Gha comes back every 2 weeks

[saullman]

My lfs is going to rent me a sea hare. After he eats the algae I can return him. Then I was going to follow-up with nopox, but I have never used it before and was told to be very careful. I do have a good Tunze skimmer. So I have a few questions about nopox.

1- Is it safe on corals, fish, and inverts?
2-How much should I use in a 45 gal JBJ aio? I was told to use less than what is recommended.
3-Do I still do water changes while using nopox. I am currently doing them every other week.
4-What else do I need to know about using nopox?

 

[road_runner]

What's your system details?
No3 po4 kh, ph,
What's your filtration?
Skimmer, sump?, carbon? Gfo?
How old your system?

 

[ello42]

My lfs is going to rent me a sea hare. After he eats the algae I can return him. Then I was going to follow-up with nopox, but I have never used it before and was told to be very careful. I do have a good Tunze skimmer. So I have a few questions about nopox.

1- Is it safe on corals, fish, and inverts?
2-How much should I use in a 45 gal JBJ aio? I was told to use less than what is recommended.
3-Do I still do water changes while using nopox. I am currently doing them every other week.
4-What else do I need to know about using nopox?

Use 2ml per day of nopox yes you can do wc every other week while using nopox my personal opinion is i had the same problem the only thing i did was to remove my substrate and run bare bottom and stil use nopox 2 months later no gha in fact no algea the only thing i get is a slight haze every 3-5days on the glass

 

[ello42]

My lfs is going to rent me a sea hare. After he eats the algae I can return him. Then I was going to follow-up with nopox, but I have never used it before and was told to be very careful. I do have a good Tunze skimmer. So I have a few questions about nopox.

1- Is it safe on corals, fish, and inverts?
2-How much should I use in a 45 gal JBJ aio? I was told to use less than what is recommended.
3-Do I still do water changes while using nopox. I am currently doing them every other week.
4-What else do I need to know about using nopox?

Few things more check your PO4 and NO3 keep it very low and turn you intensity of our light to 50% or run blue or royal blue led or T5 not sure what fixture you have i have found that white is a waist of time your coloration and growth of your coral will take off when running blue or royal blue saying that running blue and keeping your PO4 and NO3 with bare bottom = no algea i couldnt keep sps in my tank and since two months ago my sps i got is thriving

 

[SPR1968]

My lfs is going to rent me a sea hare. After he eats the algae I can return him. Then I was going to follow-up with nopox, but I have never used it before and was told to be very careful. I do have a good Tunze skimmer. So I have a few questions about nopox.

1- Is it safe on corals, fish, and inverts?
2-How much should I use in a 45 gal JBJ aio? I was told to use less than what is recommended.
3-Do I still do water changes while using nopox. I am currently doing them every other week.
4-What else do I need to know about using nopox?

I doubt the sea hare will eat that length algae, but you never know and it’s certainly worth a try

Firstly you need to test you parameters in particular nitrate and phosphate and try and decide what’s causing the algae to grow. Phosphate may be very low and being used as food by the algae and is something to check.

Nopox won’t directly kill off the algae, it will reduce the nutrient levels, but primarily nitrate, much less so phosphate so depending on the issue it may or may not be appropriate as you don’t want to drive nitrate to zero or you could have other worse issues.

I’m guessing it’s probably an issue with phosphate so read up on GFO for example as a means of phosphate removal and control. There are other methods as well. I use a combination of Nopox and Rhowaphos Also check your using 0 TDS RODI water for your water changes as this is vital to avoid introducing nutrients into the system

But to answer your questions:

1- Is it safe on corals, fish, and inverts? Yes it’s safe, it’s basically carbon dosing which you can read up on

2-How much should I use in a 45 gal JBJ aio? I was told to use less than what is recommended. Just follow the instructions and if you prefer start at 50% of the recommended dose and then increase by 1ml per day every week until Nitrate falls, IF indeed you decide to use Nopox

3-Do I still do water changes while using nopox. I am currently doing them every other week. Yes you can continue water changes

4-What else do I need to know about using Nopox? You need to set the skimmer to ‘wet skim’ to use it effectively

 

[road_runner]

I would not dose nopox jist to get rid of algae. Unless you want to commit to nopox.
You will dose nopox, it will bring down your no3, possibly po4. (If you bring it down too fast you might shock the coral so make sure you read how to use nopox on mature thanks). Also calculate the dosage from redsea Manuel do not just take somone dosing suggestion since it's very system volume dependent.

