Pulling my hair out, need some suggestions!

[LeeT]

Hi guys, posted some info on my tank a while back and wanted some suggestions now that I have some pics. Here's the stats. I had a 100 gal set up for about a year & 1/2. We moved about 3 months ago and I upgraded to a 125. I put 100 lbs of fresh aragonite in the new tank and then put my old sand on top of that to give me a 4-5 inch sand bed. I made all new water and threw the old out & put my live rock in. All fish made the move just fine. However, I have been battling and algae problem since I set up the new tank. I have some maroonish slime algae and a bright green algae covering the rocks and in & on top of the sand bed. All my water was made with a brand new RO/DI unit from Kent. (The high silicate one). I don't have a phospate or silicate test. All my water param's have been normal from day 1. SG of 1.025, ph of 8.2, alk of 8.0, ca of 450. I added some corals and 3 of them died. The meat is looking good and the frilly mushrooms are looking pretty bad. You will see them in the pics. They are almost white now. I have 3-175w MH 10k and 2-55w PC actinics. Lights are about 8 months old. All my coraline is gone and the algae cannot be blown off by a powerhead. It is really on there. You can see in 1 of the pics where I scraped some off the powerhead with my fingernail. It is on the glass as well. So, what is it and how do I get rid of it guys? What steps do I take? I got a cleanup crew from FFE but the snails died after about 3 days, and the hermits died after about 7 days. Acclimation was normal. I have ran carbon quite a bit to try and rule out contamination. I don't know why the fish are totally happy but the corals and inverts are not. The only things I dose is Kent 2 part daily and I have been doing 25 gal. water changes every 2 weeks for 2 months now. I have reduced the photoperiod to 8 hours from 10. Am I missing something here. Thanks for all the help guys.

[ October 27, 2001: Message edited by: LeeT ]

[ October 27, 2001: Message edited by: LeeT ]</p>

 

[LeeT]

Oops, here is the other image. Thanks again guys.

 

[davelin315]

There doesn't seem to be a picture.

However, my guess is that your tank is cycling again. Despite the fact that you used RO water, there's always the possibility that in moving your substrate (I've seen several threads on this, and had it happen to me once before about 8 years ago) it had enough die off or you stirred up enough detritus in it to cause an ammonia spike. This could have caused your problems. Fish will tolerate nitrite and ammonia to a certain extent while corals and inverts might not do as well, hence cycling with fish versus cycling with corals.

You mention your water parameters are fine such as pH, alk, and calcium, but how about ammonia and nitrite?

 

[LeeT]

Well, apparently you can't store files on angelfire and then link to them or they remove your page. Go figure. Anyway, I never had an ammonia spike. I remember I was so worried about that when I moved. I tested ammonia and nitrite several times daily for about 10 days to make sure my fish wouldnt get stressed. my ammonia and nitrite are 0 and so is my nitrates since I have been doing all the water changes. Hopefully the pics will give you guys some ideas as this looks different than cyano or diatoms which I have seen before. I have never seen algae quite like this. Thanks again guys.

[ October 27, 2001: Message edited by: LeeT ]</p>

 

[LeeT]

OK hopefully this will work. The pics are at:
http://community.webshots.com/user/leerph

Thanks again for all the suggestions you can give me.

 

[davelin315]

The only thing I could see was possible the presence of some red slime algae, don't know if it is or not with the picture. Maybe there is something wrong with your lights? The few things I could make out were some mushrooms that appeared to be completely bleached, which suggests a lighting or water quality problem. If you've removed water quality from the equation, which it looks like you have, the other possibility that I see is your lights. Maybe it's time to replace them? I've heard some brands of MH burn out rather quickly, and that could be the problem. Other than that I'm tapped.

 

[Rich-n-poor]

Ive seen mushroooms bleach out when they were under too low wattage lighting then color back up when placed under higher lighting but I would think you have more than enough My shrooms like the darker sections of the tank have you tried moving them to a different location ?
Could the algea on the power head have been green coralline ? coralline loves plastic ?

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