At a loss after our tank almost crashed.. now battling... well, what is it?

[EricL.]

First things first
T = 25°C +- 0.1°C
Salinity = 35 psu
Ammonium = 0
Nitrate =0-1 ppm
Nitrite = 0
Phosphate almost zero
pH = 8.2

3 months ago, just when we thought we were through the "ugly phase", our 250l tank almost crashed because the sump overfilled and caused 3 weeks of skimmed fish poo to re-release into the water column. Out of our five fish in the tank (2 ocellaris, 2 bangai cardinals, 1 tailspot blenny), the blenny died, CuC (snails and hermit crabs) survived.
What followed was an algae and cyano bloom, which we countered by manually removing as much as possible.
Well, since then, nitrate and phosphate plummeted and the tank looks the ugliest it has ever been. We are losing the battle of manual removal against a bloom of cyano and... well, what is the other stuff?

We also tried carbon dosing and overfeeding in combination with beneficial bacteria, but nitrates stayed at 0 and algae keeps blooming.
Any help is very much appreciated as this starts to feel like a lost war..
One more thing: We are located in germany so many of the medications and "wonder-fluids" are not available to us.

Thanks in advance,

Eric and Kathrin

(Pictures taken with only white light turned on)

 

[X-37B]

Fluconazole would be my answer. Also remove as much as you can before treatment and during treatment. No need for lights out just follow the directions.
Watch po4 as it will spike with the amount of algae you have.
It should be available in Germamy I would think.
I have used it before in my 120 sps system with good results and no losses.

 

[a4edwin]

Did you try a water change?

 

[EricL.]

Did you try a water change?

Yes, 10% weekly. What kind of algae do you think these are?

 

[SlugSnorter]

Fluconazole (if it is not in germany, a SeaHare Slug maybe, you will need to feed it after), Waterchanges

 

[SlugSnorter]

Yes, 10% weekly. What kind of algae do you think these are?

multiple types, also Nitrates are zero because the algae is eating them

 

[EricL.]

Fluconazole would be my answer. Also remove as much as you can before treatment and during treatment. No need for lights out just follow the directions.
Watch po4 as it will spike with the amount of algae you have.
It should be available in Germamy I would think.
I have used it before in my 120 sps system with good results and no losses.

Fluconazole (if it is not in germany, a SeaHare Slug maybe, you will need to feed it after), Waterchanges

Alright, thanks. I'll get some. Any more directions? 9mg per litre? One dose? Thanks in advance!

 

[brandon429]

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

study that thread not as a cursory read but in detail, click the updates and see outcomes

if you add dosers into that tank and kill that mass inside you risk total chemical souping

your tank at 250 l can be rip cleaned, much bigger than that and it would be hard but two brute trash cans hold enough new water for you to have on the reassembly

you can clearly see that not rip cleaning has amounted to the current state.

*waiting this long to take command over the tank has a price, and that's future gardening even after a rip clean to physically siphon up and remove stringy growths as they come back. don't dose for them, spend three gallons siphon water effort and stick a hose in the tank and remove them, same thing as pulling dandelions in a garden.

it doesnt work one time, its what you do repeated until fescue takes over and excludes them for you. the reef is total dandelions at this point, but you can forcefully win if you want it bad enough, the road map is directly right there.

all questions about cycle issues, covered (each entrant posts pics of a fixed tank, not a cycled one etc)

 

[boacvh]

I would say stop overfeeding. Nitrates read 0 because your algae is "consuming" them so they don't show up in your test, so you are feeding the algae.
The tank is still fairly new and needs stability. These wars take time, and stability is the key so my advice is not to rush to dose the tank with all kinds of wonder fluids as you call them. They will help you short term but if you don't fix the cause it will just come back.
Manual removal, water changes and reducing the input of nutrients into the tank will go a long way. But don't expect results in just a couple days.
As mentioned by @90's reefer above you could try fluconazole but my advice is to pair that with fixing the cause of your issue, which I would suspect in large part is the overfeeding. (Your skimmer issue is the same, it just put nutrients back into the water column)

 

[brandon429]

I think fluconazole does a good job in reefing, it's elbowed its way in as a permanent option now.

