S

Subskipper

Guest
Hello all,

Thanks again for continued assistance. I have two questions:

1) Which fish & Inverts do you suggest for keeping a sand bottom clean?

2) How long should a refugium light be left on?

Even with the 500+ gallons per hour flow through my tank, and a Rio 600 pump moving the water (the water movement is swift) I am noticing brown spots on the sand. I am sure it is impossible to keep the sand perfectly white, and not sure if that should even be my goal, but I wonder what I can add to the tank to keep the sand clean.

I think the brown is just algae, although since putting the refugium into service, I have not seen a single spot of algae on the walls of the tank....so I wonder how some of my liverock appears to be turning brown as if it were an algae bloom??

Thanks

Subskipper
 

House of Laughter

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Skipper,

That's allot of questions :)


Not sure if you're ever going to have a completely clean sandbed, but relatively clean is a nice goal :)

First - you need sand sifters - gobie (fish) is good, I have a watchman and love him. Nassarius Snails or Cerith Snails as well - also a fighting conch will sift. Also, crabs, crabs and more crabs. If you don't have any spagetti worms, get them, the move around your sand all the time keeping it clean and healthy.

The fuge - there are many perspectives on this, but here is mine - fuge should be on a reverse photo period to your tank lights - so if your tank lights are on for 10 hours, your fuge should be on the other time - not 14 hours, though - I have my tank lights (in one way or another) for 13 hours - my fuge is on for 9 hours, so for two hours the tank has no lighting whatsoever.

Not sure what's going on with your rock, but doesn't sound good - we would need more information on your tank, re: lighting, depth etc.

Hope this is helpful.

House
 

glipper69

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I keep my fuge lights on 24/7 there never off.

how long has your tank been up and running. If it's a fairly new setupless than 6 months, you should expect various outbreaks of different forms of algae. Brown included. No need to drive yourself crazy over it. just get some more cleaners and watch your excess nutrients. you might also want to try setting up a phosban or rowasphos in a reactor, this will help to limit and major outbreaks.

GL
Frank
 
S

Subskipper

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Frank,

You brought up a very good point. I recently rebuilt the entire tank. I removed the crushed coral that was fouling up my alk and calcium and replaced it with marine sand. Although I saved a good portion of the water, I still lost a lot of the bacteria load that my crushed coral was holding. I also replaced my eheim 2227 wet dry with a full sump(including in sump skimmer)I added the refugium at the same time.

In short, although my reef has been up for over seven months, I really brought it back to the beginning and started over when I replaced the crushed coral. I should have expected that the beginning would cause things like the algae blooms.

I am new to this, I learn something new each day.

Thanks

Bernard
 

glipper69

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THe same thing happened to me recently. my auto top off failed so I basically poisoned my whole tank including alot of the good bacteria so my tank had to basically recycle itself, so I went through exactly what you are going through. cyano, diatom, brown algae, (NO Hair Algae though thankgod)
So it will pass be good luck and be patient.
FRank
 

marrone

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It seems alot of tank, that have been running for quite sometime, go though aglea blooms or have cyano start to grow for no reason. My tank is going through a cyano bloom right now and it's bein running for a long time and nothing has really changed to cause the bloom. If you do a search on RC you'll see alot of people, with tanks that have been running awhile, go through algae blooms every so offen.
 

triggerboy

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I have gone throught the cynao, diatom, hair problem recently in my 55 that I have had up for about 19 months (with a 3"-4" DSB) The sand got so bad at one point it would be covered in a layer of algae/cyano that I'd reach in and peel off.. it was disgusting... here's what I did...

1. Changed my bulbs... I new it was time, but was holding out for some stupid reason... I think this is was one of the major causes of the problem to begin with... the difference was remarkable how much whiter/blue the new bulbs were compared to the older bulbs which burned to a yellow/red spectrum. (NOTE: this also cause the algae/cyano problem to get worse intially.. more light... more fuel to the fire!!!)

2. To compensate for the new bulbs, I turned down the lighting period a few hours. This was my first fix after the alage seemed to get worse after replacing the bulbs.

3. Massive water change... I know people suggest alot of smaller ones... but I didn't notice any change in my tank until I did about a 40-50% water change... this is the one thing that probably helped the most!!! I made sure to suck out as much hair/cyano I could while doing the change. I even removed some of the rocks and scrubbed them clean with a brush in the water I was removing.

4. I left the lights off for 2-3 days after the big water change.... this way the algae couldn't start blooming agian immediatley.

