Nasty problem with a fairly established tank

[Alkaholic]

Hello fellow reefers,

After spending the past hour looking around the discussion board archives, I haven't been able to come up with a solution to my problem.

I don't have a digital camera so I'll have to describe the problem in words.

For the past 2 months I've been battling a very nasty algae that grows in the sandbed and the rocks. In the beginning I could just take a stick and stir it off and it would get sucked in the overflow but it keeps coming back and has killed a LOT of my corals and a blue clam.

The algae is a brownish red in colour but its NOT carpet like. Instead its very very stringy and it comes in strands that stretch around all over the place like brownish, red spiderwebs. IF i turn off the lights for a long enough time, the stands turn greyish white and loose their adhesive properties and essentially "die".

I don't know what to do. I've done water changes of up to 30% and its to no avail. It KEEPS coming back. Is it Cyano? i can't tell. I thought cyano was carpetty. I bought some red slime removed chemcials ( I hate chemicals but i would rather use them then have my tank completely rot) and it seemed to help for a bit but it came back after 2 weeks.

My top off water and water i use for water changes is RO water and Has no phosphates or nitrates.

The sandbed i currently have is not the "sugar sized grains" that the people on this board seem to love. I'm assuming sugar sized crains are ACTUALLY the size of sugar? like very very very fine? just as fine as salt? I wish I had gotten that but i just got some standard carrib-sea sand. Mmm the grain size isn't "large", but i'd say like 1/4 or 1/5 the size of a grain of uncooked rice? That's all i can think of.

I have a blue linkia in there. he's been around for over a year, donut coral, bubble coral, some shrooms, a 4" clam a green carpet that i've had for over a year. 4 small fish and a tang. So its not very heavily stocked. and I feed every other day. All the remaining corals are doing VERY well.

I have 2X250watt MH lights that i run about 5 hours a day. anymore and the algae grows insanely fast. It tends to grow only when the lighting is strong enough.

I drip kalk and i use a buffer powder once in a while to keep the dkH at 10 -11

Tank is 1.5 years old
75 gallon tank with 15 gallon sump.
turboflotor modded to fight a mag 7
pH 8.2
calcium levels are around 400
No detectable phosphates
about 130 pounds of LR
nitrates are high as in over 1.0. that's all my test kit reads up to for the nitrates. can't seem to lower it.


ANY help would be appreciated. I know this post is longm but after 2 months I thought i'd stop trying to be a hero and ask you guys =)


thanks in advance

 

[DK]

How old are the bulbs? Do you also have any actinic lighting? Cyano and algae need food and light in the right spectrum to grow and thrive.

 

[4angel]

Hi Alk and welcome. I have been on board for a few months and I would have to say that a lot of the folks here have great advice that has helped me a great deal. My opinion in what's going on in your tank would be as a result of the high nitrates. What's the live stock situation like Those 4 small fish how small?. Allot of stuff just cant handle nitrates. I never kept clams my self but I would assume they fit into that category. As far as controlling nitrates in my tank I would think its a combo of water changes as well as some caulerpa doing its thing. over stocking contributes to some bad times in the tank. It sounds to me the growth you described could be some hair algae. I have periodic blooms of the hair stuff. I prune as well as adjust my lighting I sometimes cut back some lighting then return. I try to keep fresh bulbs going all the time. Welcome again. A lot of folks will give input and as a result of being in this hobby you'll find yourself back here again and again and not just for help but for ideas as well. By the way great name.
_________________
Honda Ballade

 

[Alkaholic]

The bulbs are about 6 months old.
they are 10k specturm bulbs
I run some flourescnt actinic lights when the MH lights are off

Hmm i've heard about this caulepera stuff
does it actually work that well? do you grow it in the tank? or in the sump?
if i grow it in the tank will my tang eat it up?

 

[bar]

your tang will love the caulerpa
i put mine in a refugium with live sand

 

[bar]

and yes it work well for me :wink:

 

[4angel]

As Bar said your tang will love it. I have some in my tank. I also keep caulepera in my sump. Caulepera and some other algae help in controling nitrate levels but it should not take the place of regular maintance.
_________________
Mercedes SSK

 

[Alkaholic]

do you need hermit crabs and a clean up crew? i just realized i have much less then the recommended amount of hermit crabs and snails.

they all recently died due to a lack of feeding of the tank.

any suggestions?

I'm getting VERY frustrated with this problem. IT seems like all my water paramters are right. I have high water flow. Good lighting. but this STUPID algae that keeps growing on me. which doens't even look like any of the cyano bacteria pictures i have seen on the web.

 

[ReefLion]

Sounds like dinoflagellaes to me. I'm not sure if I spelled that right, but did you include that term in your searches on this board? Give that a try (with variations on spelling), and see if you get some info. HTH

Tim

 

[Anonymous]

above 1.0 can also be 50 :wink:

get a higher range kit for the NO3 and see what your results are.also-reO4:try halving the amount of water in the test sample and see if you then get a positive reading(this doubles the low end detection range of your test-non detectable does not =0 :wink: )

try using only the halides w/out the actinics.most of my microalgaes disappeared when i stopped using actinics

hth

 

[Alkaholic]

Dinoflagelletes eh? okay i'll go read up on it


I never knew actinics cause algae growth?
Hmm. maybe that's the problem

another question though Maybe i have too much circulation or too little circulation. I have 4 maxijet 1200s on the tank. And i'm using a wavemaster on it.
its a 75 gallon tank. do i need more powerheads? or shoudl i take some out?

Also do powerheads need to be put at several depths in the tank? or is it okay to put them all at the top with the heads pointing downwards?

Oh one more thing. Any wavemaster users out there? is there a specific setting i should put the wavemaster at? I've always had the machine set to a low turbulence.

thanks again for all the tips from you guys.

 

[Anonymous]

Alkaholic-

please don't misinterpret my statement about actinics.i'm not trying to say that actinics are the cause of nuisance algae.rather that an excess of the right wavelengths of light can help it to grow, if all the other factors (like nutrients) are also present.

your halides should be more than adequate, in the amount of PAR they give off, for your corals and/or macros.the actinics may be an excess, given what you already have for lighting.this excess 'light energy' may the a limiting growth factor for your nuisance algae/dino's-but so are the various nutrients, too.

-and yes, the ideal sand is very fine grain stuff-look for oolitic, or southdown on a search.the grain size ranges from sugar to dust size particles

hth

 

[DK]

I see that the lights are felatively new, so spectrum shift is not a likely source. Have you actually removed the "stuff" from the system as in siphoning it through a airline tube into a bucket? Obviously, food for its growth is in your tank. By removing the algae/cyano, you remove some of whatever it is "eating" in addition to what you don't want in your tank.

Are you using RO/DI water? BTW my nitrates were as high as 200 without algae growth under 250W 10K's, it is now down to 25 and averything is fine, SPS, LPS and corraling growth all fine. I add this because either your micro nutrients are out of wack (what else are you adding?) or you have plenty of phosphate or possibly silicate.