0 phosphate/nitrate but abundant algae

[Pennywise the Clown]

Third dose of vibrant dosed. Not seeing any difference yet but i know it takes a while. Picture to follow.

Vibrant took about a month of dosing twice a week before I noticed an improvement. But after that it disappeared very quickly and has stayed clear ever since.

 

[getmealemon]

Every coral in the tank above can sit out in the air for 30 mins + and not die, ergo we have a way to fix this tank if you are willing to force clean it back into shape, no harm comes to the coral only the algae.

we would keep them misted or in a holding container of course, but they can take air emersion if required/ we have video of this being done several times/trust :)

If you want it fixed, the tank must be disassembled then cleaned in a certain manner... put back without algae, all detritus stores removed, and then in the clean condition only we would start flucoazole. Every action advised for controlling algae here is great, but it comes after your weekend of harsh work for having not worked so far, that's the real balance. you make the algae go away over the course of two days tank redo, perfectly algae free.

now you have a reset tank using all the same corals, fish and substrate. work clean from there

I would love the challenge of restoring this by thread... the tank is 100% eutrophic but by this weekend can be made oligotrophic by sheer will. For five mos after that you'll be hand guiding regrowth out, no one off effort undoes years of plant gain. But the initial fix will make the tank look and run 90% better and each tuft of algae is retaining detritus for onsite feed degradation which is why your testers don't matter here. eutrophic conditions will recirculate the rot all around your tank as some action kills off the algae and you leave it to slowly die

but to make this tank clean, kill the algae and export it, in the same run. stop the cycle of detritus castings everywhere is the best advice. an intercept using skip cycle cleaning already done in threads combining out to +100 pages

You'll have to choose when you are ready to be algae free, then we can.

It starts with making one single test rock comply before you do the whole tank. This is where you learn it's regrowth or death characters based on how you would garden it back into shape. its a time waster to subject your whole tank to an experiment. If you want to dose something to the water, test it in a 5 gal bucket/same dilution on a test rock before you act on the main tank.

The #1 thing that should occur is a pre modeled kill, and then when you apply it to the whole tank you know what to expect.


No test kits are needed to fix this tank only will to copy the work already done in gha fix threads

If your normal reef lighting is 10k/ white with hardly any blues like the pics above that is a huge contributor, not a param. Are your lights normally that white or is it adjusted for pictures

when your tank is fixed, the current lighting intensity needs to drop 40% and ramp back up, if ever, based on algae regrowth, over the next half year. Your current lighting is in excess, there are no shade points. all points get 100% sun, that's likely about 70% of your cause. every coral in there will still continue on if your lighting is reduced just under half then ramped up, they do not require the current levels that feed the algae too.

I believe you have zero phosphate issues from the rock as causative. params or things you measure didn't cause this, only allowance. Disallowance is the cure, starting with test rock assessment so your actual variables are considered before the big job is ran

My lights are always ran with blues - just changed them to white to show the algae better.

I do have one smaller rock which I could test on, only has a few zoas on it. I will have a go at siphoning some of the detritus from the tank, hopefully over the next few days.

 

[brandon429]

The first test is with peroxide as the kill

No concern about whole tank yet, it feels great just to make one rock comply. If this method doesn’t work we will know soon via growback

It’s gotta be a steak knife not a brush, we are mimicking the beak of a parrotfish, they literally eat rock and poop sand and digest the algae in between for nutrition...leaves behind bare rock on a real reef. Via rasping bite, algae is gone = Instantly ripe for something else to be there vs invasive algae (eventually we can just plant more corals to compete for space to shield out algae. In every place above where coral flesh exists, no algae.)

On that one rock it’s ideal to use forceful picking/dentist make gums bleed type precision debriding of the algae off the test rock using a precision knife tip. none of these steps kill filtration bac.

Your coral if attached to rock sits there on the counter in the air as you pick, scrape and saltwater rinse around it... detail that rock to a no algae condition. Rinse with saltwater, down the drain with target and waste.