Assuming the above went peacefully, Algae will possibly go away cause of low nutrient. Then once you stop nopox, whatever was fueling the algae still exaist, algae will come back more.
I advice you first figure out what's fueling algae.. is it over feeding? Is it filtiration inadequate?..etc
Test parameters so you know where you are.
Be diligent with water change and husbandry.
Reduce feeding if possible.
Skim wet.
Add good gfo and good activated carbon..
Add urchins and snails. Urchins are good for these type of algae.
The more yoir system mature and maintained the less these algae appear.

Then treat the source rather than hid the symptoms with nopox.

Unless if you read about redsea nopox and you like the program, that's a diffrent story. You can use it and commit. But do not use it for short term, cause stopping nopox after long term usage have caused issues to many people.
I ran redsea program for 2 years, it was actually not very good for me. But that's a story for other post.

 

[EmptyWallet]

SPR1968 is 100% spot on.

GHA is generally fuelled by phosphate not nitrate, so GFO as opposed to NoPox will yield better results. Get good test kits to monitor Phosphate and Nitrate and watch it daily.

I used 50% of what the daily recommendation is on the NoPox box and it still smashed nitrates to near zero in a few days.

I also got rid of my sandbed which I believe made a big difference in nutrient control

 

[EmptyWallet]

oh and just in case you didn't already know, you can't pull out a sandbed in one go. You need to go very slowly (I did about 10% a week for 10 ten weeks) to avoid removing too much beneficial bacteria too quickly.

 

[Reefthedayaway]

Probably feeding too much or it's getting to much light. What's your feeding & lighting schedule? What age is your tank?

 

[Reefthedayaway]

Don't need to get rid of your sand bed either for a bit of green hair algae!! I would get a sandsifter and snails to keep it turnimg over.

 

[saullman]

What's your system details?
No3 po4 kh, ph,
What's your filtration?
Skimmer, sump?, carbon? Gfo?
How old your system?

Nitrates are consistently between 10-20 ppm (hard to tell with api test kit)
Phosphates always test at 0
PH= 7.8-8.0

I have a jbj 45 AIO with a Tunze skimmer. It's been running for almost 2 years.
For filtration I have a sock on 1 side and a filter pad on the other.
Not currently running any other media through system.

 

[saullman]

Few things more check your PO4 and NO3 keep it very low and turn you intensity of our light to 50% or run blue or royal blue led or T5 not sure what fixture you have i have found that white is a waist of time your coloration and growth of your coral will take off when running blue or royal blue saying that running blue and keeping your PO4 and NO3 with bare bottom = no algea i couldnt keep sps in my tank and since two months ago my sps i got is thriving

For lighting I am running an AI Prime HD. Here is what my schedule looks like.

 

[saullman]

I doubt the sea hare will eat that length algae, but you never know and it’s certainly worth a try

Firstly you need to test you parameters in particular nitrate and phosphate and try and decide what’s causing the algae to grow. Phosphate may be very low and being used as food by the algae and is something to check.

Nopox won’t directly kill off the algae, it will reduce the nutrient levels, but primarily nitrate, much less so phosphate so depending on the issue it may or may not be appropriate as you don’t want to drive nitrate to zero or you could have other worse issues.

I’m guessing it’s probably an issue with phosphate so read up on GFO for example as a means of phosphate removal and control. There are other methods as well. I use a combination of Nopox and Rhowaphos Also check your using 0 TDS RODI water for your water changes as this is vital to avoid introducing nutrients into the system

But to answer your questions:

1- Is it safe on corals, fish, and inverts? Yes it’s safe, it’s basically carbon dosing which you can read up on

2-How much should I use in a 45 gal JBJ aio? I was told to use less than what is recommended. Just follow the instructions and if you prefer start at 50% of the recommended dose and then increase by 1ml per day every week until Nitrate falls, IF indeed you decide to use Nopox

3-Do I still do water changes while using nopox. I am currently doing them every other week. Yes you can continue water changes

4-What else do I need to know about using Nopox? You need to set the skimmer to ‘wet skim’ to use it effectively

My phosphate level always test at 0 using salifert test kit
Nitrates are usually between 10-20 ppm (hard to tell with api kit)

Is rowaphos considered a gfo? I tried it before and nothing seemed to change, but maybe I wasn't using it correctly.

