Brown hair algae with bubbles

[Night Reefer]

can any one help just got a break out 3 days ago. Prior just had brown algae on the sand not too much. At first I thought it was diotoms.

Using gfo and carbon with cheato in the sump.
Temps 79
Salt 36
Phosphates 0
Nitrate just hit 0 was 5 3 days ago
Mag 1470
Cal 470
All 9.7
PH 7.6 I know it’s low waiting on a c02 scrubber to arrive.
System is 5 months old and just addded 3 fish and Corrals about 2 weeks ago. I also have snails and crabs along with 2 shrimp.

 

[sfin52]

With zero for both pho4 and no3 possible dino but unsure . you want po4 .05-.1 . No3 5-10 ppm.
Did you start out with lr or dry rock!

How are your pods and snails doing? Are they dieing or eating the algae.

I would turn off gfo. I would run activated granular carbon.

 

[Night Reefer]

I turned off gfo last night along with the skimmer. Snails are doing good. I put pods in about 5 weeks ago and I noticed two weeks ago that I had an explosion of them all over the tank. I also cleaned the Refugio’s a bit by removing some of the waste and green hair algae. Are these diatoms? I tried blowing them off the rocks and it does not seem to move that easily I would have to rub it off.I am running the triton method. Dry live rock but well cleaned for 2 months, used bleach bath and then sat until PO was no longer rising. Did many water changes when curing the rock

 

[sfin52]

It could be a stage of new tank nasties. Either way your going to want some po4 and no3 in your tank.
How long are your lights running and is the tank getting any natural sunlight?

Love the photo bomb of your cuninam clown .

 

[Night Reefer]

Yes just noticed that.

Whites 9 hours
Blues 10 hours (start 30 min before the whites and 30 min after the whites
Sump 10 hours 2 hours after blues go off and off 2 hours before the blues turn on. Had to reduce sump lights because the chaeto was starting to bleach.
I do have a slidinding glass door I facing the tank and a half moon window above. The door has blinds that are closed and the window above has 2 layers of fine curtains defusing 90% of the light. The window faces the north which also has large trees so no direct sunlight. Never had an issues when I had my planted tank setup for 4 years.

 

[sfin52]

I would cut to your whites back to 7hrs .7 hrs of white with the 10 hrs of blues should be fine.
Cheato was bleaching due to lack of nutrients. Less light should help cheato. Plants are much like algea. What makes plants grow will make algea grow.

 

[fishplace817]

Try to cut some of your light hours and see what help your cheato grow. It could be lack of nutrients or too much light

 

[chinw76]

Are you using instant ocean salt? I found that instant ocean has .5ppm to 1 ppm of ammonia. Every time I did a water change, I would get an algae bloom. My rodi water had 0 ammonia, but when I mixed instant ocean salt, I would show high levels of ammonia. Algae prefers ammonia as a nitrogen source over nitrates. I have switched salts and added a double dose of prodibio bio clean and it solved my problem. I had 1ppm of ammonia in my tank. I had 0 silicants, .01 phosphates, 3 ppm nitrates. My tank would be fine until I did a water change. I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why I would get algae. I had dinos also, and sounds like that is what you may have. I would test for ammonia if I was you. Then would suck out what algae you have and do a water change with a high grade salt mix.
This is the email I got from Hw marinemix from Germany.

Depending how sensitive your analytical method works you could be able to detect between 0,010 mg/l to max. 0,028 mg/l of ammonia / NH4 per liter marine water at a salinity of approx. 35,0‰ - 35,5‰.

This values may vary depending of temperature and salinity of the water.


Some words to ammonia in a reef aquarium:

If your aquarium has a high population of corals, ammonia will be reduced in very short time as the corals and algae’s will prefer much more the ammonia than nitrate as nitrogen source.

Therefore ammonia is mostly not detectable in a running reef tank systems.


With kind regards

Wiegandt GmbH


Annette Bell

WIEGANDT GmbH
Produkte für die Aquaristik
Sterkenhofweg 13
D-47807 Krefeld / Germany
Geschäftsführer Lutz Peter Bell

Phone: 0049-02151-393844
Fax: 0049-02151-391920
[email protected]
www.hw-wiegandt.de

 

[Night Reefer]

I did use some LOL. I had a 50 pound bag that was just sitting there. No water change was done just need to add 3 cups to bring my levels back up. But as things break down fish pee this creates some Ammonia. Are you saying it creates more than fish do in 3 cups. Every time I check my ammonia levels they were always at zero. May 28 and June 12 were the last 2 test done with a reading of zero. I will stop using it as it’s not my 1st choice, not even my 2nd or 3rd. I will also cut down on my whites and see if that also helps

 

[Night Reefer]

Status update
I tossed in 60 blue leg and a bottle of copperpods. I brushed off as much as I could and noticed a big difference after 3 days. I got some back on the overflows but not much. It also seems as the rocks are cleaner than before. We have progress. I also stated to double up there food with the pumps on instead of off. Will keep you all posted.

 

[Night Reefer]

Sorry for the late update. All gone and clean. The cleanup crew really did a great job. The only thing is my rocks are no longer white but now a shade of brown. Tossed in some corline algae so I that starts taken over.

 

[crabman85]

Very nice I think I have same thing going on