Dying Snails, Crazy Algae, No Nitrates: What is wrong?

[Zakary2003]

That's a lot of info. I spent about an hour reading about that topic and watching videos after seeing your response, but I do have a few questions. How do I clean around encrusted soft corals? I have zoas, cloves, GSP, and xenia encrusted onto the rocks. Do I just clean around them and leave the rock in between clusters or polyps dirty? What about the nem? Do I let him stay on the rock while it is out of the tank being scrubbed, or do I remove him somehow? I like this option a lot. Also, most of my structure is glued together because of the urchin causing chaos. Do I break then apart for cleaning or can I take most of the structure out at once?

I am actually moving in mid May. I might just wait until then and do a very thorough rip clean before I set the tank back up.

 

[brandon429]

Thank you honestly for reading those.

You can do external tank surgical guiding on rock at any time, they'll set in the air a little while

Use a precision knife tip to scrape away only the invasion, working around the bases of attached corals. Rinse off

Like a dentist on the tooth with the rasp

Avoids cutting the the gumeline when rasping, a dentist is that precise

Work all your rocks clean and rinse them off and set back on perfectly clean sand

That sand takes hours to rinse prep, this removes the feed component in the challenge. It's worth it for a shock afterpic

When you are cleaning rocks externally, the filter bacteria remain

That's why setting up fully- detailed rocks back on top of rip cleaned sand always skip cycles: live rock bacteria aren't harmed by our cleaning even if we use a little peroxide to cheat burn targets for a deep kill.

You'd work the tank by rock extraction dentistry until it's so full of corals you don't have to. For zoathid mats where the base tissue really can have algae attachments consider culling out those areas in surgery

If must keep, use tweezers plus a dab of peroxide worked externally

 

[brandon429]

Last step would be reducing your overall light power -20% and keep the same spectrum it's on now

Some tanks have to do this through light blocking strips if the lights aren't adjustable

The light drop works because the corals don't need that much intensity you can occasionally spot feed them and they'll get just as large on better feed and better waste export for the tank with less light than bright light that grows the algae too fast

We do the light % drop after the clean slate setup it'll help as preventative. The corals will extend and colors should look bright and clean surfaces will pop. Then just occasionally lift out a bad spot on the rock and carve it off with your knife, it's dentistry time for that reef tooth

Don't alter your water chemistry around algae prevention, angle the chemistry to grow fat corals

The algae control is manual, by forced compliance. This will lock a reef tank into a state of compliance and I like to collect the after pics of jobs like that.

 

[Bakki]

I would agree with the suggestions by Brandon. My reasoning on gha is that it looks ugly, but it doesn’t kill anything. I would focus on providing the corals and the other wanted critters what they need and just manually remove gha where the cuc can’t support. Will likely just take time.

 

[TWYOUNG]

I can recognize dinos because my family's 60 gallon reef had them for a while. I have had dinos in the past in this tank a few months ago. I don't see them now. Doesn't mean they aren't there though.

Even experts are unable to positively ID dinos without a microscopic exam. Many forms are toxic which would account for your dying snails. Lack of nutrients would also point to the likelihood of it being dino related.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed. It’s better to have the offending mass simply gone vs identifying it. It’s not like in the nuisance algae forum there are varying threads on how to cure certain strains of dinos based on ID. The thousand-combined pages of dinos threads there are simply 2% fix rates regardless of ID. Nearly all the systems in those threads are simply moving from dinos to GHA systems to cyano and back to dinos over and over, they don’t have much control at all over actual cures because the overriding theme there is do no water changes, leave the mass in the tank and work from there. We did opposite and got opposite results.

But that’s only practical for small tanks. Large tanks still need the development work they do in the big threads. One day when they figure out total control nobody will need to work in rip cleans for any size tank. In the mean time, nano owners can simply opt out of being invaded, at least there is a certain group of tanks we have that can differentiate control methods based on gallonage / better than no progress for sure

 

[Zakary2003]

@brandon429 I decided to do a rip clean today after Easter mass. The water is a bit foggy from stirred sediments and the corals are a bit upset from the tampering, but I've got the before and after pics for you. I'll get a better after pic in a few days when I've gotten rid of any remaining patches and the corals have recovered a little more. Now I just have to make sure I keep it from getting bad again.

 

[brandon429]

That sand looks completely unrinsed though? Rocks look like they’ve been cleaned off that part looks good

 

[Zakary2003]

That sand looks completely unrinsed though?

I rinsed it. The glass under the sand isn't clean because I was scratching it trying. Some chunks of algae that were left on the rocks settled in the sand.

 

[brandon429]

Nice, that must have been a massive job my gosh

We lowered the light levels in each job for several weeks after to lessen regrowth, and be removing any regrowths as you attempt to find ways to stop regrowth it will be better with most of the mass gone now

 

[Zakary2003]

Water cleared up over night and everything except the nem and the leathers are back to 100%. Lights have been lowered by 20% and I've gone through and hit all the remaining patches with peroxide until they turned white. This is the final (for now) result.

