Algae bloom

Old Dog · Sep 23, 2020

I tried saltwater 30 years ago. It didn't work out. Heard someone local was selling their full setup and decided to try it again. Paid LFS to move the 75 gallon tank the first week of June. The only inhabitants were a lot of live rock (not sure of the weight), three leather coral and a hermit crab. They put in new sand and changed out half the water at the end of the move. It had a regular fluorescent aquarium bulb.

Been following advice of LFS. Waited two weeks to add clowns, a cleaner shrimp and CUC. Didn't really see any kind of cycle. Added an additional powerhead for two total, one of the in wave mode. The tank came with a canister filter with UV light built in. Saw some aiptasia. Added two peppermind shrimp which wiped it out. Things had been going well and I had gotten a false sense of confidence. Bought Ocean Revive lights. Running lights blue for 10 hours at 40 and whites for 8 hours at 30. Added a small frogspawn coral, two tiny zoa frags, tiny pipe organ coral, two banngai cardinals, and a six line wrasse. Been feeding spirulina frozen since I started. LFS said to feed phyto once or twice a week for the coral. Started that about two weeks ago. Suddenly have an algae bloom of green hair algae and what I thought could be diatoms. Nitrates were around 80 so started doing more frequent water changes fearing nitrates were getting high and tried to cut back on the feeding and stopped the phyto. Now, it's starting to look like this might be dinos and green hair algae. Pictures are after I siphoned and don't really show how bad and stringy the algae was on the sand. It was flowing in the current.

Following are what LFS gave me for water test the last two weeks.

9/13: Salinity 1.022, KH 8, Nitrate 40-50, calcium 400, phosphate .25 I did a 10 gal water change during the week.
9/20: Salinity 1.025, KH 7, nitrate 10-15, calcium 400, phosphate .25

Salinity change is a story. I have no idea how the nitrates could have changed that fast from a 10 gallon change. From reading on the forum I've learned a lot about double checking everything LFS says. At this point though, I'm not sure direction I need to take.
Thanks for any help!

Ron Reefman · Sep 24, 2020

Welcome to Reef2Reef Troy.

How long has this system been up and running at your house?

Does your system have a sump and/or a refugium?

Even established systems that get moved can have lots of 'issues' similar to a new start up system. Algae blooms and bacteria blooms are very common to systems that see big changes (like yours being moved).

Old Dog · Sep 24, 2020

Thank you for the welcome.

It was setup at my house the first week of June this year. Hand been set up for 2 years when I got it. I realize that is only kind of pertinent because of all the changes in the move.

It is running a Forza FZ9 canister filter with UV only. That's all it had when I got it.

When I look in the mornings, thing seem a lot less bad than they did at the end of the previous day. I gather that is just an indication it is photosynthetic.

Ron Reefman · Sep 26, 2020

I would say that is very likely.

Now you may want to try the 3 days with no lights (some people even wrap the tank to keep out all light).

Or try running just the blue lights , assuming you have an led fixture. Most algae do not use blue spectrum for photosynthesis and the zooxanthellae (algae) inside the coral polyps do use blue spectrum, so they will stay healthy while the algae dies off.

Old Dog · Sep 26, 2020

Thank you. Since the nitrates are so low, is it fair to say this isn't diatoms and is either dinos or cyano?

Ron Reefman · Sep 27, 2020

No. Not IMHO. Often people with algae issues find low nitrate and/or phosphate levels. This is due to the fact that both are taken up rather quickly by the algae (think fertilizer).

I have an algae issue and my nitrates test at <5 and phosphate at <0.1. The nuisance algae in the tank grows faster than I'd like and the Chaeto in the refugium struggles to grow at all!

SMSREEF · Sep 27, 2020

Hi @Old Dog ! Welcome back to the hobby, and welcome to R2R.

I really like that the LFS replaced the existing sandbed. That was a good call. Unfortunately your rock probably locked up a bunch of phosphate and will take time to come down.

looks like hair algae to me and that’s a good thing because it’s easier to beat. Look at some of the clean up threads by @brandon429

You can manually remove a lot of that algea and export the phosphate that is tied up in the algae. Get a good clean up crew (CUC) of snails and a couple emerald crabs. Once the longer stuff is gone by manual removal the CUC may be able to keep up with it.
Large Water change will help too, and you can use the old water to scrub you rocks in and then a few buckets to rinse.
You also may try some media in the canister to lower the phosphate. major warning with this is you do not want 0 and do not want to lower fast because that will give you a whole new set of problems and corals will not react well.
I target nitrate of about 5-10 and phosphate of about 0.05-0.1 but I have opposite problem and need to dose so I grow algae instead of Dino’s and chrysophyte.