Also where can I get a inexpensive TDS meter? Funds are tight right now.

 

[saullman]

SPR1968 is 100% spot on.

GHA is generally fuelled by phosphate not nitrate, so GFO as opposed to NoPox will yield better results. Get good test kits to monitor Phosphate and Nitrate and watch it daily.

I used 50% of what the daily recommendation is on the NoPox box and it still smashed nitrates to near zero in a few days.

I also got rid of my sandbed which I believe made a big difference in nutrient control

I don't have any media reactors, but I do have some rowaphos. I tried it once with no luck, but maybe I didn't use enough or possibly didn't keep it in long enough???

 

[saullman]

Probably feeding too much or it's getting to much light. What's your feeding & lighting schedule? What age is your tank?

Tank is almost 2 years old.
I fed very light because I only have 2 small fish currently and a cleaner shrimp.
Lighting schedule is below:

 

[SPR1968]

You can get a TDS meter for very cheap, you don’t need anything expensive and it’s vital to know the quality of the water your using. It’s one of the basics of reef keeping and this could be a source of your issues.

Rhowaphos is GFO and is best used in a reactor. When you first use it you need to change it very frequently, maybe weekly, as it removes the phosphate which will be tied up in the system. If you don’t it won’t work as it will become exhausted. It won’t work very well in a bag or anything other than a reactor. It needs changing as soon as the phosphate level increases on the reactor output and a good target for phosphate is very low at 0.03ppm once you get everything sorted out.

As your nitrates are fine, I would suggest the cause of the problem is probably phosphate and whilst you can treat it with GFO, you need to find out and eliminate and major things that are raising it, or like me keep running rhowaphos 24/7.

You can probably leave Nopox for the time being as your nitrate levels seem fine.

 

[saullman]

Don't need to get rid of your sand bed either for a bit of green hair algae!! I would get a sandsifter and snails to keep it turnimg over.

I'm not getting rid of the sandbed.
What do you recommend for a sandsifter?
I have tried a sand sifting star in the past. Dead in 2 days.
I tried an urchin. Dead in 2 days.
With that being said, my system was a newer system at that point so I'm not sure if it was something that I did to kill them or another factor.

 

[SPR1968]

I'm not getting rid of the sandbed.
What do you recommend for a sandsifter?
I have tried a sand sifting star in the past. Dead in 2 days.
I tried an urchin. Dead in 2 days.
With that being said, my system was a newer system at that point so I'm not sure if it was something that I did to kill them or another factor.

You only want sand sifting starfish in well established systems with plenty of ‘food’ in the sandbed or they won’t survive, and shouldn’t ever be put in new systems

Urchins are excellent at eating algae etc and are my only choice nowadays instead of snails.

 

[Reefthedayaway]

I'm not getting rid of the sandbed.
What do you recommend for a sandsifter?
I have tried a sand sifting star in the past. Dead in 2 days.
I tried an urchin. Dead in 2 days.
With that being said, my system was a newer system at that point so I'm not sure if it was something that I did to kill them or another factor.

How old is your system? Going by the lighting schedule it doesn't seem like your tank is getting a lot of light. I'm no expert but I think not enough light can cause algae outbreaks just as much as too much light. Also I wouldn't waste my time anymore with rowaphos I've never had good results with it. I've been running cheap phosphate sponges for well over a year now and my po4 is never above 0.02. They are only about £4 each and they last for months. Also how much do you feed and what do you feed with?

 

[Jimbo662]

My parameters and light schedule was almost identical to yours. I'd been fighting GHA for about 5 months. A month to a month and a half ago I made a couple of changes and I've slowly got it under control and slowly going away. I had my light on for 12 hrs with them at max intensity for 6 hrs. I changed it to 10 hrs and max of 5 hrs. Added GFO. Each weekend I remove as much GHA as I can by hand then take a soft tooth brush and get as much off with that as possible. I replace one of my filter cups with a felt filter sock and put the end of my siphon hose in it and clean the sand. After that is done and everything is stirred up I let the system run for a couple of hours then change out the poly fill in the cups. I did have one rock that had it really bad and it was killing some zoas. It was hard to scrub this area with the tooth brush without harming the zoas so I removed it one and did a peroxide soak. I'm thinking another couple of weeks and it'll all be gone...crossing my fingers!