0 nitrates and .02 phosphates but tank overwhelmed by Green hair algae

[DanConnor]

That clean up crew is better than nothing, but honestly not that effective

I would go to liveaquaria and get some mexican turbos and astreas (or banded trochus), and tuxedo urchin.

 

[JustAnt]

Hear me out, sure a CUC will help, but there is STILL an underlying issue with nutrients. That needs to be figured out as well. Maybe siphon all detritus, sandbed, blow rocks off and do a 30-40% water change once a week for two or three weeks. This will give you CUC a chance to catch up. I notice you said you dont do water changes. You current plan of attack isnt working. Of you want to consider a no WC route, you need to remove as much Algae as possible, blackout for 2-3 days. Then add chaeto and a fuge light. This will allow the chaeto to absorb the nutrients instead of the Algae. The reason why it died previously is because the algae outcompeted the macro algae for nutrients. Either do WC’s or try the above method

Definitely agree that the reason my macro algae died off was bc the GHA outcompeted the the sea lettuce I was growing. You nailed it!

 

[JustAnt]

That clean up crew is better than nothing, but honestly not that effective

sad face inserted here

 

[Malifry97]

sad face inserted here

That CUC could use some improvements but it should be pretty effective.

 

[Malifry97]

Definitely agree that the reason my macro algae died off was bc the GHA outcompeted the the sea lettuce I was growing. You nailed it!

Id do the method I mentioned and then give the macros a go again!

 

[NS Mike D]

edit: already discussed prior to my posting

 

[NS Mike D]

Id do the method I mentioned and then give the macros a go again!

@brandon429 could help with steps to do a rip clean. Which is what I would recommend in this situation.

An alternative would be this.

Siphon sandbed heavily.
Remove AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
Dose vibrant.
Blackout for three days.

Repeat once every week or two.

just to beat this horse one more time.

 

[JustAnt]

quick side note. I am not sure dosing nopox is going to help and may make things worse. You are already low to no nutrients so carbon dosing might lead to more problems like cyano and worse, dinos.

You recognize the issue, the algae is already established and outcompeting the corals for nutrients so, IMO, lowering them any more is just going to keep the scales tipped in their favor.

Good start with pulling out what you can.


let me see if I can find the 14k gallon tank and how that reefer did it, keep in mind it was not a quick fix. That algae got there over a number of years

Ya. That is definitely a worry I have with running the nopox. Don’t u think now that i pulled out tons of he GHA the phosphates would rise but that rise will now be countered by the nopox? Does that make sense?

 

[NS Mike D]

Hear me out, sure a CUC will help, but there is STILL an underlying issue with nutrients. That needs to be figured out as well. Maybe siphon all detritus, sandbed, blow rocks off and do a 30-40% water change once a week for two or three weeks. This will give you CUC a chance to catch up. I notice you said you dont do water changes. You current plan of attack isnt working. Of you want to consider a no WC route, you need to remove as much Algae as possible, blackout for 2-3 days. Then add chaeto and a fuge light. This will allow the chaeto to absorb the nutrients instead of the Algae. The reason why it died previously is because the algae outcompeted the macro algae for nutrients. Either do WC’s or try the above method

one more time.

 

[NS Mike D]

Ya. That is definitely a worry I have with running the nopox. Don’t u think now that i pulled out tons of he GHA the phosphates would rise but that rise will now be countered by the nopox? Does that make sense?

carbon dosing (assuming you are running a skimmer that takes out the bacteria flocks the nopox is feeding) takes down NO3 faster than PO4 so the risk is cyano and you in that danger range for cyano right now.


hard to tell what will happen, but suffice to say the goal here is to get your tank to a healthy balance and so keep an eye on the levels as you deal with this. I would stop the nopox as no need to add additional risks.

 

[NS Mike D]

if your following what @Malifry97 is saying (and expanding on what @brandon429 started to say), best if you think of this as two directions, get the bad stuff out of the tank and taking the steps to get your tank back to where corals are happy and the fauna (bacteria, corlaine, pods, worms, crabs, snails, macro algae etc) are doing their thing to keep the nasties at bay.

There are a lot of good posts here, but the one off solutions are likely to fail since they are one dimensional and your problem is at least two fold.

Make a dynamic plan.

 

[robbyg]

This no water change thing is one of the worst pieces of advice that floats around on the Internet.
It sounds like a great plan and it amazing how long you can get away with it. The two year mark always seems to be the point when things start to go bad. I would imagine it depends on a lot of factors but at the end of the day the basic rule is that toxic material will build up, and if it's not removed it will wreck your tank.

 

[fish farmer]

That clean up crew is better than nothing, but honestly not that effective

I would go to liveaquaria and get some mexican turbos and astreas (or banded trochus), and tuxedo urchin.

I'm agreeing 100% with this, mexican turbos and trochus and an urchin like I suggested before. I just ordered a CUC refresher from Reef Cleaners myself and they were only trochus, turbos and nassarius.

Also you mention wanting to use the Triton method....a big component of that is using macro algae in a sump, so there you go.

 

[JustAnt]

I'm agreeing 100% with this, mexican turbos and trochus and an urchin like I suggested before. I just ordered a CUC refresher from Reef Cleaners myself and they were only trochus, turbos and nassarius.

Also you mention wanting to use the Triton method....a big component of that is using macro algae in a sump, so there you go.

I amended my order with reef cleaners to include trochus and Mexican turbo snails. Hoping this cuc is good enough to eat the algae that remained after I manually pulled the GHA.

i didn’t know that about triton method. I have a small sump and the compartment that I can use for refugium is tiny. I don’t think it’s bid enough fuge to run Triton after all.

 

[NS Mike D]

watch out for the Mexican turbos. they don't do well in the high temps we keep for reef tanks (ironic). They can pollute a tank in a heartbeat when they croack. I have had better success with their cousins the Astraea snails. The too are grazing turbos, but very hardy.

 

[William Mumford]

Sounds like a **** ton of work I’m not prepared to do. Mayb it’s time for me to move on.. IDK

Yeah move on.

 

[Malifry97]

Yeah move on.

REALLY?! That is terrible advice! Why even comment that? Everyone else here is trying to hell him and then you come along and tell him to just “move on”.

 

[William Mumford]

REALLY?! That is terrible advice! Why even comment that? Everyone else here is trying to hell him and then you come along and tell him to just “move on”.

Real not a dreamer no one changes or is going to have success if that's that attitude.

 

[Malifry97]

Real not a dreamer no one changes or is going to have success if that's that attitude.

I can see that if that was the last thing he said, BUT if you read the thread, he is already planning on taking steps to fix the issue.

 

[JustAnt]

watch out for the Mexican turbos. they don't do well in the high temps we keep for reef tanks (ironic). They can pollute a tank in a heartbeat when they croack. I have had better success with their cousins the Astraea snails. The too are grazing turbos, but very hardy.

ugh. I guess I better hope I get lucky. Others mentions to get them so I did.