Got an issue and a question

[cruzersmith]

So I’ve been holding off on corals because it appears I’m coming out of a second ugly phase on my 9 month old tank. See attached pics of yesterday after cleaning and today 24 hrs later. My light needs to be at 50% to give me 175 to 150 par at the top to 80 to 90 at the lowest. When ugly showed up I cut light back to 30% and it took almost 2 months to resolve. I upped light to 35% and ugly came back but took 3 to 4 weeks to resolve to what you see. 1st question, should I increase lighting slowly another 5% or bite the bullet and go to my beginner coral level of 50% and start adding corals. 2nd question right before ugly started receding I started having PH issue with it dropping from 8 to 7.8 and 7.79 setting off alarms. 37 gallon with 4 gallon hob sump. Phos. .03, Nitrate 3.8, DKh 8.0, PH 7.91 as of yesterday. Best pics I could get holding a pair of blue blocker sun glasses over camera lens

 

[Jamie9]

I think it's hard to say exactly the best approach on these things. But I wonder if getting some "easy corals" in there might actually help you stabilize things a bit. Or something like a refugium. Currently there doesn't appear to be a lot of things living in your tank, so I imagine any spare nutrients will happily be gobbled up by "the uglies".

I applaud your willpower being able to go that slow and steady though!!!

 

[cruzersmith]

Hey thanks. Well I had to add some turbo snails after things got really ugly the first time and they did help. I have 2 clowns, a purple fire goby and a yellow watchman goby with a fire shrimp and a Royal gramma that after a tank cleaning over 2 weeks ago I haven’t seen since. There was a lot of growth on the rocks alittle over a week ago but the snails removed most and it hasn’t come back.

 

[Tahoe61]

Are you still using HOB filtration?
What brand of lighting?
At this point in your tanks evolution I wouldn't give those pH values a second thought.
When you say uglies are you referring to a green algae or diatoms?
Yes I would begin to increase the fixtures intensity.

 

[cruzersmith]

Light is maxspect jump mj-l290. I am currently in the process of switching to a sump as there is just not a lot of room for the floss pre filtering. The process being finding a vessel small enough to fit in the stand and testing siphon overflows as I can’t drill this existing system. I had both diatoms and green hair algae in the first ugly phase. After that disappeared and I increased light the brown what appears to be diatoms showed up. I was thinking about getting a microscope if this hangs around to see exactly what it is but will wait to see.

 

[RobertK]

Did you look in the sump for your royal gramma? Mine was MIA for 2 months before I found it in the overflow!

 

[cruzersmith]

No way it could get there. It uses a “U” tube with a strainer for input. Dead or alive it’s in the rockwork.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I'm not sure what the question is exactly, I don't see any algae in the tank. Personally I would not mess with the lighting schedule, to me lighting is set it and forget it. Both corals and algae need the same lighting, so if the lighting is too low for algae to grow, then I would not add corals, the lighting will not be sufficient. I would fix the lighting, and then get corals to out compete any algae.

 

[cruzersmith]

I'm not sure what the question is exactly, I don't see any algae in the tank. Personally I would not mess with the lighting schedule, to me lighting is set it and forget it. Both corals and algae need the same lighting, so if the lighting is too low for algae to grow, then I would not add corals, the lighting will not be sufficient. I would fix the lighting, and then get corals to out compete any algae.

My fear is if I boost the lights up to the level needed for corals will the diatoms take off again like before and kill off any corals I would have placed.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

My fear is if I boost the lights up to the level needed for corals will the diatoms take off again like before and kill off any corals I would have placed.

Diatoms don't kill corals and they very rarely show up in established tanks. They feed on silicates only, so if you have diatoms then you are adding silicates to the system somehow. Are you using tap water or rodi water? Are the rodi filters clean?

I suspect you may have misidentified the algae, I suspect you might have had dino's, and the dino's will stay away as long as you have the lights low, but you have to identify what type of algae or dino you have and then deal with it, dino's are bad stuff.

 

[Jamie9]

If you are worried about it, another thing you could consider is getting some copepods going in your tank. Not sure if you have a spot for a refugium or even just somewhere to stash some live rock, but if you can get a population of them going...should at least help with any diatoms or dinos (and don't let your nutrients bottom out.)

 

[ScottJ]

I am currently in the process of switching to a sump as there is just not a lot of room for the floss pre filtering. The process being finding a vessel small enough to fit in the stand and testing siphon overflows as I can’t drill this existing system.

You should look into LifeReef overflows.
https://www.lifereef.com/siphon.html

Very good products that are worth the cost.

 

[cruzersmith]

Diatoms don't kill corals and they very rarely show up in established tanks. They feed on silicates only, so if you have diatoms then you are adding silicates to the system somehow. Are you using tap water or rodi water? Are the rodi filters clean?

I suspect you may have misidentified the algae, I suspect you might have had dino's, and the dino's will stay away as long as you have the lights low, but you have to identify what type of algae or dino you have and then deal with it, dino's are bad stuff.

Yes, my bad I meant Dino’s but said diatoms. Everything accept the tank and hob sump are new (9 mo.) with 7 stage RO all new. Doubt there are silicates being added. Thanks