New aquarium problems...need help

[JasonJ]

ok..Ive been an aquarium hobbyist for many years. I started with a 55 gallon like 10 years ago and have slowly increased over the years...I moved into a 75 gallon and the tank flourished and I had many corals and fish...I started to outgrow the tank...so when I moved into a new house I went big and got a 125 gallon....
-140 lbs figi live rock
-2 1/2 inch deep live aragonite sand bed
-many corals sps and lps
-some live plants
-2 250 watt metal halides 14,000K---these are the lights I had since the beginning
-about 10-15 fish...tangs, damels, foxface, goby, scissor tails, and blennies and angelfish
-many crabs and shrimp
---now I have never used RO water...I always used tap water and added aquasafe and let it age for top offs, then for making saltwater, same process but with instant ocean, I have used kent marine chemicals and phytoplankton to feed the reef and with much success....the reef would flourish and I would literally have to cut corals back and plants otherwise the tank would be out of control....then about 2 years in I had a massive outbreak of hair algae....with much battling and constant trying everything I gave up.....

---Now I have set up a new system
-90 gallon
-I took out all the live rock from the 125 and scrubbed and rinsed it...let it dry completely for 2-3months and then recycled it in saltwater for another month....added rock to the new tank
-2-2 1/2 inch deep sand bed black Hawaiian live sand
-new canister filter 306 fluval
-new lights 2 larger LEDS 14000K 120 watts with multiple settings
-seaclone protein skimmer
-and a few fish and corals from the 125

---Now this tank looked awesome for like 4 weeks then I got some brownish slime growing on the rocks...and its out of control...I figured it was the new lights so I raised them like 10 inches above the water, didn't fix the problem, dosed the tank with red slime killer and didn't work....this is something else, I have never encountered this problem before, the tangs and rabbit fish wont touch it, I tried 3 water changes and blew the rocks off with a power head and kept filtering, it dies down, but then comes back stronger...someone please help...I have no idea what this is?????

 

[brandon429]

if you post a full tank shot you have a great chance of getting it fixed


something keen from your post, the first tank never had to be lost to hair algae.

You can use tap, the reason people dont is because lower or zero tds topoff water helps to reduce algae but there's a very key detail in all of this

for 30 yrs the advice has been along the nutrient starvation angle and grazer angle to prevent losing tanks to hair algae. You tried but in the end the algae won


well, we have collections of thousands of threads across the forums over the years where people trying even harder than you did lost the tanks to the exact same invasion. so, they were ro/di before the invastion, GFO or phosphate controls inline before the invasion, yet the invasion happened and they lost all that investment and time.

the old school way of battling algae robs a good portion of tank keepers of an action plan because it works for about 33% of users. the rest need something to do when rule breaking algae or any other invader shows up, thats the 66% of reality we're all in.

you can simply kill hair algae using a number of techniques so that if tangs, phosphate controls, lighting intensity and duration and type dont work out, you still have an algae free reef.

the one bit of information we have been totally robbed of, and lack thereof contributes to massive loss of captive reef life, is if you get algae for any reason you can kill it before it takes over a single rock, much less the whole tank. Then go back to those legit nutrient control options and use them until you need to take action. I now have to take action on algae roughly annually, and no nutrient changes have ever been done to my reef. Battling the biomass does work long term, and we were told only nutrients controls could work long term and its not the case. Nutrient controls help or not help w regrowth, given enough time any tank w have a biomass independent of nutrient conditions, primarily through unintended import into the tank.


The very instant someone wants to be hair algae free, even if they are dosing fertilizer phosphates to the water column, they can surely be its easy to just kill it. You'll manually kill it less often if your params are in line, but they never dictate whether or not a reef tank has algae. Not killing it, and purposefullly not acting on it sure does. Reverse method thinking of algae control=not possible to lose any reef to any invader, mine's immune. nothing can invade it along the lines of algae or hitchikers.

my probs are invasive redmushroom corals that i paid money and put in lol


My own 10 yr reef runs on premixed water from the pet store, they use ro to make it, not even ro di, so Im already putting some tds into my delicate sps reef, why is there no algae because the web forums say you must use zero tds to avoid it?

If we switched to my tap, which is horribly high in tds, id still not have any algae as my algae runs independent of nutrient controls. its dependent on me not burning it out of my reef, which doesn't ever fail to occur



knowing that its impossible for any plant invader to take over my reef is the direct benefit of today's algae control models vs the past.

 

[brandon429]

the scrubbing did nothing pro or con for algae removal or prevention. it left organics inside the rock that w release algae fuel for years possibly, but, this isnt a big deal you just need to manage your reef as if its highly fed. export it better than normal, good skimming and or better water changes than the last tank got.

using zero tds water for topoff and makeup w be a big deal now, you are sourcing algae nutrients from the actual rock. animals died when the rock dessicated, a month in solution didnt remove them, they are leaking but again as proven by a zero level ammonia test kit and the presence of living benthic life in your tank (we w see on pics) you can see its not a terrible emission, its just part of the higher than average dissolved nutrient load vs if you had kept the rocks alive and simply killed all the algae in four days such that your tank had no algae regardless of params.


