dcreasy9880
Community Member
So my tank is 7 months old and I’ve always had pretty crystal clear water especially after a water change. I decided to do 10 gallon water change and really clean the glass especially back glass due to algae build up my msg cleaner could not get to cause of hob equipment, with the new light and stand placement I had to move my filters around. I did a heavy sand bed vaccine cause I’ve seen videos and other post that it’s good to turn over sand and vacuume it on water changes to get clean looking sand. I noticed last week after adding a new light I think I had set to bright I was getting major brown Dino looking algae all over the glass and sand bed, turned the lights down got more snails and the brown algae sand bed has slowly gotten better. I noticed shortly after my water was starting to get s cloudy haze to it, well I baught handful of hermit crabs and cerith snails and zombie snails to help clean up algae I can’t get to. And my lfs told me I may have caused a small new cycle due to cleaning the sand bed he recommend In a reef tank you shouldn’t ever touch your sand bed to let the cuc take care of it! So I did s water change only 5 gallons this time, I used to battle high nitrates they stayed constant at 20ppm using api reef test kit and phosphate has always read 0.25ppm. After my big 10 gallon water change I was able to get my nitrates lower looked like it was roughly 10ppm on the test of coarse phosphates stayed same.. well I’ve kept my lights dimmed down to 45% all blues and in the evenings after lights have been on I can see the Dino’s starting to come back but by morning they are minor due to no lights over night. But I have noticed especially this morning when I got home from work my water looking through the tank from side glass to side glass is very hazy/milky looking once lights are on it don’t look as bad till you look glass to glass. And I got a nitrate and phosphate hanna testers in the mail yesterday did a test this morn nitrate is 5.6ppm and phosphate is 0.10ppm. I feel being 7 months old my tank should be fully cycled, I only have 2 clowns a bi color blenny cleaner shrimp sand sifting star, 6 zombie snails, 5 cerith snails, 4 trochus snails and about 6-7 hermit crabs as live stock and a rianbow bta, gsp, pulsing Xenia frag and a Duncan frag for corals. I never had a “ugly stage” that looked as bad as all the videos of one on YouTube before I had Dino algae growth on sand bed and glass a foot few times I always just cleaned during weekly maintenance and ofcoarse white rocks that turned brown and now turning light green with some purple starting to show through.. Can you get the ugly stage at 7 months in!? Are my nitrates and phosphates at a good number!? Is there anything I can or should be doing different to help this!? Should I clean sand bed every week or leave alone!? Did I accidentally crash my cycle and start a new one!? I know it’s a lot of questions but please any help is greatly appreciated. Side note in my hob filter I run seachem matrix for bio media “Wich come out of another 6 month old fish only tank i had along with half the rock before I ever set this tank up” Filter floss, carbon pad and little bag of gfo to help battle my previous high nitrates.
