Good afternoon fellow reefers. I’m having a bit of an algae problem.
Little history on my tank: I purchased an existing FOWLR tank About a year ago. It was 4 years old when I purchased. Came with canister filter and HOB skimmer. It’s a 90 gal bow front.
I upgraded lights to 4x ai prime, added eshops r-100 sump with refugium, eshops s-120 skimmer, I run filter socks, auto top off with kelkwasser, carbon in a bag in the sump. Been running it like this since last October (10 months?). I have also added more live rock 2x mp40’s and a chiller.
I have always had fairly high po4 (.5 - .7ppm) and no3 (10-20ppm) , but so far haven’t seen any issues. I keep mostly softies, Anemones, and a few lps. I have a monti and a pillicora that are doing good as well. But only those two sps.
I have a dual reactor for BRS that I have not added yet, also a Uv steelizer not hooked up, and a reactor to be used for phosban or something similar- none of this is hooked up to the tank yet but I have it on hand.
my prams have been pretty consistent. I will attach photo of tank, sump, and last water test results.
my issue is I’ve started to see brown/rust colored algae on the sand bed. Mostly only in one corner. To me it looks like diatoms with a slightly more “rust” color. I attached a photo. It’s like a fine dust and easily blows away if disturbed. If I clean it at night it’s back by the next night.
I treated one dose of chemi clean - one day ago and may be too early to see results. Also not even sure if chemiclean works for diatoms? I do weekly 10% water changes. I have 7 stage ro/di and use red see coral pro salt.
my plans is to get the GFO and carbon reactor set up and running, to see if lower po4 will help the issue. I do have some phosphateE but nothing else seems unhappy except the algae lol.
I wanted to get you alls opinion: do you think it could just be elevated po4 and no3?
could it be silicates? Probably the only test o don’t have lol.
could algae be something other then diatoms?
Should I be using phosphate E or get GFO going?
I was hesitant on GFO regarding over stripping the water, but maybe that’s a unrealistic fear?
Is using Uv even worth it? Could it help? If so do you run it all the time? Or just until problem gets better?
Sorry for long winded message. Hope I provided enough info but if not ask away.
thank you in advance, I love R2R and all the members. This site is invaluable to me and I have learned so much from you all. So thank you all in advance!
- Happy reefing -
Little history on my tank: I purchased an existing FOWLR tank About a year ago. It was 4 years old when I purchased. Came with canister filter and HOB skimmer. It’s a 90 gal bow front.
I upgraded lights to 4x ai prime, added eshops r-100 sump with refugium, eshops s-120 skimmer, I run filter socks, auto top off with kelkwasser, carbon in a bag in the sump. Been running it like this since last October (10 months?). I have also added more live rock 2x mp40’s and a chiller.
I have always had fairly high po4 (.5 - .7ppm) and no3 (10-20ppm) , but so far haven’t seen any issues. I keep mostly softies, Anemones, and a few lps. I have a monti and a pillicora that are doing good as well. But only those two sps.
I have a dual reactor for BRS that I have not added yet, also a Uv steelizer not hooked up, and a reactor to be used for phosban or something similar- none of this is hooked up to the tank yet but I have it on hand.
my prams have been pretty consistent. I will attach photo of tank, sump, and last water test results.
my issue is I’ve started to see brown/rust colored algae on the sand bed. Mostly only in one corner. To me it looks like diatoms with a slightly more “rust” color. I attached a photo. It’s like a fine dust and easily blows away if disturbed. If I clean it at night it’s back by the next night.
I treated one dose of chemi clean - one day ago and may be too early to see results. Also not even sure if chemiclean works for diatoms? I do weekly 10% water changes. I have 7 stage ro/di and use red see coral pro salt.
my plans is to get the GFO and carbon reactor set up and running, to see if lower po4 will help the issue. I do have some phosphateE but nothing else seems unhappy except the algae lol.
I wanted to get you alls opinion: do you think it could just be elevated po4 and no3?
could it be silicates? Probably the only test o don’t have lol.
could algae be something other then diatoms?
Should I be using phosphate E or get GFO going?
I was hesitant on GFO regarding over stripping the water, but maybe that’s a unrealistic fear?
Is using Uv even worth it? Could it help? If so do you run it all the time? Or just until problem gets better?
Sorry for long winded message. Hope I provided enough info but if not ask away.
thank you in advance, I love R2R and all the members. This site is invaluable to me and I have learned so much from you all. So thank you all in advance!
- Happy reefing -