We can figure out how to upscale efficiently to the tank later, now is just learning how that work will pan out on small scale

When the rock is clean, then apply 3% peroxide from a new/ not half flat bottle to the formerly invaded surfaces. Don’t apply to coralline just hit former target ground

Peroxide is now used in absence of the target but it’s killing holdfasts the metal knife tip left behind, and bits of cellular material that otherwise is cast about the tank and reattaches

What the masses do is add peroxide to the water of a full mass system. We’re opposite


Let the peroxide sit for 2 or 3 mins on the area in the air, then rinse off with saltwater and set rock back in for observation

This test rock is now surgically clean and better able in terms of filtration than it was before; it’s pores are now open vs packed and they’re expressing detritus out into the system now for a few mos. to force clean the system is to increase surface area tenfold...to eject detritus which is the real rock issue it’s not po4 bound in the actual rock matrix in my opinion. Check out SeaBass’ work below very similar, done this way at nano reef.com

Watch that test rock over a few days as you make game plans. I bet it behaves nicely. * prediction: 3% while effective is still babywater lol we might need the rocket fuel 35% tbd lol after test rock 3% reveals growback or not


Let the record reflect nano reefers are just spoiled rotten with easy tank access, y’all get all the good fish :)

 

[getmealemon]

So i've ripped out one of the worst rocks and scrubbed it pretty good, still unable to get all the algae off but much better than it was. I have followed this up with some hydrogen peroxide. I'll see this rock develops as to whether i decide to do the rest of the rocks.

This is a picture of my reef under normal(blue) lighting.
DSC01843 by chris wagg, on Flickr

 

[brandon429]

Nice, just a little test is no harm to the rest of the system for sure.

*gha tends to growback on the first cleaning round so don’t be offended if the test rock works, and a bigger job works, but then in a few weeks you see some whiskers growing back. They always come back eventually, we’re clearing ground for you to try growback prevention options.

Nobody really has a one off solution for something this well-evolved to grow on a reef, but once you take back ground for a clean start, then you can try clean up crews, reef flux, anything just so long as it’s done in the clean condition. Adding those things to an invaded tank gets growback too, we can see this in fluconazole threads. Combining the physical work and then the preventative is today’s best algae control science

Search vibrant. Massive growback rate...it’s good product though so the right move is to surgically detail burn with peroxide, which has its own history of working well, then we blend it with these other kill options and make them only have to work on tiny bits of regrowth mass, this gives them a better chance of actually working.

Neither fluc nor vibrant has growback for everyone, it’s why they’re popular but at approx 40% of people reporting mass growback, it’s best to prep for that ahead of time with this combo move that doesn’t count out the hard work surgical step.

The main problem with no work all doser kills is the massive rot from dying plants circulates around, sinks in the bed along with unremoved fuel (detritus) already in the bed fueling original growths. Our hard work method forces a massless clean tank first, then your dosers are positioned to actually work as preventatives and no mess sinks into the tank.

If you’ll take time to clean the sandbed out and decloud the rocks, your N and P levels are reset to perfection without testing for them

 

[getmealemon]

So this is the test rock i scrubbed and bleached last week:
IMG_20190902_113450842 by chris wagg, on Flickr

And this is it today:
IMG_20190907_095700750 by chris wagg, on Flickr

What sort of timeframe do you normally give for observing grow back of the algae. Or how long would you wait before declaring test rock a success and taking all the rock out to scrub/bleach?

 

[getmealemon]

Noticed my bropsis type algae seems to be going white, happening all over the tank. Calupera type algae doesn't seem affected yet.

DSC01854 by chris wagg, on Flickr

 

[brandon429]

We don’t have an ideal time frame it’s mainly to observe/get an idea but that tester looks nice ha! Excellence. Linked to first page of the peroxide thread due to great testing before and after.

