Updated Pics, Green Water....

[Aqua Pro Builder]

Your coral is the real murderer

Judgement: Your dying coral is the real murderer

Assumptions:
1)You did not over feed your fish and left a lot of phosphorus in your tank
2)Your tape water did not have too high phosphate level
3)Your tank do not have enough macroaglae to compete with the micro aglae
4)your skimmer is working
5)The above assumptions means that I assume no external sources of phosphorus

Explanation:
Phosphorus is a building material in ALL in living organism that I know of. Therefore, phosphorus is needed for tissue growth, including your coral, algae and fish. The microalgae bloom when the phosphate level is high. There are the organic and the inorganic phosphate too. The skimmer, if working, will skimm out most of the material that contains organic phosphate which in turns will become inorganic phosphate. A reef certainly don't want inorganic phosphate. The reef's calcium carbonate usually will bind the phosphate to the aragonite crystals and locks it in so that the aglae cannot use it. However, if your aragonite crystal is not growing (that is your reef). The reverse chemistry happens. The phosphate is released back into the water further causing algae growth.

Solutions:

1)One way of cleaning your reef should include throwing away the stone, substrate, sand so forth. A total lost may not be far away.
2)Limit the growth of aglae by Iron. Unfortunately, this is hard to do properly though. So I would say forget it.
3)Harvesting the aglae!!!!!! That is filter them and dump them. I think this is the easiest way.
4)Grow macroalgae such as Caulerpa racemosa to compete with the microalgae. I will research on this.

NOTE:
I never do salt water battles in real life, so treat my recommendations as reference only. I did battle off algae in fresh water ponds, tanks,... for my friends with duckweed. General much better than using any medications because it keeps the eco system going.

If your problem is macroalgae,which is unlikely your case, then I have no idea what to do except for dumping all contents of your tank.

I have posted about trying to grow/study plankton int he following link
http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7858
ANYONE knows about plankton, please share information.

Hope this article helps you.

 

[jhale]

wow.
I did not read the entire last thread, but I had no idea it was that bad.

That's the strangest thing I've seen.
I'll throw my hat in the ring and suggest the biggest skimmers you can get, a diatom filter, and a canister filter to run carbon or some other media, not sure what yet.
I would also consider finding your fish a new home, or at least a temporary one till you figure out what's going on. same for the corals you have, there is no way they are getting enough light in that water. Good Luck.

 

[Chris5]

Well thats sounds about right, i did temp get a better skimmer and its been skimming alot out but i dont think from what i am seeing that is going to do much in this battle i think there is something going on that i am missing like a phosphate problem or something similiar that has to be controlled somehow...

and actually was wondering if with the lack of fish i have an inverts etc...maybe my tank isnt equalizing thus an algae spurt? Honestly and not repeat myself i know tap water is a no no and i know my old 30g was a small tank but that ran flawless and i barely touch the tank, filled it up and bam I had a reef in 2-3 months thriving...never seen green water either except way back when, when i was younger had a fresh water tank and remember it turning green a couple of times but i think it was due to lack of filtration and to much feeding....

and my dying coral was just part of the problem early on when i found out i had a sulfate issue, i changed out the sand and water and now corals are thriving. again so that solves that, but not the green coming back....

 

[delv]

Seems simple....you have excess nutrients...get a real skimmer, drop the fish (regardless of their personality and inappropriate size), get an RO or DI or RO/DI, change the water (with purified water), add carbon, add PO4 remover....if it doesn't help then cook your rocks.

whhat else is there?

d.

 

[Tonyscoots84]

chris if ya want lets get the asm g3 together. i wanna see who else want to go in on this i might be able to get it for 230.00 if we have enough people

 

[nanoreefer22]

G3<----Great!

 

[Aqua Pro Builder]

I see light in your battle!

Yep the green come back because not all aglae are gone when you solve the dying coral. When you changed the sand and the water, your tank is almost like new tank again but with some traces of aglae left. They are opportunistic. They bloom again can be best described as new tank symtom. But this time, you have the upper hand in the battle because you solved the sulfate issue which kills off your coral in the first place. Since you said, this time your corals are thriving, your coral should be doing it's job-calcification(hope I spell it right), therefore I presume the internal release of phosphorus into your water is lowered while the growing corals actually absorb more phosphate than the dead ones releasing them. What's left to check would be where the external phosphate come from.

Hope you don't have to go to the first solution(throw out everything) :kidding:

Do you have a net that's small enough to harvest some of the aglae? If so, take a close up pic so that I can see how big and what type of algae it may be.

One last thought, it's strange that you said all other readings are Ok because as I recall, if correctly, algae need both nitrate and phosphate together to grow not phosphate alone. Are you sure about your readings on nitrate?

my dying coral was just part of the problem early on when i found out i had a sulfate issue, i changed out the sand and water and now corals are thriving. again so that solves that, but not the green coming back....