Please help me with identification

[Freddo]

Hey Folks.

My reef tank is 1 year old. It is 115G using a plenum system. It has 100# of live rock, along with the following inhabitants:

Yellow Tang, Flame Angel, 2 Bagaii Cardinals, 2 Gold Striped Maroon Clowns, 5 Green Chromis, Royal Gramma, and a Mandarin.

Other inhabitants include 2 leathers, Wellsophyllia, Green Open Brain, Red Open Brain, Orange Tree Sponge, 2 Sarcophytons, Pulsing and Pom Pom Xenia, Bubble Tip Anenome, 1 peppermint, 1 cleaner, 1 blood red shrimp and some other softies.

I have two basic questions:

1) Over the past year I've seen more and more of a creature come out at night. They look like a tiny white starfish. Some have 4 short appendages, others have 6. The biggest is roughly 1/2" in diameter, with the smallest being roughly 1/8" in diameter.

The seem to come out at night and cover the glass as if they are eating algae. They don't seem to be harming anything, but I was wondering if someone could give me an idea as to what they are? I am concerned that they might be flatworms, but the don't look like the pictures I've seen in the books. Any ideas/pictures you can provide would be helpful.


2) For the past 3-4 months I've been battling red slime algae (I forget the real term). I've cleaned my over flow out which was badly caked (on the inside) with the stuff as well as some other bubble algaes. I'd rather not treat the stuff. I live in detroit and use tap water (no I haven't had it tested and no I don't use ro/di yet, although that may be my next piece of equipment...). I skim using an Aqua EC150 and it seems to do a good job.

I don't do regular water changes, and was considering doing 5 gallon water changes a day for 5 days to see if this might help. What do you think?

thanks everyone, and happy holidays!

Freddo

 

[Freddo]

Heh. Are you saying we don't have high quality water in the Detroit River? Come on!!!

Good point on the water changes - you are assuming that the tap water is the source of the extra nutrients. I had been assuming that the tap water was only part of the problem - that maybe I had some sort of buildup.

The tank was free of this stuff for the first 4 months or so. But it has been getting steadily worse month to month. There was a period of time where my skimmer wasn't working properly, that is now fixed.

As far as the prefilter sponges go (for both overflow and pumps) I typically clean these out using regular tap water and drying them off with a towel. Do you consider this bad? I've never had a problem.

I do know that after 4 months or so, I see a degrading in performance from My Mag 12 unless I clean it's prefilter. It will actually dimple in the middle when it becomes "dirty".

Anyone else got any ideas?

I suppose it's time to buy that ro/di unit... I had been hesitating...

Freddo

 

[tazdevil]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

As far as the prefilter sponges go (for both overflow and pumps) I typically clean these out using regular tap water and drying them off with a towel. Do you consider this bad? I've never had a problem

Yes, I do. The sponges are probably containing colonies of nitrifying bacteria. Rinsing them in plain tap water would kill them. Now, if you have plenty of LR, this may be nullifying the effect of those colonies dying off. This may be providing the nutrients for the cyano. I've seen it recommended, and been doing, the following: When you do a partial water change, with the bucket the water is in, rinse the sponge off in there. Works pretty good.

As far as the slime algae is concerned, when you do partial water changes, try suctioning it off directly. Use a smaller diameter (1/2 inch for example) tube for this, and get right down to the stuff. I had a bad green slime outbreak 2mths after my tank cycled, did this to remove it, and have never seen red,green, or brown slime since.

Your mag prefilter- clean it at least once a month, otherwise, even though it's moving water well, it will become a high nitrate producer. This happens as the detritous builds up, and is broken down biologically. Cleaning every 4 mths is a bit long, IMHO.

Lastly-be very careful with that bubble algae! I've read, and heard; that if the bubbles are broken, spores are released, and boom, more bubble algae!

Good luck!

[ December 26, 2001: Message edited by: tazdevil ]</p>

 

[tazdevil]

As far as #1, can't help w/what they are, but have seen prior posts about them, and they're not bad.

#2 Your using tap water?(not good) And from Detroit?? (even worse

). That would be my first suspect on the red slime (cyanobacteria) algae problem. Adding more water changes with TAP WATER probably won't help much. What you do need to do is start doing changes with r/o and if possible ro/di water. You can get this at most large grocery stores for very cheap.

Your now banned from using any more Detroit tap water, god knows what kind of residual metals are in that stuff

!

BTW, if your overflow/sump etc uses prefilter sponges, you may need to replace or at least clean them (in old tank water that your changing out). Do it this way to prevent any death of Nitrifying bacteria, which could result in a cycle (ugh!!). Just my 2cents, FWIW, HTH.