5. Skimmed like crazy... I adjusted my skimmer to take a more watery foam out... it's not black/green anymore of a watery green, but it fills the collection cup much quicker.

6. I bought a Algae Blenny... he doesn't seem to eat hair... but is always messing around on the sand bed.. actually eating the algae that had formed on it, never mind the glass and rocks that he feasts off of... I highly recommend one. My sand bed is looking much better than before.

6. Cut down on feedings.

These are the things I did and now I seem to have the problem well under control. I don't think there is any 1 thing you can do to stop algae/cyano/etc... it's much more complex than any one factor causing the whole problem, requiring you do a few things to change what's happening in your system. I think had I not slacked on my maintence (more water changes/replacing bulbs/etc) I could have avoided this problem to begin with, but if it get's worse, hopefully what I've mentioned above will help. Good luck.

J.
 

marrone

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I'm having the Cyano problem and it's very hard to get rid of so I'm trying a product called Chemi-clean this week, which is suppose to get rid of the cyano. You place it in your tank and then after 12 hours or so you do a large water change and run you skimmer like crazy as the bio load will increase and skimmer will take out all the stuff from your tank.

From what I've read on RC alot of people have used this once or twice a year, to knock-off outbreaks of Cyano, and it has done the job.

Most of my problem with Cyano has been that it has grow either on the rocks or on the corals, none of the sand though. My sand is pretty clean as between the hermits, snails, worms and if I still have them the little star fish.
 
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thunor

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buddy;you did not give the size of the tank.I would suggest a fighting conch(lg one from reeftopia for $8)and a court jester gobi(reinford gobi)Reinford is not cheap but but its attractive,peaceful and a strict vegetarian.
 

chrisl1

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I have to say I read this thread and it got me motivated to get my tank up in full force again, I went to WCTM (good referal from House)purchased from Ted, Nice guy and great packages,I got a cleaner crew plus a few fish on this order. Now I just need to keep on it and work the trades with people to get a nice assortment of things.

Chris
 

jackson6745

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What I did to stop a cyano outbreak:

1)placed a sack of phosban in my sump

2)changed out carbon every week

3)increased water changes to 30% water volume each week, making sure I manually remove every bit of cyano that I could.

4)cut down feeding to 1/2 cube of frozen mysis every other day

5) Increase flow to the sandbed. I simply angled my rio seio 820's down a bit.

FYI many people have experienced problems with phosphate removers such as phosban and rowaphos, I am not one of them. I use the stuff 24/7 and have noticed great improvements in the color of my SPS and also a huge decrease in all kind of algaes.

HTH,
Rich
 

FastUno

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Very interesting thread, I will be following this one!

I have a 3 mo. old tank & have gone through minor breaks already. Nothing major, just a hint of brown on the rocks, which quickly gave way to green, which then turned back to a very light brown. No hair yet!

Over the last 3 weeks I have noticed a built up of unwanted particles in the sand, mainly fish excrement. I bought one of those cylindrical cyphon tubes/vacuums & have used it this weekend. Boy did it work wonders! I think I will be using this method every 3-4 weeks. My tank is only a 26g & such work is bearable for now. I have about a dozen astreas, 2 turbos, 2 emeralds, CB Shrimp, & other smaller snails. They take care of the walls of my tank & the rocks, but don't do much with my sand. I don't want to add anything intrusive that will knock down my corals (since they are not glued).

I am considering a sand sifting type fish. What do you guys recommend in this dept? Any type of really colorful or impressive looking sand sifter that does its job?
 

pecan2phat

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Try some Nassarius or Vibrex snails. They keep your sandbed a bit "stirred" due to their burrowing activities. They are scavenger snails, not algae eating snails.
Another good addition to the Nassarius or Vibrex snails are Cerith snails. They are scavengers and algae eating snails that will go into the sandbed.
 

Tim

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I had a bit of a problem with my sandbed until I added a sandsifting starfish. He is great at turning over the sand and keeping it looking clean. Good luck...Tim
 

glipper69

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yea I have 2 sandsifting stars myself their great. I also sdo have about 100 nassarius snail about 20 astrea's 4 mexican turbos and about 50 hermits. 1 sallylightfoot, 2 mythrix crabs and 2-3 brittle stars. whew thats a lot. but in my in my book the more the merrier.

the system will usually find a balnce on how many of these critters it can support. I feed pretty heavily so they don't seem to be starving.

I do also run Rowa 24/7 -- highly recommended. love this stuff, I haven't had a hair algae outbreak since I started using it about 2 years ago.
 

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