audi772
Community Member
Hey guys, this is my first post of my tank I have going right now. I just moved it over to my new place last week. Here's the story on it. It's a 30 gallon 2'x2' and 12" high. 15 gallon Rubbermaid sump that houses a eheim jager heater, sc-65 skimmer, and a Rio hyper flow 700GPH return. Lighting is a 6 bulb T5 fixture with 3 actinics and 3 12000k bulbs. Fixture is 3 months old. I don't like the color so I will be switching to a combo of ATI bulbs, just not sure what combo yet. I like the blue look a lot. Livestock is 2 O. Clownfish, Money Cowrie, random snails and hermits, and a young red mandarin that came from my 75 gallon before I shut it down. The mandarin eats frozen foods and has been living great for about 8 months now in this tank. Very plump, eats like a pig. Also had a harlequin shrimp that decided to wander up to top of tank and get sucked into the powerhead... He is sadly no longer with me. But he may have started my algae problem, I'll get back to that later. Corals are a colony of green star, a Duncan with about 7 heads, a two headed frogspawn, a small torch, a coco worm that has been thriving for 8 months until shedding its crown during the algae outbgeak, he's still alive and is always near the top, just no crown as of now. Two random growths of xenia, a plate coral, and one frag of zoas. All of these corals were doing AMAZING before this algae outbreak. You can see in the pic how pale and shrunken up everything looks. They never used to look like that. So now I will tell the story of the problem. This tank was Crystal clear for about 6 months with the random battles with the ugly stages. But those were never terrible and I was able to easily fight them off and the Corals showed no ill effects at all. Then I got my harlequin shrimp. I would buy starfish and freeze them when I got them. He got one leg every couple weeks or if he seemed like he was on the hunt. I siphoned out the leftover starfish bits every time he ate. But the algae started to come and never let up. First it was red slime covering the rocks and glass. Then it was red slime and hair algae, and then it was just a nasty mess... Lol. I did all I could, multiple weekly 5 gallon water changes, tested daily, cleaned every part of algae I could possibly get... To no avail. I have just recently began to get it somewhat calmed down. It is now just some type of greenish algae on the bottom and rocks. Maybe you guys can id the algae for me.. ammonia was always zero, nitrite was zero, nitrate would sometimes get above 10 but I did so many water changes I never saw it go higher. Temp is always at 78 and is monitored with a reef keeper. I use IO salt, just regular not reef crystals. Rodi water used every time from a Bulk Reef Supply 4 stage filter. I also lost all my coraline algae during this too. Any other info you guys want or test you'd like me to do I will gladly. I'm out of ideas and need some help. I never had an algae problem like this on my 75 gallon which I ran for 3 years before I had to take it down. So I'm new to battling this.. I know it isn't a problem with the water source because I also have a frag system that uses the same RO and it is Crystal clear. Photo period on the tank is 9 hours. Actinics for 9, daylight for 8... Thanks guys