 

[Kjames]

Good job getting after it! Betting you feel 1000% better about your tank after the water cleared. This is the way.

 

[brandon429]

It looks bright and happy great job

 

[thrillreefer]

Does look a lot better, well done! This thread reminds me I have a neglected 2nd tank, a 13 gal with some softies, RFAs and a bunch of algae… pretty old sand bed too. Maybe I’ll try this whole rip clean business

 

[jabberwock]

@brandon429 I decided to do a rip clean today after Easter mass. The water is a bit foggy from stirred sediments and the corals are a bit upset from the tampering, but I've got the before and after pics for you. I'll get a better after pic in a few days when I've gotten rid of any remaining patches and the corals have recovered a little more. Now I just have to make sure I keep it from getting bad again.

Are those shark's teeth in the sand bed?

 

[Zakary2003]

Are those shark's teeth in the sand bed?

Yep! My roommate found them in Venice Beach and thought they'd make good tank decor.

 

[jabberwock]

Yep! My roommate found them in Venice Beach and thought they'd make good tank decor.

Yeah, I like it.

 

[KSean]

I've had a similar issue in my 10G Waterbox when I was feeding my corals heavily with reefroids AND my fish with frozen food. The bottomline cause seemed to be overfeeding in my case. It takes surprisingly small amount of food to cause GHA explosion in small tanks. The huge amount of GHA in the tank locks in your Nitrates. So it is hard for the kits to detect high nitrates.

What I did :
Stopped feeding the corals completely. Switched the fish to 2-3 times a week , few pellets of Fauna Marine coral food (Yes, my clowns loved FM to my surprise)
Took a toothbrush to the GHA and siphoned them off with huge water change.
Cleaned up my filter sponge (lot of algae/ gunk)
Replaced my RODI filters
Got a lawnmover blenny (they chomp on GHAs all day)
used NoPox (RedSea)
Though, the NoPox definitely put a lot of stress on corals. (would recommend strong chemical treatments ONLY as a last resort and be aware that they could cause coral /fish death).
All these, together brought down the GHA considerably after about 2-3 weeks.
your Anemone is rocking btw. Good luck getting rid of the GHA.

 

[saltybagel]

Resurrecting this thread, so much good info here!
I have a very similar situation and need some help; no detectable nitrates, low phosphates, and sluggish and dying trochus and cerith snails. Nassarius snails seem fine. Some differences is I still have some diatoms or dinos on my sandbed, and this is happening in an macroalgae tank. I like a little bit of GHA since it looks natural, but I hate that it is overtaking my gorgonians and my pom pom macroalgae.

Current tank stats (40gal cube):
Temp: 77C
Salinity: 1.026
Ammonia and Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates: 0ppm (undetectable)
Phosphate: 0.02ppm
Alkalinity: 8.1ish
Calcium: 380
Magnesium: ~1300 (hard to tell with Salifert test kit IMO)

I've been manually removing the GHA every few weeks and siphoning the sand every once in a while when the diatoms/dinos start to get too brown. I dose 10mL NeoNitro and ~4mL ChaetoGro daily to help keep the nitrates up and support macroalgae outcompeting the GHA.

Would adding a sea hare help make an actual dent in this GHA growth? I don't really care if it eats some of the macroalgae since I have so much of it right now. Any help would be appreciated!

Picture for reference:

 

[Zakary2003]

Resurrecting this thread, so much good info here!
I have a very similar situation and need some help; no detectable nitrates, low phosphates, and sluggish and dying trochus and cerith snails. Nassarius snails seem fine. Some differences is I still have some diatoms or dinos on my sandbed, and this is happening in an macroalgae tank. I like a little bit of GHA since it looks natural, but I hate that it is overtaking my gorgonians and my pom pom macroalgae.

Current tank stats (40gal cube):
Temp: 77C
Salinity: 1.026
Ammonia and Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates: 0ppm (undetectable)
Phosphate: 0.02ppm
Alkalinity: 8.1ish
Calcium: 380
Magnesium: ~1300 (hard to tell with Salifert test kit IMO)

I've been manually removing the GHA every few weeks and siphoning the sand every once in a while when the diatoms/dinos start to get too brown. I dose 10mL NeoNitro and ~4mL ChaetoGro daily to help keep the nitrates up and support macroalgae outcompeting the GHA.

Would adding a sea hare help make an actual dent in this GHA growth? I don't really care if it eats some of the macroalgae since I have so much of it right now. Any help would be appreciated!

Picture for reference:

I didn't have much luck with a sea hare or lettuce slug. Taking everything out and scrubbing the algae off did me the most good. After that, urchin and hermits kept it under control pretty well, and the snails added to the help once I replaced them.

All I did was remove and scrub the rocks clean and reduce the light intensity as was recommended in this thread. It worked perfectly. I had to continue manual removal for a while, but it never got out of control again.