Algae pain

bstodds15

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tank is maybe 6-7 months old. No corals yet, was planning to get corals till this happened
Well I’d definitely say hold of on corals for a little longer. Cyano is annoying and will start covering up polyps. Even if you blow it off with a Turkey baster, it can come back the next day and cover the polyps back up.

Agree that you should up the flow with the power head, this will help a lot of areas.

You should get larger clean up crew too - they won’t eat the cyano, but will eat some of the stuff that fuels cyano and will help move the sand bed around.

how big is the tank, what’s the stocking and what’s your feeding like?
 
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Unitylover

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Well I’d definitely say hold of on corals for a little longer. Cyano is annoying and will start covering up polyps. Even if you blow it off with a Turkey baster, it can come back the next day and cover the polyps back up.

Agree that you should up the flow with the power head, this will help a lot of areas.

You should get larger clean up crew too - they won’t eat the cyano, but will eat some of the stuff that fuels cyano and will help move the sand bed around.

how big is the tank, what’s the stocking and what’s your feeding like?
tanks is 10 gal. 1 clown. i feed by soaking the flakes so they sink.
 

bstodds15

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Also i forgot that I have 1 hermit, how many should / can I have? I had two, but 1 dissapeared months ago.
in a 20g you should have 10-20 hermits, you’d want about 10 snails too.
Again they won’t help clean the cyano but will help keep the tank cleaner which should help things over all.

as far as your feeding, I’d switch from flake to pellets if you could. Especially only clown, you can spot feed him pellets a few at a time to make sure he eats everything. Uneaten flake food breakdown and muck up your water parameters.
 
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Unitylover

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in a 20g you should have 10-20 hermits, you’d want about 10 snails too.
Again they won’t help clean the cyano but will help keep the tank cleaner which should help things over all.

as far as your feeding, I’d switch from flake to pellets if you could. Especially only clown, you can spot feed him pellets a few at a time to make sure he eats everything. Uneaten flake food breakdown and muck up your water parameters.
i had another fish, but it passed. Its a 10 gallon tank, so like 6 hermits?
 

bstodds15

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i had another fish, but it passed. Its a 10 gallon tank, so like 6 hermits?
I don’t know why I read 20 - yeah, 6-10 hermits in a 10 would help a lot.
I have a 15g and I usually try to keep 10 hermits in at a time.

that same tank I have 1 turbo snail, 4 nassarius snails and like 7 astrea snails.

I was having issues with brown algae for a while and when I upped the cleaning crew it helped my tank a lot.
 

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Cyano.JPG


I had this stuff all over the tank at the 4 - 7 month stage. I basted it off and netted it out during the weekly cleaning cycle. It eventually disappeared after nutrients got higher (10 - 20 NO3, 0.1 PO4) and algae (including coralline) started growing on the rocks. This was also when my pod population exploded which might have something to do with it.

I've only ever put NeoNitro and All-For-Reef in the tank.

I started the tank (15 gallon) with 7 kg of dry rock and 1 kg of "premium" live rock.
 
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Unitylover

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Cyano.JPG


I had this stuff all over the tank at the 4 - 7 month stage. I basted it off and netted it out during the weekly cleaning cycle. It eventually disappeared after nutrients got higher (10 - 20 NO3, 0.1 PO4) and algae (including coralline) started growing on the rocks. It did prefer areas where flow was lighter.

I've only ever put NeoNitro and All-For-Reef in the tank.

I started the tank (15 gallon) with 7 kg of dry rock and 1 kg of "premium" live rock.
I used all dry
 

LiamPM

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its more blues, but if i need flow, i can turn on the powerhead, as its off
Just curious - Whats the reasoning behind having the powerhead off?

They should be on, at all times - for the most part.
 

LiamPM

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No corals, and i saw that my clown was swimming harder, so i turned it off
Its likely adding to the issue with cyano in all honesty. It thrives in areas without flow amongst other things.

Clowns have a funny way of swimming and often give the impression they are struggling when they arent - Or you need a less powerful powerhead in there - But that flow should be a constant.
 

bstodds15

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Clowns are funny with power heads, mine swim directly at the powerhead and just stop to "ride the current". It's like a game for them.

Keep the powerheads on, the fish will get used to it.
 
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Unitylover

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Its likely adding to the issue with cyano in all honesty. It thrives in areas without flow amongst other things.

Clowns have a funny way of swimming and often give the impression they are struggling when they arent - Or you need a less powerful powerhead in there - But that flow should be a constant.
I orginally had no powerhead, but then i got one. She would swim faster, so i thought she was struggling. Its 250 gph. I now have it on, but off during feeding
 

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nice, im not gonna buy pods tho, they're pretty expensive, and arent needed
Buying some once as a seeding culture (specifically tisbe) is worthwhile. After the one purchase, unless you have a pod devourer like a mandarin you never need to get any again. Some LFS have their own culture setup to make it cheap.

If your willing to take a little risk, you can also seed them by not dipping coral or cheato from a mature reefers tank that you are confident doesn't have coral eating pests, ich or velvet.
 

bstodds15

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At this point your tank is definitely established and I would avoid dosing anything if you don’t need to, which since it’s just 1 clown you don’t need to.

Unfortunately the tank is just going through the ugly phase, but that will subside as it matures. It could take a few weeks or months for it to iron out the kinks, but if you aren’t massively over feeding it should balance itself out soon.

add a cleanup crew, try to siphon the cyano off during water changes. You can even just take a net and scoop it up in between water changes.

how many hours a day do you run lights/ what kind of lights? As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, white light don’t do much except grow the ugly stuff.
 
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