they key to harnessing it is applying it before outbreaks, when there's no mass to rot and fill up tank crevices as cloudy detritus. everyone uses it to avoid work required, and they pay as cyano circling shortly after that is directly seen in the fluconazole thread to a very high degree

but after a cleaning, zero waste tank, zero mass rocks, if growback is a known problem you can begin with half the required fluc right then and work up. adding fluc to a fully invaded system can simply kill the entire system in four days, this tank needs surgery and it needs preps that come from work links involving the public's tanks, as they present vs our own reefs. the planning needs to involve something we can click and verify one year later what occurred

 

[brandon429]

this tank here has live rocks of gold quality. true quality coralline can be revealed here

in the rip clean preps are steps that specifically work around coralline and not kill it off the rock, that's by design.

after a rip clean, a UV sterilizer/cheap pond one off amazon and some fluc to be used only if rip + UV doesnt work is how to go about it

frankly, in the fluc thread they deal with green plants as the target, not cyano + coexpression of dinos. there isn't a green plant issue I see here above. if we chart out green plant challenge tanks that dosed fluc or vibrant to an invaded reef, they turn into the OP's pics above at a high rate we can see. its uncommon to use either of those indirect controls to fix this condition above.

Eric your tank represents a very large section of reefs that are under sustained invasion challenge. If you want to custom plan a fix right here we can see that through easily. 48 hours/done

 

[2una]

frankly, in the fluc thread they deal with green plants as the target, not cyano + coexpression of dinos. there isn't a green plant issue I see here above.

I'm quite amazed that without a shred of bryopsis people are shouting fluc

OP
Do you have socks? If so i would start by doing a syphon of everything thru the socks for a few days & then see where your at before hitting the tank with any med.

 

[X-37B]

Alright, thanks. I'll get some. Any more directions? 9mg per litre? One dose? Thanks in advance!

Dont over think this.
Once the fluc has removed the algae do the recommended WC.
I add 1 snail per 2g's of water for most efficient algae control in all my systems.
In my 120 at last count 80 snails.
My 2 tangs help but they really dont touch the small amonut of visible algae present in my system.
The snails will keep the rock surfaces clean as long as the algae dies not get to long.
My urchins help in this respect too.

 

[X-37B]

I'm quite amazed that without a shred of bryopsis people are shouting fluc

OP
Do you have socks? If so i would start by doing a syphon of everything thru the socks for a few days & then see where your at before hitting the tank with any med.

Fluc works for hair algae most of the time. No one is shouting its a reccomendation.
I have seen it work more times than it has not if used correctly.

They have already done manual removal and it has not been effective.

 

[brandon429]

I would definately have fluc available if I had a large tank/inaccessible. Its impressive

I was trying to get that guy with the seventeen foot long reef tank to rip clean it via scuba disassembly, but he declined and instead fluc'd it / win

 

[EricL.]

this tank here has live rocks of gold quality. true quality coralline can be revealed here

in the rip clean preps are steps that specifically work around coralline and not kill it off the rock, that's by design.

after a rip clean, a UV sterilizer/cheap pond one off amazon and some fluc to be used only if rip + UV doesnt work is how to go about it

frankly, in the fluc thread they deal with green plants as the target, not cyano + coexpression of dinos. there isn't a green plant issue I see here above. if we chart out green plant challenge tanks that dosed fluc or vibrant to an invaded reef, they turn into the OP's pics above at a high rate we can see. its uncommon to use either of those indirect controls to fix this condition above.

Eric your tank represents a very large section of reefs that are under sustained invasion challenge. If you want to custom plan a fix right here we can see that through easily. 48 hours/done

Alright, thanks for your input y'all, I am ready to go the route of rip cleaning. After going through your posts, this is the battle plan I created:

Preparation

• Order enough salt.
• Make sure I have enough H2O2
• Also, order new Ro/DI filtration
• Completely fill my two Euroboxes (100l each) with ro/di water to have fast access to saltwater
• Order fluc just in case
• Buy a UV sterilizer & pump (I need assistance here in choosing an appropriate one)
• (unrelated to the problem: order a 25mm drill long enough to drill through the wall behind my tank (where my equipment & euroboxes are placed; this is for future projects like automatic water changes)
• also, order nitrate and phosphate solutions to overcome deficiencies later on (useful?)