Your current issues are phosphates leaking from the rocks and fueling cyano, you need a gfo reactor sir/. post pics, i clean up tanks for the sheer fun of collecting after pic. people who like plant refugiums would recommend those to deal with excess nutrients, but neither of them is the way you handle algae when its present. what these two methods do is try and prevent regrowth, they are not removers.





The reason im recommending phosphate control here is because the rock is now pumping some out in addition to daily feeding.

You need phosphate control for this cyano, but when GHA comes back, soon if not already complexed in some of the cyano communities (need close up pics) just zap it and kill it. Choose your zap from many on the internet, research, but in the end any system that makes a tuft of algae disappear yesterday is the right one for you.

If your system allows that algae to exist tomorrow, while something starves it supposedly or you wait for an animal to eat it, or we search an ID to see what worked for others, then you know this tank w repeat the prior tank eutrophication. If you select a method that kills an algae tuft within 24-48 hrs and that space on the rock is blank, using no animal or starvation, then you know from decisive action that algae that was previously there but is now totally dead cannot spread. best algae approach ever. im actually cheating my tank into its second decade by just burning algae, much like GFO users cheat the natural phosphate sinks in our tanks. we are all cheating in one way or another, were ocean fish ever truly meant to live in ten gallons even though we can justify it ten ways lol

so, pick a cheat that works, we are much freer to act today than have even been given permission in any prior reefkeeping decade.

 

[JasonJ]

I've heard that...I was told by a professional reef keeper in Madison last night that I need established bacteria and creatures from a mature tank to eat the algae..example copepods and amiphopods....it's not cyano algae because I treated for it like 3 times and did 5 1/2 tank water changes.....he said it's not the lights...but I fear it still might be....the rock that's not exposed to the light is completely clean and white....so I took 2 cup fulls of the sand from my established 125 and dumped them in the 90 last night....hoping this will jump start the bacteria and let's sand creatures spread....I know the rock is giving off some ammonia...because it was when I was cycling it....I've heard of live rock going bad...and considering this rock is like 10 years old it might be...the guy in Madison said you want a hint of ammonia to get the bacteria going and to scrub the rock and keep doing water changes...I've heard of people nuking rock...boiling...vodka...peroxide...and magnesium....I haven't tried these cause I'm afraid of the harm it might do and it's unnatural....I've never used a reactor before....I've always had really good luck with just adding chemicals and Kent marine supplements once a week....constant skimming and filtration and really heavy water flow.....I will post some pics....you tell me what you think

 

[JasonJ]

It wont let me upload anything

 

[JasonJ]

There we go...this is what it looked like to start with....amazing at first

 

[JasonJ]

And these are what its progressed to now

 

[JasonJ]

Difficult to post pictures on here....but the first are when the tank was first set up and now as you can see the algae or diatoms have progressed....I stirred things up last night and put some established sand in hoping the bacteria would spread....hasn't changed much as of today yet hoping by tomorrow to see a change

 

[JasonJ]

Still debating or not to take all the rock out and just go buy new stuff cause like I said Ive had it for quite some time....I will post some older pix of the 125 when it was going....same methods and same process like Ive always done and worked well until the hair algae took hold and spread

 

[Vegareef]

Check your Nitrates and Phosphates. It looks like they're a bit high. Getting these two in order would do you a great deal of help. There are many options for purchase at your lps or even vodka or vinegar dosing. Good luck with the algae.

 

[Zacco]

Get yourself a media reactor and start running GFO (Granular Ferric Oxide) I run GFO on my tanks and never have any nuisance algae problems) Bind those phosphates up!

 

[Mike in CT]

And if you start GFO, it's likely going to take a while to get it under control. Probably a lot of phosphates built up in your rock work. One risk of using tap water is you never know when they might add, or work on on the pipes and wipe out your whole tank.
I ran tap for 10 plus years, but I always fought algae and diatoms.

 

[brandon429]

I would support either of the two options above

Excellent pics J

Nice tank too, really has potential. I say lets not give up yet and treat the tank for two mos before evaluating

Don't use API test kits for this

Hundreds of dollars is on the line use a nice phosphate test kit brand that has decent search returns on reliability, salifert comes to mind as one option

Know the real levels

You should take a small suspect test rock, put it in a bucket of just clean sw and check sample in a week as an isolated look at phosphate leaking

The main tank is skewed by feeding and additional bioloads, if the test bucket yields some on the good quality phosphate test then we have insight about the destiny of this rock vs just guessing.

Treat the tank as a high bioload tank imo, you have a chance of fixing it

This algae above, any chance you could hand siphon it all clean then gfo or vodka dose that setup...it comes off the rocks easier than gha and hand removal of biomass has been indicated in tanks approaching eutrophication. Yours is only topically affected now let's fight for it a while before giving up.

Secret

Your tank is a prime candidate for oversized uv filtration for specific reasons I'm serious. It can do wonders for you

Not correctly sized uv, but grossly oversized. Pond uv unit, you can't put one on too big.

