Help! Ugly Brown phase for 10 months now!!! Video Attached.

STOmaha · May 18, 2021

Hello, Twenty years ago when I did my first reef tank with Live Rock it was perfect from week 4 moving on. But this dry rock has me perplexed!

I have a non-stop ugly brown or snot green hair algae phase. I've tried Reef Flux RX, I've tried scrubbing the rock, I do 20% water change every two weeks, I have UV, I have a skimmer, I tried Mexican Turbos but they can't keep up. The tank has another weird cycle where it gets milky cloudy every 3-5 weeks and the while UV will help, it's super weird.

I'm now dosing some "Seachem Seed" to see if that will help, I don't want to do Vibrant as I have a bunch of Macro Algae in a refugium. Thoughts?

I have some flat rock stacked back against the glass wall that could be providing a very slow flow/decomposition areas that might be giving me some trouble as well.

Here's a reddit link with my video if it doesn't play below. ()

Thanks!

MnFish1 · May 18, 2021

Do you know your parameters? Unfortunately cannot see the video. Do you have any corals, etc. The cloudy water sounds like bacterial blooms. do you have a high stocking density, feed too much. too much light? One solution is to seed the tank with something that will take over from the 'uglies'. Depending on your calcium and alkalinity, something like coralline algae (you can get a seeding bottle) may help. Also - a refugium - with algae, etc. Do you use carbon (black carbon), a skimmer? etc?

dvgyfresh · May 18, 2021

Need a microscope for ID, looks almost like turf algae or cyano ? I think you should put some macro algae like a lot into the tank to bring competition to the algae , also some bacteria to help bring down nutrients/ reduce light for a couple of days but need microscope ID to really confirm the next steps