Battle plan

• Prepare and fill quarantine tank with water from the DT
• Transfer fish & CuC to the quarantine tank
• Remove rocks, scrape them with a pocket knife, apply H2O2
• take some samples to view under the microscope to know what my enemy was
• Take the sand out of the DT, rinse it under tap water until it is crystal clear
• Drain Tank & Sump
• Clean Tank & Sump, using vinegar
• Rinse Tank & Sump
• (Drill 6 holes through the wall)
• Install UV sterilizer
• Re-Lay the sand bed
• Bring rocks back in
• Fill with fresh water
• Dim the lights (white off? Blue 50% of the initial value?)
• Bring the fish & CuC back in

Aftermath

• Clean quarantine tank
• How to proceed with the tank? (Feeding, Water params, adding phosphate or nitrate?)
• Prevent further outbreaks: How to?

Again, thanks for your help!

 

[brandon429]

That is so good we need to borrow that summary once the job is done and replace my screed on the first page with it

perfection, those identifications and suppressive actions come in the clean condition, after the work, it’s perfect

also to add: you have about an 80% chance of a one pass fix and a 20% chance the rip clean holds for a month and then a tiny strand or four comes back. Not carnage, but the remassing effort of the top invader in reefing above all possible invasions…I really think some degree of that are dinoflagellates. That’s the point I don’t have perfect answers for since it’s the top invasion in reefing if indeed identification shows amphidinium cells or ostreopsis as a key player in this expression above. We consider inserting a siphon hose and two gallons siphoning out the strands to prevent remassing the same effort as kneeling in a garden we are perfecting and knifing back out three dandelions that popped up after spending all weekend culling 300 of them


other key factors: some dinos battles are so tough it takes staggered re addition of sand to win, meaning they rip clean and don’t add sand back until the tank as a whole shows control. It’s easier to mop up offender cells in a bare bottom tank, so we can consider that for round two if required.

(round two rip/worst case scenario won’t need all new water you could catch and hold all the current used water because it won’t be full of irritants this first round rip clean is the big rinse and new water angle)


I honestly think putting sand back is ok as the two hours of straight tap water rinsing it’s going to take to make it cloudless certainly isn’t going to contain dinos when done. Final rinse of the tap water sand is RO water, to evacuate tap from in between the grains, the neutralized sand is ready and cup tested at this stage to ensure total clarity. Fish jumping out of holding containers or incomplete sand rinse are the only times I’ve seen someone not like rip cleaning


when you reassemble a reef so impossibly laser clear it looks empty of water when it’s full, that will feel like a win for sure. Anticipate the minor growback, the Spartans will try and re phalanx we already expect it but you’ll be able to spot siphon, or indeed lift out rocks for a quick *tap water*rinse on round two growback hammering if required. The standard saltwater rinse off after debriding growth areas and peroxide only spot applied is right for the first go as it preserves their bacteria considering we are about to blast the sand to the sky and back first go to eject all its waste.

yes on phosphate and nitrate controls, the dinos thread shows some folks boosting those into a suppression mode against the targets. And if errors there cause some gha then when you lift out a rock to scrape and kill guide the rock and set it back, you won’t be upwelling dirty waste all around as the point of a rip clean is to hopefully win in one pass but also to have cloudless substrates able to be repositioned worked and handled without causing more clouding and casting. You have new water planned for, fish held accordingly, I can’t see how there are error gaps this effort looks to be in planning something we want to add to that GOAT thread once it’s done.

 

[brandon429]

For uv which I think is highly indicated here, the team can recommend what they use or think is best. Pentair aquatics sells $900 ones that can be ran constantly in saltwater without pause, and Amazon $90 ones will zap invaders as a super cheap koi pond sterilizer but they’ll rust out in time and are best used intermittently then we turn them off and manually guide the system back into compliance by spot removals and physically preventing remassing of target over and over until they exhaust.


the lighting re ramp that’s intuited by you as you see fit. Something a bit dimmer overall then ramped back up only as you hand guide regrowths as an effort to both slow them and still meet coral needs you can’t harm the system one way or another with this no burn safety re ramp phasing. Your call


matching temp and salinity to the holding water is all that’s required of the new water.


******those rocks you have contain ideal coralline spots we want to not scrape or hit with peroxide, try forceful rubbing off of adherents and saltwater rinse first go to preserve those with knife scrapes and peroxide for the tufted areas if possible. Those are spots that will repel gha as a core benefit to keeping the rock vs starting with new rock. Those rocks will look great when guided back by spot surgery in the sink

take good phone pics of it all for shock value on the before/ afters

 

[brandon429]

hows it looking here

 

[brandon429]

even if a rip clean isn't selected or held off till later thats not a prob we still want tank pics from any treatment offered so we can build pattern sets

not everyone wants to rip clean

but those who do, shine lol