Hello all,
A little over a month ago, my live rock order from Tampa Bay Saltwater came in. The rock was fantastic, and for the most part remains fantastic. However, I've been having increasing algae issues I don't quite know how to handle.
The first week or so, the rock was doing fine. There was no sign of a cycle (zero ammonia spike) and the tank was algae free. About a week later, after I introduced some livestock from Indo-Pacific Sea farms (and put macros into the sump) I began to have some algae issues. Initially this was of course diatoms, although this shifted pretty quickly to green hair algae.
Managing the green hair algae was difficult, but I slowly managed to win the battle. I purchased online more CUC snails and the like from reefcleaners and algae barn, and even found a captive-bred yellow tang which has done a good job. In addition, I used a toothbrush on the rocks, and scraped the back wall (which had a quite furry carpet of hair algae in the center by the overflow). There are a few small tufts of GHA left on one rock - and ironically enough on some of the brown macros - but that battle has been won.
The problem is, after mostly defeating the GHA, dinos appear to be taking over the tank. There's stringy brown goop on everything. Not just the rocks, walls, and sand bed, but even on the xenia and urchin spines. It doesn't appear to be bad enough yet to actually have killed anything, but it's unsightly as hell.
Current FTS:
With the exception of the two orchid pseudochromis in the shot, and a small number of hardy corals, everything I've added has been for nutrient control. In terms of fish, I added the aforementioned yellow tang, a court jester goby, and just recently an eyespot blenny. I've added a red tuxedo urchin and many different kinds of algae-eating snails as well, albeit not in incredibly high densities as of yet.
I have been feeding, but not incredibly aggressively. I dose phyto just about every day for the filter feeders. For some reason my pseudochromis don't eat refrigerated arctipods, but they do like the bloodworms for my freshwater tanks, so I feed them that. Every other day I feed a rock flower anemone a frozen cube of mysis, and the rest get the leftovers. Possibly I should be feeding more, because I've heard dinos do worse in high nutrient tanks.
I have a fuge with chaeto, along with some other macros (ulva, red gracilaria). It doesn't appear to be working that well at nutrient export to be honest - I've even found some hair algae in it. Maybe it's because I am running it on 24-hour lights rather than reverse cycling from my display tank?
I am using RO/DI water with 0 TDS. I have to admit I have not been checking water parameters much as of yet, because I have yet to introduce any stony corals and the tank seemed cycled. I was using an ammonia alert tab to check for ammonia spikes during the cyles, and when I went break out the master kit this week to do testing, I realized the instructions were entirely missing. My freshwater kit shows about 5 PPM nitrates and a PH of about 8.3. I have new electronic tests coming in the mail from BRS to check my phosphate levels to see if that's an issue.
Some more shots:
Snot and bubbles all over the macros...
As I said, even the urchins are getting gunk on them. This guy was a hitchhiker, not purchased.
Any ideas?
A little over a month ago, my live rock order from Tampa Bay Saltwater came in. The rock was fantastic, and for the most part remains fantastic. However, I've been having increasing algae issues I don't quite know how to handle.
The first week or so, the rock was doing fine. There was no sign of a cycle (zero ammonia spike) and the tank was algae free. About a week later, after I introduced some livestock from Indo-Pacific Sea farms (and put macros into the sump) I began to have some algae issues. Initially this was of course diatoms, although this shifted pretty quickly to green hair algae.
Managing the green hair algae was difficult, but I slowly managed to win the battle. I purchased online more CUC snails and the like from reefcleaners and algae barn, and even found a captive-bred yellow tang which has done a good job. In addition, I used a toothbrush on the rocks, and scraped the back wall (which had a quite furry carpet of hair algae in the center by the overflow). There are a few small tufts of GHA left on one rock - and ironically enough on some of the brown macros - but that battle has been won.
The problem is, after mostly defeating the GHA, dinos appear to be taking over the tank. There's stringy brown goop on everything. Not just the rocks, walls, and sand bed, but even on the xenia and urchin spines. It doesn't appear to be bad enough yet to actually have killed anything, but it's unsightly as hell.
Current FTS:
With the exception of the two orchid pseudochromis in the shot, and a small number of hardy corals, everything I've added has been for nutrient control. In terms of fish, I added the aforementioned yellow tang, a court jester goby, and just recently an eyespot blenny. I've added a red tuxedo urchin and many different kinds of algae-eating snails as well, albeit not in incredibly high densities as of yet.
I have been feeding, but not incredibly aggressively. I dose phyto just about every day for the filter feeders. For some reason my pseudochromis don't eat refrigerated arctipods, but they do like the bloodworms for my freshwater tanks, so I feed them that. Every other day I feed a rock flower anemone a frozen cube of mysis, and the rest get the leftovers. Possibly I should be feeding more, because I've heard dinos do worse in high nutrient tanks.
I have a fuge with chaeto, along with some other macros (ulva, red gracilaria). It doesn't appear to be working that well at nutrient export to be honest - I've even found some hair algae in it. Maybe it's because I am running it on 24-hour lights rather than reverse cycling from my display tank?
I am using RO/DI water with 0 TDS. I have to admit I have not been checking water parameters much as of yet, because I have yet to introduce any stony corals and the tank seemed cycled. I was using an ammonia alert tab to check for ammonia spikes during the cyles, and when I went break out the master kit this week to do testing, I realized the instructions were entirely missing. My freshwater kit shows about 5 PPM nitrates and a PH of about 8.3. I have new electronic tests coming in the mail from BRS to check my phosphate levels to see if that's an issue.
Some more shots:
Snot and bubbles all over the macros...
As I said, even the urchins are getting gunk on them. This guy was a hitchhiker, not purchased.
Any ideas?
Last edited:
