Algae or possibly bacteria growing in my tank, need help

[Cody Shockley]

Hey guys!

I am relatively new to having a salt water reef tank as I have had my tank for 1 year and have been battling to what I thought was algae. My tank was crystal clear for the first 4 months and then it started to get this red hair like substance across my tank. My local fish store told me it was cyanobacteria and helped me get if of it, but now I have this kind of green, slimy film all across my tank that sticks to my rocks and is really hard to scrape off. I spend 3 hours every week scrubbing my rocks and cleaning my tank only for it to grow back again within a few days. My local fish store has told me that it is just another form of cyanobacteria and for me to increase my flow in my tank. So I got these wave makers that pulse and create ripples in my tank and increased my flow to where I don't have dead spots and it is still coming back. At the time I had 0 nitrates and 0 Phosphates and a buddy of mine said it could be due to a lack of chemical imbalance in my tank and i needed to increase my nitrates and phosphates. So I got some N03 booster and a phosphate booster and slowly added it in. I got my phosphates right away at 0.2 PPM and kept it there and could not get any nitrates. I eventually ended up adding in a whole bottle of 102OZ and still got nothing, only to find out that my nitrate tester that I had (API nitrate test kit) was not reading my nitrates at all. I got a HANNA Nitrate checker and it just flashed over 5PPM at me which means that I probably have way more nitrates in my tank than I wanted and now I have this new orange, web like stuff growing in my tank that looks like DINOS. I am needing help so badly as to what I should do because I have been battling this for the last 8 months trying to learn and go to my store and they are no help at all. Every week I manually remove everything from my tank, change out my filter sock and do a water change with RO water and I just replaced my RO water filters.

My tank: 30 Gallon
Equipment: 20-50 micron balls, High Capacity GFO, ROX 0.8 carbon filters ( change monthly as instructed on box), Protein Skimmer, 200 Microns filter sock, a UV sterilizer and 2 ocean stream OS-1k wave makers. I also use a 5 stage RO filtration system for my water changes.
Treatment solutions I've tried using last 8 months: Chemi-Clean, Vibrant and Brightwell Micro bacteria.

Current Tank Parameters:
Phosphate : 0.25
Nitrate: over 5
Salinity: 35
Ammonia: 0
High Range PH: 8.0
Alkalinity: 107.4
Calcium: 650
Magnesium: 1500


My current questions I have are:
What are good High Range Nitrate test kits.
What tank parameters should I have in my tank?
What is this stuff and how do I get rid of it?

 

[brandon429]

Your reef needs to be rip cleaned, here are two threads showing five hundred combined jobs. it means by taking one look at a nano we know what it can become by five pm today if wanted. Reef tanks accumulate waste differently in each home and exports must be dynamic to keep balance.

what we provide is the safe catch up all at once where it looks as if the export has been balanced all along.


how to deal with the sand and get all new water and not cause a cycle is this thread. Everything but the rocks will be fixed using this cleaning method,

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

I am fairly worried about moving my freshwater setup as it is fairly overstocked (reduces aggression as no one fish gets singled out). I did fail to think about the toxicity of nitrite on top of ammonia toxicity... Here is my plan for the cichlid tank. I have gradually reduced my pH from 8.2 to...

www.reef2reef.com

and the rocks, add this cleaning step here so your growback is less.

Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide

What you are really in for: Hand cleaning, hard work siphon and rasp-removing of accumulations and invasions outside the tank and doing massive water changes is 90% of this thread, peroxide is 10%. We almost never dose peroxide into the tank water, this is a you-work-physically-hard as catch-up...

www.reef2reef.com

working your nano in parts is the issue. Cleaned rocks set back on dirty sand regrow quickly

as u study the massive work put into those collections, notice how we deal with tanks as a complete whole, all at once, never in parts. right now both your rocks and sand are packed with waste that will cloud the whole tank if disturbed (and that clouding would kill the fish too)

find any after pics on either thread- the sand is 100% clean and cloudless and so are the rocks and all animals are happy to be in a cleaned tank. There is no additive or animal that will fix your tank, but manual cleaning sure will. Taking measurements for nitrate and phosphate does no good until the tank has been reset back to clean. The dark pigmented zones are literally leaking phosphate and nitrate into the tank along with expected sources like fish feed inout.

clearly this trick set above is best for nano reefs vs larger tanks due to practicality. Good thing yours is an easy nano to fix

 

[ShepherdReefer]

This is the worst part of owning a reef tank. I'm sorry that you are going through it, I have in the past and now on the latest tank. We installed a UV, our first time using a UV, to help get rid of the Dinos. Now we have short, well, the rock is green but some of the rock you can see. I hope you get this under control, so many ways and options.

 

[Paul B]

Treatment solutions I've tried using last 8 months: Chemi-Clean, Vibrant and Brightwell Micro bacteria.

I hate to say this but I would have done nothing from the beginning. I know it looked lousy but thats the way some tanks cycle. Now that you added all these things, you short circuited the process and there isn't much you can do now except re start it.

Chemicals normally just make things worse. Just my opinion of course.
Good Luck

 

[ShepherdReefer]

Agree

 

[brandon429]

Why pay all the money we do only to let it self wreck years?

*people adopted that as a rule solely for lack of means to stop it. Since we can’t think of any alternative, it was canonized for all reefs as a requisite-the allowed uglies phase.

making excuses to all viewers. For months, it’s supposed to look that way, they never agree it looks good or normal.



they notice the algae before the scape, the details, the corals

we pay money only to dislike something into next year? A stop has been put to that above x2

 

[brandon429]

none of us here should be allowed to garden or care for front lawns and weeds, no detailing allowed when growth season comes back. Just mow only and let all the goatheads mix in

 

[Cody Shockley]

So should I do a really thorough deep clean all at once or reset it? I'm afraid to reset my tank because I would make the same mistakes again. If I end up having to go that route then what should I do to make sure I do things correctly? Should I not at in any of the chemicals such as chemi-clean, vibrant and micro bacteria? I unfortunately have no pictures a really "ugly" phase where my algae took over my tank completely with long, hair like algae. Is that normal for the "ugly" phase to completely cover my entire tank? I guess when I get there I can always post here again and make sure I take the necessary steps to correctly handle it.

 

[Paul B]

I personally do not like to use Chemi Clean. I never used vibrant or micro bacteria so I have no opinion on those.

I do know that unless you are using a lot of real live rock, not most of the stuff they sell today, your tank should level out eventually. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a year or so.

The ugly phase is just due to the bacteria trying to grow in the correct proportions. But they have problems because while they are growing, they are also attacked by other bacteria, viruses and fungus.
They do all get in line eventually but you may not like the waiting.

If I were you I would install an algae scrubber. I built one for my tank and always have it in there and my tank is 50 years old. An algae scrubber just offers algae a better place to grow than on your corals and it is easy to remove to remove the algae.

I want algae growing because it is natural and normal. Tanks with absolutely no algae are not very healthy as it grows on every healthy reef in the world. But I don't want it growing where I can see it.

 

[Cody Shockley]

Here is an update on my tank over the last week. I drained my tank and completely scrubbed and cleaned the entire thing. It's been about a week since I've done this and have had 0 algae growth. I haven't added my rocks back in yet as i'm still working on cleaning all the algae on them.

 

[brandon429]

I bet they can be out of the water a little while. How long have you been working on them/ duration out of water

looks very clean about we will like to see this completed it w be sharp