Cannot control phos and nitrates! Urgent advice needed

[Bobhop]

Hi all, new the the forum! Thanks for having me and all that

I'm experiencing high phos and nitrate, which has caused a huge green hair algae problem!

Tank has been running for over 2 years. I went on holiday in August and left my dad to feed my fish every other day for the 10 days - I also stupidly turned my skimmer off to minimise components that could potentially cause a problem in my absence. When I returned I noticed that in 10 days he'd fed them the same amount I would have fed them in over a month! Since then, green hair algae has taken over my tank. I've had a few corals die, and also lost two sea hares I introduced to try and combat the algae.

Current water readings are as follows;

Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates 80
Phos 0.5

Setup consists of 125ltr tank, 30ltr sump with skimmer and trickle filter with various filter media types including ceramic rings, ceramic spheres, sponges, floss.

Livestock;

2 x clowns, 1.5 years
Valentini Puffer - 2 months
File fish - 4 months
Cleaner Wrasse - 1 year
Fire Fish - 2 years
Scooter Blenny - 2 months
3 x hermit crabs
Cleaner shrimp
2 x Turbo snails


I have been dosing Nitrate Minus as I had some spare, but it hasn't really helped much. I've reduced feeding to half the usual amount to reduce N & P coming from excess food.

Yesterday I added a reactor containing Nutri-Fix NP Bio Pellets and a filter bag with some NT Labs Phosphate Remover. I'm going to measure again tomorrow to see if it's helped but would really appreciate the advice of someone more experienced than myself.

My wife got me a new (more powerful) light for my birthday ;Happy and I'm keen to start cracking on with some of the better coral that need more light, but I'm not going to put any more money into the tank until I've got on top of the water quality.

Thanks!

 

[Bobhop]

I should add that I do a fortnightly 25 ltr water change.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Give the tank a good cleaning and don't think bringing it back down to original levels overnight will help the situation. I'd stay away from any chemicals you mentioned

This would be my course of action:

1 - syphon out detritus and hair algae
2 - Reduce back on feeding
3 - wet skim
4 - Make few 25% waterchanges over the course of few weeks.
5 - Test your NO/PO bi-weekly

Good luck and keep us posted..

 

[lapin]

Welcome
In my opinion, manual removal of your algae will act as a nutrient export. Water changes like you are doing will also help. Vac the sand bed and blow off the rocks so you can skim off all the excess decomposing food. I dont think there is a magic solution. It will take time and good practices to get it back in shape. I would avoid the new light. Algae needs light. No need to give it more.