Anyone offer some help on a dirty little problem?

[drainbamage]

Well it's the frag tank, so the stuff in there is little..get it? anyways, the problem is in the pictures bellow. Tank has nice specs:

'Trate:0
Phos: 0
Alk: 6 dKH (most recent measurement, been getting it back up after slacking on dosing during midterms)
Calc: 440
Mag: 1360

30 gallon tank, Tunze 9002, 3 K1's for flow, Eheim 2213 running ROWA Phos, Chemi Pure Elite, ZeoVit media (just recently added so expecting them to kick in and help at some point), and carbon. Bulbs are <2 months old-4x24" Teklight T5. Green Coris Wrasse and a Mandarin Dragonet are bioload, though they never get fed, just the corals (though I'm guessing that the Mandarin does keep the pod population low resulting in less pods to break down the detritus.)
Only noticeable thing I can figure is that tank is barebottom and there are detritus piles that build up. I'm unable to siphon all of them as the frag rack covers over the majority of the tank. Though the tests are reading goose eggs (using a salifert test kit) there's still "dirtiness" in the water that's promoting the growth of this algage (I'm assuming it's an algae, have also wondered if it's diatoms?)

The corals are all in good health seemingly, but the zoa's especially are not willing to fully open as the nuisance growth seems to be choking them out.

So if anyone has some suggestions, I'd be much appreciative.

 

[gparr]

Looks like some nuisance algae and dinoflagellates. That strong nuisance growth and detritus piling up in some places, suggests to me that water flow in the tank is inadequate and is not keeping nutrients in the water column for removal. Of course, I'm making the assumption that you're skimming the water, regularly changing carbon in your reactor, doing regular water changes, using RO/DI water that you know has a TDS near zero because you've measured it, blah, blah, blah. Also, many times I've seen white egg crate seem to be the source for nutrients for nuisance algae. Most use black egg crate or bleach their white egg crate a couple of times. That seems to eliminate that nutrient source.

Once you eliminate the food source for the nuisance algae, you're going to have to spend some time cleaning all of those plugs because, as the algae starts to die off, it will provide a nutrient source of its own. Removing as much as possible will help prevent that.
Gary

 

[blurry]

sorry man, I've been dealing with the exact same issue. here's what I've learned:

my system:
120 2x4 T5 (at the time)
connected - (2) 20 gallon frag tanks wit T5s
40 gallon sump
GFO/Carbon/Skimmer/Dosing pumps
all levels good except phosphate which was 0-3PPB (parts per billion - i.e. very low using hanna low range digital tester)

The Dinos started in the frag tank, display was unaffected. after a while I did take a hit in the display. I did two 3-day blackouts which set them back heavily. display stayed clean, graf tanks went back to being infested. I lost 2 SPS with the blackout and some still haven't recolored

** blackout - not recommended

completely cleaned out the frag tanks, scrubbed all the plugs and egg crate. looked good for about 3-4 days, growth started back up

removed 6500K T5s and went to all ATI Blue - growth slowed down

** 6500K lighting seems to help them grow

cleaned again, replaced all the white egg crate, same as before good for a couple days

added soda lime reactor (bulk soda lime from airgas is cheap). PH increases from about 8 to 8.3

**ph increase seems to slow them down

time went on, soda lime ran out and the population grew

rebuilt the entire frag tanks. took about 8 hours. cleaned glass with vinegar, cleaned power heads, all new plugs, switched to black egg crate, replaced main rack. new setup has removable racks with room to get a magnet through. replaced soda lime

grwoth started again after about 1 week, though only on the plugs. Black rack has slight growth, bet very little.

** black egg crate is the way to go - white stuff puts something in the water they love.

An the big revelation (thanks to my wife) - the plugs are causing the growth. turns out you need to soak your plugs for 2-3 weeks to let them leach chemicals out. water change the plugs every week with RO/DI

** soak your plugs 2-3 weeks before using in RO/DI. ceramics less, though I'm not sure how long.

So at this time I've learned that white egg crate and fresh plugs leaches stuff into the water, so do fresh plugs. black egg crate is better, though I have some growth there also, maybe the black egg crate needs to be soaked also. Fresh plugs are VERY conducive to growth, they need to be soaked, ceramic is better, and easier to clean. Ceramic plugs also need to be soaked. 6500K lighting fuels Dino growth. High PH sets them back, consider soda lime as it is easy (connect to skimmer). a kalk slurry with also boost PH, though it is a lot more risky. from the reading I have done a pH of 8.5 yo 8.6 for a week will finish them off. manual removal is key - stay on top of them!