That recommendation comes from using oversized uv as a sucker punch cheat for twenty years, a fair portion of the work online in threads. Right now at nano reef.com disease and pest forum giant peroxide thread, a nano has ostreopsis microscopy verified pervasive dinos not responding to week long taped black outs, heavy phosphate binding, and heavy peroxide. Guess what kicked it

55 watts pond uv
he was thinking of getting a 9 w turbo twist which was already big for a smaller nano. If he installed two 55 watts pond uv thats ok as well, you can't overdo.

Clearly new rock and new algae control techniques is a fresh start, you won't be compensating for nutrient emitting rock but thats $$

Your tank as it stands has the nutrient profile of simply an aged, heavy stocked tank and lots of people run those without shelving all the rock. We can cpr your current tank clean for sure, either way w work just different tactics and cost.

Ps, don't think I'm recommending you spend three hundred on pond uv sight unseen even though its the best closet nuke for you to have...nope, you can often borrow them for a one month trial run. Twice Ive got online uv users into free gear see if this can luck out for you:
- check w lfs contacts and the manager, they have or know people who retired pond uv to a shed because when they used it, it wasn't grossly oversized it was barely sized for their pond. Correct uv use is a snooze pace waste of time, go gross and win.
- local forum boards worked in my city. Join yours, offer to dance at their wedding if someone w lend you a month eval uv. Chances are you can barter something for them and just keep it. This option is best bet
So many ways to get uv

 

[JasonJ]

If I use the gfo reactor....it says there are effects on pH and alkalinity....is there anything you can add to off set this balance...I know that some of my corals like higher pH and salinity...example. my elkhorn.......and others are the opposite...I've tried Kent marine pH increasing.....but never used a reactor.....I also have a brand new uv sterilizer...would you guys recommend hooking that up also???

 

[JasonJ]

If I use the gfo reactor....it says there are effects on pH and alkalinity....is there anything you can add to off set this balance...I know that some of my corals like higher pH and salinity...example. my elkhorn.......and others are the opposite...I've tried Kent marine pH increasing.....but never used a reactor.....I also have a brand new uv sterilizer...would you guys recommend hooking that up also???

 

[Maximo]

You have dinoflagellates! They are a common part of a new tank! It's common within the first year of a tank! They key to algae control is first identifying what algae is taking control in your tank! You need to do a few day lights out period! Sea hares work great devouring the stuff! You also need to be running a reactor I would use gfo until the algae is under control then dial it back to light carbon and monitor! Be very careful with uv sterilizes they kill way more than just the bad bacteria in your tank! You already have a nutrient issue you don't want to kill off more bacteria and send it into the water column! You need nutrient export not another internal bacteria doser! Turn up your skimmer so you have to empy the collection cup 1 to 2 times a day! Don't of crazy on water changes your tank is still cycling! I would only do 10-15% every two weeks for a couple months! This is not going to be an instant fix it may take months! And one of the main reasons we use rodi filters is to remove silicates! They are also fuel for algae and help algae establish a foot hold! Do as much research on dinoflagellates as that is the algae in your photos! I get minor algae blooms in my tank when my top off/ water change water reaches 1 ppm! Keep your salinity, temp, Alk, mag and cal consistent and your tank will flourish! Do you have a refugium to help with phosphate control? What are your nitrates at?

 

[JasonJ]

So it's been almost 2 weeks and I did a 50 percent water change....and got all parameters correct. Protein skimmer has been on over time for the past week and have been running some new media in the canister....even siphoned the sand a bit all around the tank. ..added a few hermit crabs...and 3 cups of established sand from the 125 gallon with live amiphopods and copepods.....went 2 days with lights completely out....tank looks amazing....haven't changed anything that's worked for me in the past....some of the corals though aren't opening up like they should when they were under the metal halides in the 125.....still have the new led fixtures raised and by about 10 inches above the water line

 

[KINGROWLAND1217]

I'm having the same exact problem. What's the new media you added to your canister? Did you just change what you had or get a whole new type of media? Thanks for any help

 

[aquariumrescueunit]

It is a phosphate issue, I had the same problem. I tried to leach it with removers and water changes which does work, however it will keep coming back because the phosphate has saturated the sand and rock and the more you pull out of the water it will keep coming back by being pulled out of the sand bed and rocks. I would reccomend taking all your rocks and coral and fish and putting them in a Rubbermaid tub with the water you have now and run a power head, heater and rig your lights over it for the corals. Completely drain the tank and scoop out the sand and replace the sand bed I know a few different people who said that replacing their sandbed dropped the phosphate down by A LOT. Then scrub all your rocks with a toothbrush the best you can getting that algae off em and fill up the tank with new saltwater and let the sand settle and then put your stuff back in. And don't forget to have your water at good temps before you put everything back in. And I would suggest getting a media reactor and running GFO in it. I had my biocube spring a leak that had the same exact issues and I replaced the sand and moved into a bigger tank and run GFO now and it saved what was left of my tank....hope this helps

 

[aquariumrescueunit]

If the problem comes back give my method a try. A lot of times the sand gets completely used up as in how it cycles the water and will just keep putting phosphate back in the tank continuing your algae problem