GHA and dosing nitrates

rueric

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Hi folks..

I'm at my wits end with trying to battle GHA.
For the past 4 months, I've been battle GHA. I'm looking to know if I should perhaps dose nitrates in an attempt to "balance" out my nutrients.
Here are the various things I have tried thus far:
- Weekly 30-40% water changes after scrubbing and pulling out the long one-inch strands
- Reduced feeding, only 1x a day
- Chemipure Elite (Has GFO)
- Reef Flux AND Flux RX
- Setting up a breeder box refugium
- Added lots of CUC, only to have them all die within a week. (Probably contributed to even more growth?)
- Peroxide 50/50 dips for rocks that can be moved out

Currently, I'm in my 2nd week of my 2nd fluc treatment, this time using Reef Flux. This does not appear to be having any impact on the GHA, it is still growing back, albeit slightly slowly.

As of last nights testing:
Alk: 7.8
Nitrate: 0.0
Phosphate: 0.06

At this point, what are my options, what should I try?
Should I try dosing Nitrates to see if that would reduce my phosphate, bring some balance to the tank, and pray it weakens the GHA?
OR, would it only serve to strengthen the GHA?
 

SPR1968

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I would look at your phosphate levels, as GHA ‘generally’ can use it as a food source and therefore give a false low reading

If it were me I would try something like rowaphos (I use a lot of it) or more of your GFO and it will remove any excess phosphate from the system and starve the GHA. Remember it needs changing when spent or it won’t work

Also look at what your adding, food types etc which may contain high phosphate levels.
 
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rueric

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I agree, I've been using Chemipure Elite as it contains some GFO to reduce my phosphates.
From what I've read, raising nitrates will also drive down phosphates as well.

The foods I feed are strictly hikari seaweed extreme pellets and once a week frozen mysis (rinsed with RODI water).
No dosing of anything else
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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I have a hard time seeing a scenario where dosing nitrate causes a decline in green hair algae unless you deplete something else, such as iron.

I’d address the dead clean up crew and why it happens before going after algae.
 

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Hi folks..

I'm at my wits end with trying to battle GHA.
For the past 4 months, I've been battle GHA. I'm looking to know if I should perhaps dose nitrates in an attempt to "balance" out my nutrients.
Here are the various things I have tried thus far:
- Weekly 30-40% water changes after scrubbing and pulling out the long one-inch strands
- Reduced feeding, only 1x a day
- Chemipure Elite (Has GFO)
- Reef Flux AND Flux RX
- Setting up a breeder box refugium
- Added lots of CUC, only to have them all die within a week. (Probably contributed to even more growth?)
- Peroxide 50/50 dips for rocks that can be moved out

Currently, I'm in my 2nd week of my 2nd fluc treatment, this time using Reef Flux. This does not appear to be having any impact on the GHA, it is still growing back, albeit slightly slowly.

As of last nights testing:
Alk: 7.8
Nitrate: 0.0
Phosphate: 0.06

At this point, what are my options, what should I try?
Should I try dosing Nitrates to see if that would reduce my phosphate, bring some balance to the tank, and pray it weakens the GHA?
OR, would it only serve to strengthen the GHA?
The reef aquarium is an ideal environment to grow algae. Brand new clean surfaces in a reef aquarium seem to be one of the best ways to start an algae culture. So, algae growth is normal. In your situation, the growth got out of control.

Grazing by snails and other animals is a good way to keep it under control. Physical and chemical means is certainly an option. Adjusting nitrate and phosphate levels in the water might be as effective as folk remedies. Algae can live and grow with low nitrate and phosphate concentrations.

A couple thoughts. Post pictures of the algae and let’s make sure exactly what is growing. The snail death is a bit troubling. I suppose you could have been unlucky, or maybe a tiny bit careless acclimating them. Snails should be easy to maintain when properly acclimated and fed. I would complete your latest attempt and then decide whether to fight on or restart the aquarium.
 
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rueric

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I have a hard time seeing a scenario where dosing nitrate causes a decline in green hair algae unless you deplete something else, such as iron.

