Algae issues

[Qasim]

Hello,

I have been battling this brown algae issues that recently resulted in little tiny hair algaes. I have tested and i have high nitrates and Im fighting this for ling time. Below is a video of my tank that shows the algaes. I have NO3PO4X and I stopped it and all other addtitives i have taken out phosphate reducing media as well as carbon. Im only adding Microbacter7 and I have been running Microbacter Lattice Medium for a week now.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

It looks like you have several things going on there. The stuff on the rocks looks like GHA or turf algae, hard to tell with the blue lights. The stuff on the sand looks like diatoms with some cyano mixed in.

How about giving us some more precise information. What are your parameters? Lights and light schedule? Age of tank? Maintenance schedule?

I didn't see anything that looked like Dino's IMO.

 

[Blutspitze]

If you've got the crazy high nitrates then your best bet would likely be to do massive water changes. I had a similar breakout and did 2X 80% changes - one a week for 2 weeks. Plus food reduction and, where possible, taking rocks out and scrubbing them with a stiff brush.

 

[Qasim]

Thanks for the reply, my nitrates are more than 100 ppm and phosphates are 0.02 ppm mag 1380, calcium 460, alk 10.9 i have read on the forums that it is dino due to the fact that it has bubbles and it is slimy brown all over the place i tried to blast then with a turkey buster but after a few hours they are back. Im trying my all to reduce the nitrates i was thinking of making a sulphur reactor but finding the media is the issue I cannot order online since del8vering it here to my place is really hard. I created a little reactor and filled with microbacter lattice medium just like the photo. Im dosing weekly 10ml of vibrant.
My tank is 2 years and a couple months now i used to have green hair algae outbreak in the past but not like this before. I have got these photos at night now the algaes on the sand disappear during night but they appear again in the morning.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

@Qasim, slimy and bubbles can be cyano as well. From your pictures and description, I would say it is GHA and cyano that are your main problems. Though it is not impossible to have dino's with GHA and cyano, dino's don't compete very well with other algae and bacteria. That is why dino's tend to show up in near 0 nutrient systems, they are better at survival when other competitors are nutrient limited.

I would highly encourage you to consider eliminating the source of food for these algae by checking out some threads by @brandon429. Just click on his thread here or look for threads started by @brandon429. His process would clean your tank up in a few hours and if done correctly, will continue to keep it clean. I have had great success using his methods.

 

[Qasim]

Thanks for the tip and article i will have to go through it carefully. I have got the following might give it a try.

 

[dwest]

I wou

Thanks for the tip and article i will have to go through it carefully. I have got the following might give it a try.

I wouldn’t do anything thing else until I knew what I was dealing with. For about $10 you likely can ID the issue.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071JQFXC4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Thanks for the tip and article i will have to go through it carefully. I have got the following might give it a try.

IMO, that is simply treating a symptom, not taking care of the cause. I agree with @dwest, I wouldn't add that until I had ID'd the algae as dino's.

 

[brandon429]

This doesn’t look too bad to me, there is a little bit of darkened organic matter in the sandbed, which does indeed fuel worms and diverse microfauna but also a little cyano above it, so options include just lightly manually siphoning it out routinely as part of maintenance all the way up to full bed cleaning if you want it to stop. As sandbeds age they’ll have invasions come and go it’s a usual cycle for them, doesn’t look bad above.

Regarding the rocks why not take one section out, and observe it as a test rock treated in a separate bucket vs the whole tank treated it’s safer this way. Take another rock section, dump peroxide across it as comparison/rinse and put back in tank, see which test does better in a week before upscaling to the whole tank. You’ll be using something that works

 

[Qasim]

Thank you all for the helpful tips, as for the microscope I will not be able to get it here in less than 3 weeks time. I couldnt find peroxide here in my country or at least they dont sell it here again getting it will need 3 weeks time minimum if I ship it and that is if they allow chemicals shipped by couriers. There is Brightwell Aquatics Razor available that claims to clean rock surfaces from algae and they say it is reef safe. To be honest Im afraid to use Dino X as some have lost their shrimp and I dont want to loose my fireshrimp that is as in my tank for 2 years if not more. Yesterday I have received my salifert test kits for Nitrate and phosphate and they measured my parameter as follows: Phosphate 0.025 ppm and Nitrate 50 ppm. I think the test kits I had were not measuring well I have API test kits and got sera NO3 for seawater. I used the later ones they were measuring around 100 ppm but the salifert was measuring 50 so I dont know which one to trust at this moment.

