instantaquatics
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- Sep 16, 2018
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My tank's been up for 2 months, it was rushed as I needed to move everything over from my cracked 20 gallon. I decided to get a 40 gallon breeder.
There was live rock transferred over, and 'live' sand was purchased and put into the tank. There was dry rock put into the tank by Caribsea, the purple arch stuff. The live rock had tons of macroalgae and microalgae due to neglect (I'll get more into this neglect later on) and a bad setup overall.
I have a hang on back refugium with chaeto, filter floss, a sponge, live rock rubble, and a good amount of ceramic media. This refugium has been on a couple of tanks and has been up for I'd say a year maybe over now, it's got some coralline in there.
Tank has been running for 2 months now and has some stock. Originally all that came from the 20 gallon was a clownfish pair, but now I have a lawnmower blenny (who is fat and happy off the glass algae and readily accepts flake food), the 2 clowns, 15 astrea snails, and 4 cerith snails. My clean up crew is pretty lacking, but it's getting there.
Here's where my problem starts: My tank didn't go through the normal cycle since it needed to go up and I used live rock etc. I was awful and did not test for ANYTHING besides salinity. The corals (although hardy, some zoas, a duncan, and pocillopora) did great and I've actually fragged that pocillopora into 9 frags now in an effort to fill the tank a bit more.
I had a growth spurt of green hair algae and that macroalgae that came over to my tank, I believe it is cladorphis. I cut it down (the macroalgae) and it has not grown back, but it's always been relatively slow growing.
I've gotten back into reefing now and I'm ready to take this tank to the next level, and that's where I run into some problems. I'm not sure where my tank is at. I'm going to start doing weekly water changes and testing much more often to make sure everything is stable and good. However, my test results for phosphates and nitrates were a bit weird that really make me question where my tank is at. For reference, the green hair algae is really brown and seems to be dead, and I just removed some in a water change today. I brushed it with a tooth brush and pulled some with my hands. Some of it came off really easily and was no problem to remove, other parts did as well but left visible fibers in the rock, and others would just not scrape off or be pulled off.
My nitrates checked out at 0 and my phosphates also at 0. The nitrate test kit I use is red sea and the phosphate test kit I use is API (definitely not the best). I feed 4x a week, including feeding the corals and the fish until they are visibly rounder. I'm assuming the algae is just using the nitrates and phosphates and that mine are not "actually" 0.
Where do I go from here? I'm going to start doing weekly 10% water changes as my alkalinity is pretty low, but I don't think that alk affects the algae (I could be wrong!).
There was live rock transferred over, and 'live' sand was purchased and put into the tank. There was dry rock put into the tank by Caribsea, the purple arch stuff. The live rock had tons of macroalgae and microalgae due to neglect (I'll get more into this neglect later on) and a bad setup overall.
I have a hang on back refugium with chaeto, filter floss, a sponge, live rock rubble, and a good amount of ceramic media. This refugium has been on a couple of tanks and has been up for I'd say a year maybe over now, it's got some coralline in there.
Tank has been running for 2 months now and has some stock. Originally all that came from the 20 gallon was a clownfish pair, but now I have a lawnmower blenny (who is fat and happy off the glass algae and readily accepts flake food), the 2 clowns, 15 astrea snails, and 4 cerith snails. My clean up crew is pretty lacking, but it's getting there.
Here's where my problem starts: My tank didn't go through the normal cycle since it needed to go up and I used live rock etc. I was awful and did not test for ANYTHING besides salinity. The corals (although hardy, some zoas, a duncan, and pocillopora) did great and I've actually fragged that pocillopora into 9 frags now in an effort to fill the tank a bit more.
I had a growth spurt of green hair algae and that macroalgae that came over to my tank, I believe it is cladorphis. I cut it down (the macroalgae) and it has not grown back, but it's always been relatively slow growing.
I've gotten back into reefing now and I'm ready to take this tank to the next level, and that's where I run into some problems. I'm not sure where my tank is at. I'm going to start doing weekly water changes and testing much more often to make sure everything is stable and good. However, my test results for phosphates and nitrates were a bit weird that really make me question where my tank is at. For reference, the green hair algae is really brown and seems to be dead, and I just removed some in a water change today. I brushed it with a tooth brush and pulled some with my hands. Some of it came off really easily and was no problem to remove, other parts did as well but left visible fibers in the rock, and others would just not scrape off or be pulled off.
My nitrates checked out at 0 and my phosphates also at 0. The nitrate test kit I use is red sea and the phosphate test kit I use is API (definitely not the best). I feed 4x a week, including feeding the corals and the fish until they are visibly rounder. I'm assuming the algae is just using the nitrates and phosphates and that mine are not "actually" 0.
Where do I go from here? I'm going to start doing weekly 10% water changes as my alkalinity is pretty low, but I don't think that alk affects the algae (I could be wrong!).