I’d address the dead clean up crew and why it happens before going after algae.
I've never tried to problem-solve snail deaths before.. other then temp swings (which is not really a problem in my tank), what do I look out fo
Currently in the system, I have 1 trochus, 3 mexican turbos, a tuxedo urchin, various nassarius, and a couple of hermits (32G tank btw)
 

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I've never tried to problem-solve snail deaths before.. other then temp swings (which is not really a problem in my tank), what do I look out fo
Currently in the system, I have 1 trochus, 3 mexican turbos, a tuxedo urchin, various nassarius, and a couple of hermits (32G tank btw)
Can we see a full tank shot and an up close of the algae in white lights?
 

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Hi folks..

I'm at my wits end with trying to battle GHA.
For the past 4 months, I've been battle GHA. I'm looking to know if I should perhaps dose nitrates in an attempt to "balance" out my nutrients.
Here are the various things I have tried thus far:
- Weekly 30-40% water changes after scrubbing and pulling out the long one-inch strands
- Reduced feeding, only 1x a day
- Chemipure Elite (Has GFO)
- Reef Flux AND Flux RX
- Setting up a breeder box refugium
- Added lots of CUC, only to have them all die within a week. (Probably contributed to even more growth?)
- Peroxide 50/50 dips for rocks that can be moved out

Currently, I'm in my 2nd week of my 2nd fluc treatment, this time using Reef Flux. This does not appear to be having any impact on the GHA, it is still growing back, albeit slightly slowly.

As of last nights testing:
Alk: 7.8
Nitrate: 0.0
Phosphate: 0.06

At this point, what are my options, what should I try?
Should I try dosing Nitrates to see if that would reduce my phosphate, bring some balance to the tank, and pray it weakens the GHA?
OR, would it only serve to strengthen the GHA?
I had the same thing happen in my large system for the past year. Started with 400 pounds of dry rock and ~70 pounds of live rock. The battle with GHA went on for probly about 6 months and I lost hundreds of snails in the process (turbos and astreaes). They wouldn’t eat the stuff either for the most part and if they did I assume it was what was killing them. I correlated their death with either ammonia (never tested this) or the GHA being toxic. I think also that the GHA could have actually been Lyngbya.

What worked for me was maturing my rock. I started dosing kalkwasser to increase ph and promote corraline growth. In addition I started scrubbing my rocks with a tooth brush weekly and did this for probly 3 months (a tall task in a 500 gallon display). With each scrub it allowed the corraline and other microfauna to colonize the rock just a little more each time. At the one year mark my tank is finally 95% clear of GHA. Increasing flow and blowing detritus off the rock work weekly with a power head should also help.

I was where you were, at my wits end, but kept on with the scrubbing and making the environment more suitable for other competitors.

I would encourage you to bring down nutrients instead of increase. Also, adding some live rock direct from the ocean could help with your microfauna.
 

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YOU PROBABLY DO NOT HAVE GHA. You have lynbya which is a bacteria. IT LOOKS JUST LIKE GHA. Please don't keep throwing CUC's at this like everyone will tell you. I can't even begin to imagine how many CUC's have been killed by the bad advice on this topic. PLEASE DON'T GO OUT AND BUY A SEA HARE, URCHIN, OR LAWNMOWER BLENNY ETC. ETC. LIKE EVERYONE.
I won't give you any advice on how to rid this from your tank as I am also battling lynbya, and I don't have a definitive answer.
 
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rueric

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Pictures as requested! I’ll take a look at lynbya..

49EC3302-3F1C-4166-8472-5CDC73E4CF82.jpeg 2DD5EA1C-AD9B-42A3-AB3D-C82EA4B22FBD.jpeg 94BB4C30-3D47-4C49-960F-AFA7FD84E7AE.jpeg

The places where you dont see the algae growing is because i used peroxide dip
 
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rueric

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Maybe I should just start dosing peroxide...

One other thing to note as I continue to look into lyngbya..

When I do my weekly scrubbing/pulling, this stuff does indeed have roots to it, so I'm not sure, is this a characteristic of lyngbya or GHA still?
 
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ryshark

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Maybe I should just start dosing peroxide...

One other thing to note as I continue to look into lyngbya..