 

[Qasim]

Here are some more photos of these algae under day light. Im preparing RODI water with 0 TDS to do a water change hope it will help with some issues. And for the past 24 hours my skimmer overflowed twice given the fact that the bubbles were not hight at the neck of the cone as seen on the photo below.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Thank you all for the helpful tips, as for the microscope I will not be able to get it here in less than 3 weeks time. I couldnt find peroxide here in my country or at least they dont sell it here again getting it will need 3 weeks time minimum if I ship it and that is if they allow chemicals shipped by couriers. There is Brightwell Aquatics Razor available that claims to clean rock surfaces from algae and they say it is reef safe. To be honest Im afraid to use Dino X as some have lost their shrimp and I dont want to loose my fireshrimp that is as in my tank for 2 years if not more. Yesterday I have received my salifert test kits for Nitrate and phosphate and they measured my parameter as follows: Phosphate 0.025 ppm and Nitrate 50 ppm. I think the test kits I had were not measuring well I have API test kits and got sera NO3 for seawater. I used the later ones they were measuring around 100 ppm but the salifert was measuring 50 so I dont know which one to trust at this moment.

I don't think that you need chemicals like DinoX to treat your tank. As @brandon429 said, it doesn't look that bad. If it were my tank, I would vacuum as much detritus out of the tank as I could, and do a sand rinse. I would also remove as much of the algae by hand as I could, or take the rocks out and scrub them with a brush. I would then add some turbo snails to work on the rest of the algae. Removing as much algae by hand as you can will give the CUC a fighting chance. I would also set my skimmer to skim wetter so that I had a light tea colored skimmate. I also might add ROX carbon in a filter bag just to absorb any organics or toxins that the dying algae may release.

 

[Qasim]

Im going to vacuum the sand bed and try to clean up as much as I can. I have prepared RODI water to perform a water change.

 

[Qasim]

I have done a water change last night in the morning i woke up and i noticed there are algae forming up on my sand again. I will post photos once im back from home.

PS: my time is GMT+3

 

[NS Mike D]

I have done a water change last night in the morning i woke up and i noticed there are algae forming up on my sand again. I will post photos once im back from home.

PS: my time is GMT+3

hang in there. there are algae/bacteria in the water column that will reform on the sand bed after a good vacuum. I was shocked at what got through my filter socks and reformed in the bucket when I was trying to set up a temporary sump to increase scrubbing the water.

in the end. I need to dose H2O2 to finish off what I couldn't scrub/vacuum. The sps get mad, but recover after a few weeks of leaving the tank alone.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

I have done a water change last night in the morning i woke up and i noticed there are algae forming up on my sand again. I will post photos once im back from home.

PS: my time is GMT+3

Can you stir your sand bed up without seeing a cloud of detritus in the water? If not, you need to vacuum or rinse the sand bed until it is totally clean of all detritus. If you just vacuum the algae off of the top of the sand, you are not getting rid of the food source and the algae will return. The stuff I see on your sand is cyano. It will return quickly if the food source isn't removed. I would worry more about the GHA on the rocks than the cyano on the sand bed right now. By thoroughly cleaning the sand and removing and scrubbing the rocks, you are removing the algae, but more importantly, removing food sources for any nuisance algae or bacteria.

 

[Qasim]

Just like you said it returned back like seen on the photos. My skimmer is not acting normal. The micro bubbles are not going up at all but randomly filling the collection cup as seen on the phot it runs just like it used to before.

 

[Snowxcross]

Just like you said it returned back like seen on the photos. My skimmer is not acting normal. The micro bubbles are not going up at all but randomly filling the collection cup as seen on the phot it runs just like it used to before.

Hi Qasim - Looking at the full tank picture above, i see your powerhead is in the high/middle of your tank pointing a bit upwards. I cant really see from other angles, so you might have others. I would move your powerhead (if not already) towards the rock and sand, somewhere that it can keep detritus from staying on the sand and rock. I had a similar problem and corrected it with proper flow. I spent a bit of manual labor scrubbing the rocks with a toothbrush and vacuuming the sand bed once or twice a week. I actually didnt do water changes because all you're doing at that point is providing the algae fresh nutrients. The idea is to starve it. After doing the manual scrubbing, i actually worked it into my weekly maintenance and dont mind scrubbing the rocks at all now. You can also do a black out for 2-3 days. I have done this as well when i had this issue, and together, it worked. Once you get it cleared up, add a GFO reactor, test your phosphates and see how it all plays out. As others mentioned, add some workers, turbo snails will clean that up, but not if it starts getting too long. Red legged hermits will be able to get into crevices easier than snails. Did you notice your nitrates go down from 100+ after the water change?

 

[Qasim]

Thanks for the tip and information. I will start vacumming and brushing. I have done tests phosphate is 0.025 but nitrates around 50 i did the tests two days ago. Getting the snails is a bit of issue but I have a red legged hermit and a blue legged hermit as well

 

[Barnabie Mejia]

someone mentioned taking a rock at a time and pulling it from the tank and brushing it, what would be the proper procedure for this? I have GHA in my tank and I have been physically removing as much as I can and "pinching" it off while I do water changes, but I feel like I haven't made any progress and I feel the tank still looks the same after weeks of chasing it down.... if removing the rocks and brushing them will help me get a little ahead, maybe that might be the route to take...