here

http://www.uwcmn.com/vibrant-liquid-aquarium-cleaner.

Be sure to read reviews of it on the reef2reef forum

good luck

thats the stuff i was thinking of and was considering adding something like marine pure or some new dry rock to my display once i got my tank back to normal. then giving macro a shot again maybe
 

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