Aqua Man · Sep 27, 2020

See some nice spots of coralline, that’s good! I would add a couple more hermits or snails to help eat the algae. An urchin would be even better. Urchins eat algae fast.

Welcome to R2R!

Dan_P · Sep 27, 2020

Old Dog said:
I tried saltwater 30 years ago. It didn't work out. Heard someone local was selling their full setup and decided to try it again. Paid LFS to move the 75 gallon tank the first week of June. The only inhabitants were a lot of live rock (not sure of the weight), three leather coral and a hermit crab. They put in new sand and changed out half the water at the end of the move. It had a regular fluorescent aquarium bulb.

Been following advice of LFS. Waited two weeks to add clowns, a cleaner shrimp and CUC. Didn't really see any kind of cycle. Added an additional powerhead for two total, one of the in wave mode. The tank came with a canister filter with UV light built in. Saw some aiptasia. Added two peppermind shrimp which wiped it out. Things had been going well and I had gotten a false sense of confidence. Bought Ocean Revive lights. Running lights blue for 10 hours at 40 and whites for 8 hours at 30. Added a small frogspawn coral, two tiny zoa frags, tiny pipe organ coral, two banngai cardinals, and a six line wrasse. Been feeding spirulina frozen since I started. LFS said to feed phyto once or twice a week for the coral. Started that about two weeks ago. Suddenly have an algae bloom of green hair algae and what I thought could be diatoms. Nitrates were around 80 so started doing more frequent water changes fearing nitrates were getting high and tried to cut back on the feeding and stopped the phyto. Now, it's starting to look like this might be dinos and green hair algae. Pictures are after I siphoned and don't really show how bad and stringy the algae was on the sand. It was flowing in the current.

Following are what LFS gave me for water test the last two weeks.

9/13: Salinity 1.022, KH 8, Nitrate 40-50, calcium 400, phosphate .25 I did a 10 gal water change during the week.
9/20: Salinity 1.025, KH 7, nitrate 10-15, calcium 400, phosphate .25

Salinity change is a story. I have no idea how the nitrates could have changed that fast from a 10 gallon change. From reading on the forum I've learned a lot about double checking everything LFS says. At this point though, I'm not sure direction I need to take.
Thanks for any help!

Welcome back! You seem to have a bit of mess on your hands. What a way to come back to the hobby!

You may want to test the water yourself to get control of the quality of the testing results. You are right about a ten gallon water changes for a 75 gallon system only reduce the nitrates by 65/75.

Switching lights probably increased light intensity and got the algae already present growing like mad.

Moving the aquarium and replacing the sand means you have a brand new system. It will likely develop all sorts of nuisance algae. Also, given that it is a new system, the increase in live stock might have been aggressive, but maybe not. Adding fish and feeding the system probably drove up the nitrates and phosphates.

It is going to take months to whip the system into shape. Don’t go nuts trying all sorts of remedies in an attempt to have a beautiful system in a month.

Old Dog · Sep 28, 2020

Thank you all for the posts! I think my biggest issue like most starting out, is actually identifying what it is and then figuring out the cause. Pictures I take and ones I see just don't do any of it justice and make it hard to compare. Then, I guess there are different strains, etc that look different.

You're probably right about the fish. I had held off pretty good. When they moved the tank and first couple of weeks, the LFS really cautioned me to go slow. I followed their advice. Then as I went in, they would encourage me for me. Probably a little too much encouragement!

I've been checking nitrates/ammonia/nitrites/salinity myself during the week and then LFS checks on the weekends to make sure I'm doing it right. Those test kits came with the tank. I will need to get something for phosphate/calcium/alkalinity.

I did just do a 3 day blackout. The stuff I siphoned off didn't come back with lights off <fingers crossed>. Turned them back on today. I shortened the time for the whites to 3 hours.

last check at LFS was:
salinity 1.025
nitrate 3.0
phosphate .25
alkalinity 9
calcium 420

Alkalinity was down to 7 so have been dosing Reef Fusion 1 and 2 every few days which has the alkalinity better but calcium on the high end.

While at the LFS, I bought two trochus snails. So CUC now consistes of 6 trochus, 1 hermit crab, 5 nassarius snails and what's left of the 10 little snails (cerith maybe?) I started with that I don't always catch when they are upside down and lose them.