still battling those damn nussiance algaes

[reefNewbie]

I have been battleing dyno, cyano and green hair algae for over 4 months now. I have a 90 gallon with 2500 gal/hr flow, 4in DSB 125 lbs LR and brand new bulbs(MH and VHO), euro reef cs6-1 skimmer. I have a refugium with lots of macro algae. I am running phosban and have been running it for about 3 weeks now. I only have two small fish in there now and have been doing very minimal feedings maybe every 3rd day. I have also been doing weekly 20% water changes and syphon out as much of the junk (mainly dynos) on my rocks as possible. Also kicked the light cycle down to 5 hrs a day. This I have been doing for a good 2 months now. The water i use is 0 TDS ro/di water. Yet for some reason i cannot get rid of this stuff and whats worse is now the cyano is growing like mad. I dont get how this stuff is growing.

Also i noticed that nitrates have been appearing, only .5 ppm but still it used to always be 0. Anyone have any suggestions or ideas? thanks

 

[Baianotang]

When I take my baiano tang out of the main tank, the rocks will soon get full of algae (nasty). When he is in there its all ok. Tang it!

 

[Anonymous]

Blue tangs eat hair like other tangs right??

 

[Ben1]

Seems like the bases are covored. No offence but adding fish is usually never the solution to this type of issue, more times then not it adds to the problem.

Where did the live rock come from in this tank? Is it possible it is leaching bound P02 back into the water?

What about the sandbed, is it possibly over loaded? Do you use a sand bed. It is possible stirring/vacuuming small sections of the sand bed once a week will eliminate the problems.

Has the Phosban helped? Have you tried other products like ROWAphos?

 

[Ben1]

BTW, I have only just tried ROWAphos. I was growing diatoms to the point where they coated the class heavily every day. Since adding it I didn't have to clean the glass until after 3 days. So far I think it's pretty good and isnt just carbon and ion absorbers. I also run a bag of carbon in the sump once in a while.

 

[Anonymous]

I am running a bag of carbon and two bags of phoX from Hagen and still I see nuisance cyno, dyno and hair. I have been using distilled for top off and NSW from scripps for water changes

I have added two fighting conches and a lawnmower blenny but they seem to be fighting a losing battle. Drives me nutz. I ripp it out by hand too.

 

[hillbilly]

I know it's something no one wants to hear, but its possible that the DSB or the LR is leaching food for the algae. My money would be on the DSB.

 

[Anonymous]

so how would you get the leech to stop?

 

[Ben1]

Sandbeds and liverock can bind with P02. The P02 gets absorbed into the live rock and once the P02 levels are fixed it can leach back into the water indefinatly. Could be years before it stops. Which is why I asked about the sandbed/rocks. In this case I would start over with new fresh live rock and sand. Or attemp to vacuum small sections of the bed at a time untill the whole beds been cleaned.

Reefnewbie where did the sand/rock in your tank come from?

 

[Anonymous]

The LR and/or LS is my guess as well. As Ben said, he appears to have all of his bases covered...I'm not sure what else to look at.

 

[reefNewbie]

so you guys are telling me that the only way to fix this is ti either vaccuum the sand bed and LR or replace both?

 

[Anonymous]

so you guys are telling me that the only way to fix this is ti either vaccuum the sand bed and LR or replace both?

crap

 

[Anonymous]

how old is the tank?


assuming it is a year and half old, as that is the date of your joining this board, i would say it could be the DSB but unless you are feeding heavily i would look at other issues first.

flow is the first thing and the most likely culprit, IMO... you give us a GPH but is the inside a high flow environment? if you kicked it up a notch would sand start moving around?

what lives in the bed? do you get plenty of movement in it?
are you housing corals? if not turn the light cycle way down.


depending on the fish, you might be able to stop feeding for long periods of time.

 

[Anonymous]

I feed maybe 4 to 5 times a week and very small doses

I have 2 chromis
1 oc
neon dottyback
lawnmower blenny

xenia
a million feather dusters
2 fighting conches
a bunch of ceriths
a bunch of hermits
brittle star
coral banded shrimp



My flow is
rio 1700 (900 gph)
rio 210 (30 gph)
2 maxi jet 400's (110 gph)
power sweep (110 gph)

I could be wrong on the gph's

dsb had a million pods and worm all in it so thing do get moved around


I am going to upgrade the rio 1700 to a little giant that is about 2.5 times as strong as the rio but the will happen whne I move and redo my setup