The current believe [for my tanks] is that the lack of liverock isn't providing bacteria to combat the Dinos. put in some established liverock Cut the lighting to 4 hours/day to allow the liverock bacteria which proper in the dark a chance to go to work.

stay with it!

 

[Speg]

How long has this tank been running? I would try to increase the CUC by a couple large mexican turbo snails..they may be big and annoying since they push stuff over, but they are excellent at mowing the lawn...ahem algae.

What's your lights-on time? You could try to drop it to 4 hours for a few days to help out....and if you're feeding, try feeding once every 3 days until this starts to decrease.

What's your current CUC?

 

[blurry]

CUC doesn't do much for Dino's. Dinoflagellates comes in many variations - quite a few are poisonous to fish and snails. I lost about 1/2 my snails to Dino's in the first month. currently no snails left.

 

[Speg]

CUC doesn't do much for Dino's. Dinoflagellates comes in many variations - quite a few are poisonous to fish and snails. I lost about 1/2 my snails to Dino's in the first month. currently no snails left.

Looks like more than just dinos in there though, no?

 

[octoberfest]

Dino and algae feed off of nutrients in the water including nitrates and phosphates. One reason they could be showing zero is because they're using up all the nitrates and phosphates as they grow, there has to be something there for them to "eat". It goes off the same principal for the reason people use macro algae in their fuge, hoping it will take up the nutrients fast enough to reduce them in the water column. Also I'm not so sure that's dino, doesn't have the "snot" appearance of dino. An easy test would be to see if you can blow any of it away easily with a turkey baster, dino will blow away pretty easy. My guess is that the bubbles are just air bubbles caused by photosynthesis, could be wrong on that but I've seen it a couple times before.

A clean-up crew is just a band-aid on a bigger problem. They may reduce the algae for a time but the problem is still there. Reducing the photo period or going with a blackout will help reduce the algae however again it won't fix the problem.

 

[Speg]

A clean-up crew is just a band-aid on a bigger problem. They may reduce the algae for a time but the problem is still there. Reducing the photo period or going with a blackout will help reduce the algae however again it won't fix the problem.

Unless the problem IS because the photo-period is set too long and nutrients are being used too often/too much and they're not being consumed by tank creatures within a decent amount of time :)

 

[reefpeeper]

get a sailfin tang they seem to eat many different kinds of algae and more snails

 

[Speg]

get a sailfin tang they seem to eat many different kinds of algae and more snails

30 gallon tank.

 

[extremehobbyist]

i just put two sea hares in my system they eat everything mayby try one

 

[Troylee]

another idea for plug's and discs is to just put them in the tank on the toilet.... water change every time you flush it lol.... i know a few people who do that lol

 

[m and m]

You shouldn't be using zeovit media with out the liquid additives and it shouldn't DEFINITELY be used with GFO. Also take each plug out scrap that crap off and syphon out as much as you can.

 

[drainbamage]

Big thanks to everyone's ideas, going to attempt to reply to all-

Tank has been up ~6 months
Eggcrate has been in there that whole time, so I will replace with black ASAP, but shouldn't the white have been leeched by now? (obviously not, but how long would I need to leach it otherwise?)
I'm going to try and get some more flow going on, the challenge is adding flow without blasting the frags as majority are not SPS.
CUC is just a couple hermits and an Emerald crab. I'd like to add a cucumber and some other munchers, but unsure how they'll deal with the bare-bottom. I do have a spare sea hare in another tank I'm going to try throwing in, just hate how much stuff they knock over, and especially how often they rip Zoa's off their plugs =(
I feed anywhere from daily to once a week or so, I'm not a regular scheduled type of guy. Since the problem has become more apparent I've cut way back on what food I was putting in, and water changes have stepped up considerably.
I'll give thought to dropping a sailfin in there-the LFS regularly has half-dollar sized guys that I could put in there for at least a few months to help munch stuff, then PIF to a local guy with a bigger tank
No 6500K's-I know they promote coral growth but just found them too ugly to want to deal with. The warmest bulb is a 12k, the other three are actinics.
Photoperiod is about 9 hours on daylight, 10 hours with actinics. Reluctant to cut back too much on photoperiod and risk the Yuma's that are propogating in there but might have to.
Have done a 2 day blackout, got a lot of stuff that blew off the plugs, but just came back super fast so wasn't a great solution.