When I do my weekly scrubbing/pulling, this stuff does indeed have roots to it, so I'm not sure, is this a characteristic of lyngbya or GHA still?
I don't think lyngbya has any root and it can't be "pulled" off with fingers, but it can easily be blasted off with a turkey baster, leaving no root behind.
I also don't think that lyngbya is that green, however, the texture of the algae/bacteria looks very similar in your pictures to whatever caused my reboot.
 

rmorris_14

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It took me 5ish months to clear mine up. From what I have read, once it has been a problem for awhile, the phosphates start to bind to the rocks and sand. So even when you remove the algae, the phosphate leech back into the water and continue to feed the algae. I would guess your phosphates are much higher than the test reading you are getting, but the GHA is absorbing them so it isn't being reflected on the test. I tried 5 months of vibrant before I learned what it actually was and discontinued use. It wasn't really working like it said it would always. My GHA was mostly on my rocks. The only thing that worked for me was removing the rocks one week at a time (but you could do it more frequently). Scrubbing off the algae with a steel brush (like seriously scrubbing the crap out of them and getting in all the nooks the best I could). Then spraying/ painting H202 onto the rock. let it sit for 3 to 5minutes and then rinse it off and put it back. I also upped my CUC and started dosing phyto. I would also recommend to start vacuuming your sand during water changes. If you haven't done it in a while, do small sections overtime. In the end no quick fixes work for me. It was manual removal OUTSIDE of the tank combined with H202 and it wasn't fun. You can find threads on "rip clean". Also consider your lighting and whether or not you are running whites too high for too long and if your tank is near a window getting any natural light. Both of those can also contribute to the problem.
 
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vetteguy53081

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I'll look into it, willing to try anything at this point.

@vetteguy53081 - I think you're the resident pest expert.. any guidance for me here?
This is wire or turf algae which is a little tougher to remove. You can try pressing down on it with your thumb and try to peel it off. If no success, remove rock and place in container of tank water and scrub with a firm toothbrush or similar and return to tank
To finish cleaning, add pitho crab, emerald crab female, astrea snail, pencil urchin and 12 carribean blue leg hermits
 
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rueric

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This is wire or turf algae which is a little tougher to remove. You can try pressing down on it with your thumb and try to peel it off. If no success, remove rock and place in container of tank water and scrub with a firm toothbrush or similar and return to tank
To finish cleaning, add pitho crab, emerald crab female, astrea snail, pencil urchin and 12 carribean blue leg hermits
Thanks for the guidance, the last emerald crab I got try and tackle this ~4 weeks ago died, along with the other stuff i bought. Did not include pitho crab or astrea snails.

What do you suggest doing for the back wall?
I suspect the brushing in the tank is causing the spores to float around and grow on everything else so I'll stop doing in-tank scrubs immediately.
 
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rueric

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It took me 5ish months to clear mine up. From what I have read, once it has been a problem for awhile, the phosphates start to bind to the rocks and sand. So even when you remove the algae, the phosphate leech back into the water and continue to feed the algae. I would guess your phosphates are much higher than the test reading you are getting, but the GHA is absorbing them so it isn't being reflected on the test. I tried 5 months of vibrant before I learned what it actually was and discontinued use. It wasn't really working like it said it would always. My GHA was mostly on my rocks. The only thing that worked for me was removing the rocks one week at a time (but you could do it more frequently). Scrubbing off the algae with a steel brush (like seriously scrubbing the crap out of them and getting in all the nooks the best I could). Then spraying/ painting H202 onto the rock. let it sit for 3 to 5minutes and then rinse it off and put it back. I also upped my CUC and started dosing phyto. I would also recommend to start vacuuming your sand during water changes. If you haven't done it in a while, do small sections overtime. In the end no quick fixes work for me. It was manual removal OUTSIDE of the tank combined with H202 and it wasn't fun. You can find threads on "rip clean". Also consider your lighting and whether or not you are running whites too high for too long and if your tank is near a window getting any natural light. Both of those can also contribute to the problem.
I am seeing good results with my last h202 dip for the smaller rocks. I think i'll need to take a similar approach to my main rock structure which is all glued together. It's going to be a PITA because I do have a single frogspawn mounted using glue+putty on it...
 
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