0 nitrate/phosphate and algae. Questions

[DirtMcGurt]

Best of luck to you! Dosing N03 and P04 and getting it balanced and stable is really what made my tank blossom. It would survive with high N03 and low/zero P04 but now its cranked up. It will take a few weeks but you should see results in a month. If not, then you have another issue. Manual algae removal really helped me too. You can also up you algae cuc, only if it needs it.

 

[Dan_P]

Difficult to suggest a solution without seeing a picture. So, let’s assume your aquarium is now a very stable ecosystem with green hair algae playing an important role. No amount of tweaking of parameters will help. The green hair algae has to go.

If the system is too far gone, restarting the aquarium might be the best option. Next option, physical removal of the algae but it can be a tedious and frustrating process. Are you up for such a mental challenge? Beside you removing the algae, you need something to eat it. Hair algae has very fine strands that snake over everything. What you see is are just the filaments or hairs that leave the surface. While you can easily get at the hair part, the surfaces need to be cleaned. That is why something needs to clean up what you leave behind. It can also grow in the substrate.

Hair algae clumps tend to accumulate fine particles of substrate and waste, creating a stable and fertilized area for growth. In addition, dead and dying hair algae are food for other nuisance organism growth which produce waste and fertilizes new hair algae. You may have to improve your routine maintenance by first cleaning out all these pockets and islands of waste AND then to continue to keep rock surfaces and substrate clean.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

IMO, a bacteria/algae symbiotic relationship is the root cause of persistant nuisance algae. If the population of these particular strains of bacteria get a foothold in the system they can dominate competition & the algae has a great advantage.

"Studies indicate that specific functional types of bacteria are associated with most algae, which exploit this unique habitat, in some cases also helping algal growth, in a classic case of mutualism (Kim et al., 2014a, Ramanan et al., 2015). These functions include ability to degrade complex polysaccharides, to stave off competition, and provide beneficial attributes to algae. And this requires enormous metabolic activity linked to a complex signaling network to maintain the relationship, backed by fluid genetic machinery."

Algae–bacteria interactions: Evolution, ecology and emerging applications

Algae and bacteria have coexisted ever since the early stages of evolution. This coevolution has revolutionized life on earth in many aspects. Algae a…

www.sciencedirect.com

No3 & po4 aside, algae need some specific nutrients to proliferate & persist. Bacteria are known to aid algae by supplying necessary vitamins, nutrients & growth hormones, and conferring resistance to pathogens.

 

[NanoDJS]

I think in the year 2020 , that the whole 0 / 0 myth needs to stop. The lighting is upto a point where if your strip your nutes down too low your going to kill coral fast , and cause so many other problems. Also 12 hr photo-period is kinda long with those nute levels and might be contributing to your algae growth. I would try 10 hours/day for a week and see if that helps also you need closer to a 16:1 ratio of your p/n to have proper nutrient uptake, get your dkh upto around 9 and your p .25 and n at least 5 ..........high light / high nutes .... low light / low nutes algae or not.

 

[AndrewB]

Thank you all. I have for years been trying to keep nitrate and phosphate as low as possible without hitting zero.

After however long it's been I'm starting to see a difference. I dose brightwell phosphate, nitrogen, reef builder, and microbacter7. The brown algae has almost been eliminated and I was able to manually remove most GHA. When I get a working camera again I will post pictures. Thanks again.

 

[DirtMcGurt]

Thank you all. I have for years been trying to keep nitrate and phosphate as low as possible without hitting zero.

After however long it's been I'm starting to see a difference. I dose brightwell phosphate, nitrogen, reef builder, and microbacter7. The brown algae has almost been eliminated and I was able to manually remove most GHA. When I get a working camera again I will post pictures. Thanks again.

That's great news! In the next cpl weeks you should really see a difference. Try to keep testing those N03 and PO4 levels. In my tank it came to a point where I didn't need to dose anymore. It's like once the balance was achieved and maintained for a month or so, everything just stuck. I know that's not very scientific lol but it just happened. How do your corals look? Also, pics would be great!