*growback happens in all reefs bc algae is as tuned to be there as coral. Even those who’ve found the ideal repellent balance will get it again one day, it’s circular. We simply want to show a means of stopping takeover and resetting tank

Once your system has been taken apart and cleaned fully, all detritus taken along with the algae, it will still grow back one day but slower, and in a way you can intercept with one of the common ways like fluconazole or vibrant

We should not dose things to the water in the invaded condition, bc all the dying plant mass circulates around the tank. It should be manually cleaned first like your test shows and then it’s positioned to have controllable growback wo full takeover

That test rock of yours just got human grazed
Tangs, take notes lol

 

[brandon429]

Also, any coral stuck to the walls (I try that too it looks good) does not die when we take apart tank for declouding/cleaning

Just mist it with a bottle of saltwater. It could stay alive days while drained if you just mist it

This allows disassembly cleaning without concern
it’ll be safe work we just saw up there and we re assemble your tank with the adhered corals in place. All the phosphate and nitrate we have a concern with in this low fish bioload tank is actually locked up in detritus and not in solution (can’t measure certain organic states)

Once we either kill off the algae and export the mass, or if we takedown clean it all at once and export mass, that detritus will not have plant fronds to hide and become broken down by bacteria.

Killing algae is indeed actually preventing algae, you’ve just killed one of algae’s -best- feed sources: the designed trapping of organic waste stores inside algae fronds and whorls for on site breakdown independent of water tested params or adsorbents like Gfo

As of now, any test rocks swirled about mid tank before surgery will indeed cast off visible clouds of feed we can see without aid. Dan P has already tested the material in another thread and found it’s nutrient profile.

That test rock you just created if rinsed once more time externally in saltwater will now be casting- free

When you shake it about next week in tank, fractional or no visual clouding comes off, that’s the new oligotrophic state visually confirmed. Your portion of reef in that condition specifically wants to take on coralline and coral, accretion and calcifying organisms, vs plants and mud which is specifically the eutrophic/catch all state

*once your tank is forced into oligotrophic conditions, then use precise chemistry and testing and adsorbents and fluconazole etc as growback preventers. The key to all algae control in reefing where tank size allows is to force the clean condition, then apply all of today’s best algae science solely in the clean condition for growback prevention.

Only 1% do it that way, 99% dose the invaded condition and wait, wait, wait, bleach, wait, get a new invasion of cyano, but microscopes, buy testers, buy dosers, buy ICP testing so you know your params spot on.

But you just made a test rock comply, free, knowing no other details other than a reckoning was coming to that spot. Resolve fixed your test rock, not biology or chemistry.

There indeed are two things one can do darn fast in reefing: cycling and being algae free.

 

[blasterman]

Nuisance algaes like this are a self reinforcing loop like Brandon says.

Although hind sight is 20/20 over the years of setting up tanks I've learned that if you rapidly increase nutrient levels after cycling with Flourish or potassium nitrate, let it sit for a month, and then do a massive water change before adding live stock nuisance algaes out breaks are greatly reduced. I then slowly bring up nutrient levels to production levels. IMO, trying to keep new tanks too pristine from the start creates an explosive situation because organisms and slow churning bacteria beds that consume nitrate and other nutients never have a chance to establish. So, nuisance algae can rapidly take hold when it starts.

Personally if I see an outbreak of nuisance algae starting (been years) I get some big turbos from the reef store and let them go to town. The OP's original tank is nothing but a tasty salad for a bunch of turbos and they would have scrubbed that tank bare in a few days.

 

[brandon429]

Team can we update here

This thread is top billing on my peroxide thread due to test modeling and personal resolve all in one place
We would savor knowing:
Current pics of test rock

Changes made to system as algae preventatives if any

How much work hi/low it has taken to maintain the clean condition and not be invaded


Bleach has not been studied for reefing prep like peroxide has. Was peroxide used in any prep steps along the way to compare known methods and experimental ones (bleach)
depending on course it's very interesting to know if biota are affected less or worse by bleach if indeed that was used

 

[Phyber]

Can OP buy/rent a sea hare? Ugly critters but ate up all the gha in my old tank. Combine the hare with water changes, increased skimming, and no nutrient import... should definitely be on the right path