15g cube mixed reef lighting

[BAMslam93]

Hi all,

I've been battling some nasty green hair algae for the past couple of months and I've been wondering if my lighting (along with nutrient management and scrubbing) needed to be adjusted.

I have a HelloReef 15 gallon running for 1.5 years with a mix of sps (stylophora, montis, cyphastrea), LPS (frogspawn and acan lords), and softies (zoas and Rhodactis mushrooms) with an AI Blade Coral Grow 12 inch running a modified "Growing LPS/Soft Corals" template for 10 hours. Any advice for fine tuning my light schedule?

Just want to make sure corals and macroalgae (codium and gracilaria) can benefit while gha gets beaten back. I also bought a VBR-Aqua IP68 PAR meter so I'm planning to take some measurements this weekend and build out a par map.

 

[stE25wy14]

why is your frogspawn all closed up? can you also take a white lights pic so we could assess the algae problem?

 

[BAMslam93]

For sure, I attached some filtered photos for a better idea of the algae problem. It's been receding due to hair algae growing on the base and spirorbid worms growing on the skeleton. I also recently lost a branching hammer due to phosphate dropping from 0.24 to 0.12 ppm in a couple of days. I switched from Chemipure Elite to straight GFO since it wasn't making a dent in phosphate. Considering changing out my filter sock every other day instead of every three days and feeding every other day along with more basting and scrubbing.

 

[stE25wy14]

so, feed every day, these are saltwater fish, not fw, these are predators, they need to be fed
what are you feeding? how much?
I would REALLY recommend moving that wave maker up and away from the coral

u have some aiptasia mixed in there it looks like, to the left of that orange thing in the second pic

how often are your water changes?what is that coral infront of the digi? doesn't look healthy too

either way
pretty nice tank :D

 

[rtparty]

What are your nitrates and phosphates normally at?

What kind of cleanup crew do you have? It looks like it needs to be beefed up considerably.

Personally, I’d plan a a decent size water change where you scrub the rocks like crazy and then suck out all the loose hair algae, cyano, dinos, whatever else. Have a big cleanup crew at the ready. Once it’s scrubbed and cleaned up, add in the new crew. This way the algae is much shorter and easier for them to get ahead of.

Try to keep nitrates around 10ppm and phosphate above .1ppm. Maybe even add some pods after the water change just to help boost the whole cleanup crew from top to bottom.

For lighting, have the Blade run around 13-15 watts total. MyAI tells you the wattage in the app. Set the blues to like 10-11 watts and then the whites the other 3-4 watts

 

[BAMslam93]

so, feed every day, these are saltwater fish, not fw, these are predators, they need to be fed
what are you feeding? how much?
I would REALLY recommend moving that wave maker up and away from the coral

u have some aiptasia mixed in there it looks like, to the left of that orange thing in the second pic

how often are your water changes?what is that coral infront of the digi? doesn't look healthy too

either way
pretty nice tank :D

Thank you! Sorry, my phone's camera is a potato, I did have aiptasia once but my peppermint shrimp couple have pretty much banished it to the sump. It's just bits of bryopsis mixed in with the hair algae lol

I try to feed a variety of pellets like TDO and Hikari Marine and frozen food like baby brine shrimp, cyclopods, or rotifers and sometimes mysis or adult brine shrimp. I also dose Red Sea Reef Energy AB+ and Phyto-Feast Live once a day. I just moved the wavemaker so the top is 3" below the waterline.

I change out 16% or 2.5 gallons of water once a week and make sure to scrub out as much hair algae as I can. I'm also planning to scrub off some from my macroalgae as well.

 

[BAMslam93]

What are your nitrates and phosphates normally at?

What kind of cleanup crew do you have? It looks like it needs to be beefed up considerably.

Personally, I’d plan a a decent size water change where you scrub the rocks like crazy and then suck out all the loose hair algae, cyano, dinos, whatever else. Have a big cleanup crew at the ready. Once it’s scrubbed and cleaned up, add in the new crew. This way the algae is much shorter and easier for them to get ahead of.

Try to keep nitrates around 10ppm and phosphate above .1ppm. Maybe even add some pods after the water change just to help boost the whole cleanup crew from top to bottom.

For lighting, have the Blade run around 13-15 watts total. MyAI tells you the wattage in the app. Set the blues to like 10-11 watts and then the whites the other 3-4 watts

Just checked my trends and nitrate has been around 2-6 ppm with recent stints at zero in late June and April to May. Phosphate has been much crazier, hovering around 0.10-0.15 ppm and even spiked to 0.29 ppm. Phosphate has gone down pretty fast from 0.24 to 0.12 to 0.02 in the span of a few days. I just tested today after a water change this past weekend and switching out Chemipure Elite for 3 tbsps of GFO and nitrate is now 1.1 ppm and phosphate is 0.02 ppm. I took out the GFO for now so phosphate wouldn't bottom out.

Right now, I have a handful (6-10) blue leg hermits, 1 zebra turbo snail, 2 cerith snails, 1 trochus snail, 2 peppermint shrimp and 3 nassarius snails. I haven't had the best of luck keeping algae-eating snails and I think it caused a vicious cycle of them not eating the long hair algae, phosphate being high and stressing them out, and deaths causing phosphate to spike. Hopefully I can get more reinforcements soon once things settle down and I can really make a dent with manual removal.

Yes! I haven't seen my pods in a long time and that's my next move to add some more along with some more macroalgae.

I also used the Schedule Builder and set my max lighting to 14w with 90% for Royal Blue and Blue and 15% Cool White.

 

[rtparty]

Just checked my trends and nitrate has been around 2-6 ppm with recent stints at zero in late June and April to May. Phosphate has been much crazier, hovering around 0.10-0.15 ppm and even spiked to 0.29 ppm. Phosphate has gone down pretty fast from 0.24 to 0.12 to 0.02 in the span of a few days. I just tested today after a water change this past weekend and switching out Chemipure Elite for 3 tbsps of GFO and nitrate is now 1.1 ppm and phosphate is 0.02 ppm. I took out the GFO for now so phosphate wouldn't bottom out.

Right now, I have a handful (6-10) blue leg hermits, 1 zebra turbo snail, 2 cerith snails, 1 trochus snail, 2 peppermint shrimp and 3 nassarius snails. I haven't had the best of luck keeping algae-eating snails and I think it caused a vicious cycle of them not eating the long hair algae, phosphate being high and stressing them out, and deaths causing phosphate to spike. Hopefully I can get more reinforcements soon once things settle down and I can really make a dent with manual removal.

Yes! I haven't seen my pods in a long time and that's my next move to add some more along with some more macroalgae.

I also used the Schedule Builder and set my max lighting to 14w with 90% for Royal Blue and Blue and 15% Cool White.

Yep, some manual removal and a beefed up CUC will go a long way IMO. I would look at 10-15 trochus and a Mexican turbo snail if you can. I’ve had great luck with the longer hair algae and the Mexican turbos

 

[Gumbies R Us]

I agree if you beef up your CUC by a good bit, your tank would be almost spotless. It's always better to overshoot with CUC than undershoot it imo.