Why not use the Zeovit media without the liquid? I'm not using GFO so not worried about that, but my display is looking quite nice, where I'm using a box (200 grams I think?) of ZeoVit rocks and have never touched any of the additives

 

[Speg]

I think you should cut the lights way back. 6 hours is really the "norm" for a tank.

Also, I use white eggcrate in my frag tank...never had an issue....and your tank is still pretty new, usually the first few months are the worst for this type of stuff as I'm sure you know.

Good luck bra.

 

[NeveroddoreveN]

If you're bare bottom in a frag tank (do you have LR?), bacteria may not have much surface area to colonize; leaving algae to do the heavy lifting of the nitrogen cycle. Increase flow. If you're feeling frisky you could also go completely dark for a few days until the algae dies to eliminate the competition with nitrifying bacteria (is zeo bacterial?- Idk it too well) and get it off the zoas. Aiming a powerhead at the BB and running a filter sock would help detritus accumulations.

I recently went through the same thing in my 29 frag tank. I added a korralia 4 to my 3 maxi-jet 1200s, left the lights out, stirred the SSB everyday (while dark,) started carbon/mb7 dosing and I'm really happy with the results. I kept the k4 in, continued stirring the SB weekly and carbon/mb7 dosing. At 1st it looked like way to much flow, but everybody sucked it up and they're all happy, detritus/cyano/GHA free frags.

Green Coris Wrasse and a Mandarin Dragonet in a bb 30? Is it plumbed to a larger system?

 

[drainbamage]

If you're bare bottom in a frag tank (do you have LR?), bacteria may not have much surface area to colonize; leaving algae to do the heavy lifting of the nitrogen cycle. Increase flow. If you're feeling frisky you could also go completely dark for a few days until the algae dies to eliminate the competition with nitrifying bacteria (is zeo bacterial?- Idk it too well) and get it off the zoas. Aiming a powerhead at the BB and running a filter sock would help detritus accumulations.

I recently went through the same thing in my 29 frag tank. I added a korralia 4 to my 3 maxi-jet 1200s, left the lights out, stirred the SSB everyday (while dark,) started carbon/mb7 dosing and I'm really happy with the results. I kept the k4 in, continued stirring the SB weekly and carbon/mb7 dosing. At 1st it looked like way to much flow, but everybody sucked it up and they're all happy, detritus/cyano/GHA free frags.

Green Coris Wrasse and a Mandarin Dragonet in a bb 30? Is it plumbed to a larger system?

Going to add maybe a couple K2's under the eggcrate pointing from front to back-basically opposite of how the three K1's are situated. It's a stand-alone tank, nothing plumbed to it or anything. Do have maybe 20+lbs of rock in there as well. And honestly I have no real understanding of the zeovit stuff-I mostly just dropped it in my display on a whim to see what would happen. Can't attribute anything particular to it, but I'm very happy with the way that tank is looking, so figured I'd add it into the frag tank as well.
The green corris is maybe 2", the Mandarin is full grown and about 18 months old (was transfered into the tank when i set it up from my display after she decided she didn't like the boy toy I had gotten for her.)

 

[blurry]

The thought on the CUC is that the dinos will kill off the crew. the real issue is mentioned above - something is providing resources in the water to promote growth. cut to minimal feeding, ditch the crate (though after 6 months its nice to think it would be gone). get new plugs, ceramic and soak those in RO/DI for awhile. add live rock and move the fish out. no reason to have fish in a frag tank that I can think if (interested to hear thoughts on why they should be there). do a serious cleaning (at minimum scrub plugs with a new toothbrush from the dollar store).

as far as soaking in the toilet, there is phosphate in tap water along with other crap that can get soaked into the plug. use RO/DI, its cheap enough.

I'm going through the same thing. its a pain.

 

[Jpurpz831]

i only run metal hilides for 4 hours helped me with algae problem

 

[shapermike]

I went through that with one system. too many fish in that tank and when I moved them out and added a skimmer in the tank the algae slowed way down. This tank is connected to other frag tanks. Well now that tanks looks great and the plugs don't get covered with algae any more