Absolute Distress! Algae is breaking my WILL!! Help please

[Beardo]

I wanted to send an update here a month later. I really have made a lot of progress in the past month. All the algae on my live rock is eliminated. Still having Dino issues in my sand though.
Water is stable at:
Alk 7.8 (slowly rising)
Cal 380 (slowly rising)
ph 8.13
temp 78.2
orp 422
No3 10
Po4 .10-.15
mag 1380 (slowly rising)

Here is what I took from everyone in this post what I followed through with:
*I cut way back on feeding 3 cubes frozen every other day
**stopped adding all algae control chemicals
*did a 4 day black out
*Added a 114 wt AquaUV sterilizer
*Raised my po4 slightly
*Couple 35 gal water changes
*Recently started up my refugium again with cheato, I'm currently waiting on Caulerpa to add

My overall coral growth has exploded, that is why I think my calcium and alk has been lower than usual. trying to constantly test and adjust the DOS once a week to try to slowly get them stable at higher levels. But I am really trying to not rush anything and take everything super slow as to keep the system as stable as possible.

So all in all I am very pleased with my current situation. I am not sure what to do with the sand algae issue yet. Gonna just leave things as is for a while and see if the UV sterilizer slowly does away with it. But I am not sure on the path this take for now. below are updated pics. The tank is double sided through the wall and this is only one side. I didn't want to overrun the post with too many pics.

Can you take another set of pictures of the dinos under the scope? My guess would be that the UV took care of the Ostreopsis and now the second second species of dinos became dominant. Most likely culprit is amphidinium.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Good stuff man. Thanks for the update.

something was smelling in my tank I could nt figure out why. So last 10 days day by day I tried to eliminate one thing. I actually removed 60% of my sand, 5 lbs of refuium mud and most of my chaeto. When that didnt work I stopped feeding mysis for a few days. My phosphates jumps to .05 a day after cheato removal but 2 days later it was 0. I had to feed a lot and reduce skimmer line to bring the phosphates up to 2ppb which took 2 days. I would say the removal of detritus sink (sand) full of dead stuff was creating phosphates feeding the algae regardless my standard 0.03 hanna reading.

I thought removing the sand and cheato would increase nutrients but it did the opposite. I had to dim the lights and overfeed to compensate. Look into the sand removal I guarantee its trapping alot of stuff that perhaps may help your algae make a comeback. Algae is true testing method for Phosphates and hanna is secondary

 

[Antlrman]

Good stuff man. Thanks for the update.

something was smelling in my tank I could nt figure out why. So last 10 days day by day I tried to eliminate one thing. I actually removed 60% of my sand, 5 lbs of refuium mud and most of my chaeto. When that didnt work I stopped feeding mysis for a few days. My phosphates jumps to .05 a day after cheato removal but 2 days later it was 0. I had to feed a lot and reduce skimmer line to bring the phosphates up to 2ppb which took 2 days. I would say the removal of detritus sink (sand) full of dead stuff was creating phosphates feeding the algae regardless my standard 0.03 hanna reading.

I thought removing the sand and cheato would increase nutrients but it did the opposite. I had to dim the lights and overfeed to compensate. Look into the sand removal I guarantee its trapping alot of stuff that perhaps may help your algae make a comeback. Algae is true testing method for Phosphates and hanna is secondary

I am definitely planning to start removing my sand little by little pretty soon. It is the same sand I had 13 months shop when my tank crashed. We have siphoned it many times. And lots detritous continues to come out of it even a year later. Sometimes I hit pockets with foul odor as well.

I already removed half my mud in the sump. Plan on removing more as time goes on.

 

[Antlrman]

Can you take another set of pictures of the dinos under the scope? My guess would be that the UV took care of the Ostreopsis and now the second second species of dinos became dominant. Most likely culprit is amphidinium.

Yes, I'm going to get a better scope than I used last time though. I'll post soon as I get it in the mail.

 

[cracker]

Tank's looking so much better ! Great job Man . So the CUC helped out?

 

[Beardo]

Yes, I'm going to get a better scope than I used last time though. I'll post soon as I get it in the mail.

Forgot to say the tank really looks good. Glad to hear your corals are thriving now.

 

[Antlrman]

Tank's looking so much better ! Great job Man . So the CUC helped out?

I think so. I can't say for sure what did it. But the combination of things seemed to do the job.

 

[Daydream Corals]

I would try dosing Hydrogen Peroxide 3% 1ml per 10 gallons with a 3 day blackout. Before you start dosing do a water change and manually remove as much algae as you can. You can just dump it I to begin with then once it starts going away you can start to spot dose with the pumps off to areas with algae still. Then add some cuc and continue the dosing with peroxide.

 

[Daydream Corals]

Also I would stop dosing Aminos and all similar vitamins that can be feeding the bad bacteria.

 

[Antlrman]

I would try dosing Hydrogen Peroxide 3% 1ml per 10 gallons with a 3 day blackout. Before you start dosing do a water change and manually remove as much algae as you can. You can just dump it I to begin with then once it starts going away you can start to spot dose with the pumps off to areas with algae still. Then add some cuc and continue the dosing with peroxide.

So the peroxide dosing will help kill the dino?

 

[Brew12]

So the peroxide dosing will help kill the dino?

It can, yes. It is more effective against some strains than others but it is completely reef safe so worth a try imo.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I think your tank looks super robust and mature enough to handle any algae outbreaks. I don't agree with recommendation of the Watt per gallon rule for a UV it does not have to be overkill just enough contact time and how clean you keep it. Im using a 36Watt on a 130gallon system and I would use this same UV on anything up to 250gallons.

I don't like dosing any chemical since these have an impact on all tank inhabitants and depending on coral species thing can go south fast. I think the dinos are just apart of nature as is cyano and other algaes so preventing them from spreading (like all other pest) is done by observation and action. I did everything to prevent dinos before they came by adding LR, growing cheato, and using a UV filter and Dinos still made an attempt to take over. I am confident they don't have a place in my tank and your aswell

 

[brandon429]

fascinating thread


being able to track an invasion since Nov

update pics are gold here, I really like these types of challenges can't wait to see how it looks.

*there are ways to handle and apply peroxide much better than just dosing to the water* and I do agree it might be a nice tool here, the corals I see are not sensitives.

you have one sensitive, the lysmata cleaner. it will likely die, they're the weakest organism I know to peroxide. However, you should be spot testing a single rock for performance data before you do anything to this whole tank.

the trick for you here is to be working on a single test rock doing different tests on it, to chart the least possible works it takes to cause death of the target, then you upscale. don't play w a whole tank like this in guessing, my opinion going off large algae correction threads on peroxide.

what is your total water volume, if this is anywhere near a nano you could lick this fast.

 

[Antlrman]

fascinating thread


being able to track an invasion since Nov

update pics are gold here, I really like these types of challenges can't wait to see how it looks.

*there are ways to handle and apply peroxide much better than just dosing to the water* and I do agree it might be a nice tool here, the corals I see are not sensitives.

you have one sensitive, the lysmata cleaner. it will likely die, they're the weakest organism I know to peroxide. However, you should be spot testing a single rock for performance data before you do anything to this whole tank.

the trick for you here is to be working on a single test rock doing different tests on it, to chart the least possible works it takes to cause death of the target, then you upscale. don't play w a whole tank like this in guessing, my opinion going off large algae correction threads on peroxide.

what is your total water volume, if this is anywhere near a nano you could lick this fast.

220 gal DT with 75 gal sump.
I am down to just ugly looking brown dino in my sand. At least I believe it is dino's. I just received my new scope with built in camera, so going to try it out and post some picks of the algae to see what everyone thinks I have here.

In the mean time I have begun slowly removing my sand bed. I syphoning it out little by little once every two weeks during water changes.

 

[brandon429]

agreed on UV as above. I consider UV as important or more important than skimming in large tanks, we have offsets for non skimming. finding offsets for massive amounts of circulating invaders comprises all algae control threads on the web...UV such a critical cheat in my opinion.

 

[Deniss]

Man, i have this same exact algae! It's the hardest one i have had so far! I had green hair algae before, i eliminated that succesfully but after a few weeks this algae popped up. Been battling it for months now, trying so many things that are not working. 2 weeks ago i stopped dosing nitrate and phosphate. Reading your topic now, i tested my parameters and i have 0.1 phosphate and 0 nitrate. Would you suggest rising them up? Even though it's possible the algae is consuming it before we can test for it? What types of snails were part of your CUC?

 

[Paul B]

I would stop using
Red Slime Remover, AlgaeFIX, Vibrant, Bacteria, I don't know what Flunco 200 is but stop it. Stop testing Bromine, Boron, Lithium. Iodine, molybdenum, Manganese, Vanadium, Nickel, and Zinc.
Stop the PHOLS xtra special (whatever that is)
Stop any coral food and aminos, then go outside and look for a tree stump to dump that stump remover on. Don't put it in your tank.

You don't have a tank, you have a chemical factory. All the tank needs is seawater which has everything in it to grow corals. The tanks with the most tweeking are the ones with all the problems.
Just my opinion of course.

 

[Ashish Patel]

IMO mexican turbo snails are the best thing for overall algae control.

I have 4 in the display and 1 in the refugium and the clean my vortech pumps, overflow, and rockwork like no other. Since I have 5 I decided to put one in the refugium to see if it would eat the cyano and many varieties of algae from the walls,. few days later all the algae was gone.. I was not sure if the turbo would eat cyano but it did as if it was a delicacy. These mexican turbos produce nice large pellets of Poop so providing some good phosphates to nitrates conversions which is helping bring up my nitrates. Yesterday suspecting the larger ones are starved I decided to feed 1 large (1.3" turbo) some seaweed in a magnet grid and added a 5 layers of seaweed. The next morning the entire grid was empty.

Not enough is said about these monsters, I would not add more than 1 large per 50 gallon otherwise they'll just starve and you'll end up with 1 per 50 gallon. I added 5 now I have to re-home some since its pointless to supplement feed them. GO TURBO

 

[Antlrman]

Man, i have this same exact algae! It's the hardest one i have had so far! I had green hair algae before, i eliminated that succesfully but after a few weeks this algae popped up. Been battling it for months now, trying so many things that are not working. 2 weeks ago i stopped dosing nitrate and phosphate. Reading your topic now, i tested my parameters and i have 0.1 phosphate and 0 nitrate. Would you suggest rising them up? Even though it's possible the algae is consuming it before we can test for it? What types of snails were part of your CUC?

I'm loaded with all types of snails. The large Mexican turbo snails I think did the best. I was so frustrated I went way overboard on my CUC and bought like triple what I needed of about 8 different types of snails, added 2 more sand sifting stars and a sand dollar.

I think it was a combination of what I did. I added the UV light, I did a black period on the lights, raised my po4 , and maintained my nitrates at 10. I also treated for cyano at the same time. After that my live rock all cleaned up and most of my sand.

I am still dealing with dino's on the sand. But I feel that I am at least winning the war at this point. After the initial main treatment of all of the above listed as a large scale wipeout I have really tried to slow down my attack and take things super slow now. Keeping my water quality as consistent as possible and slowly removing my sand that I believe is also contributing to the issue.

 

[jsker]

How long are you running the white spectrum and what intensity ? I dialed my whites back to 5 hours total @31% max. My Diano, cyano issues disappeared in 7 days. corals look great and I have been running this way for about two months