How did you defeat the ugly phase?

[Ntvper]

I made the fatal mistake of not rinsing my sandbed when I started my tank. I think that's why I had it so bad when it came to the ugly phase and the sandbed.

Dude I’ve rinsed and rinsed and rinsed. Had that it’s gotta run clear before it goes into tank…… sand has silicates sorry. Then there’s that quality comes in but guess what sand has silicates……stupid nature

 

[vpierce3]

I start with at least half of my rock being established/live. I use live sand with a 1” deep bed. I mix all new salt water with RODI. Never use tap! Turn lighting only half way up for first month, then slowly ramp up to the par you want. Buy good quality lights; this isn’t the place to cheap out. Make sure your tank has enough flow; very important to avoid dead spots. Use good quality bacteria like microbacter7 or Dr Tim’s One and Only. After a month add several types of copepods and feed them with phyto to start/reinforce the biodiversity needed to stabilize the tank.
Consider a nice sized refugium with pods and other critters in it. I have rock rubble on the bottom of my refugium sitting on egg crate so there are no dead spots. The cheato is floating in the water over that with a good quality refugium light.
Patiently add fish slowly. Your tank is an ecosystem….don’t shock it. Add a fish or two, give your tank a couple weeks to adjust, check parameters, add another fish or two, repeat.
Every time I have ever done something fast in this hobby, I’ve regretted it.
Add cuc conservatively. Only add as you see a need after the initial ugly stage has run its course. That way you don’t get a cuc die-off from starvation later on.
Initially, the ugly stage (brown algae, then green (not GHA)) is the tank cycling or achieving biological balance. If this ugly phase prolongs more than a few months or develops into GHA, Cyano or Dinos; that is usually the tank reacting to a mistake we made or trying to rush the process.

 

[reeftankdude]

Walmart distilled water and no lights for the first three months.

 

[Koty]

I differentiate between cycle algae which comes and eventually goes as the tank matures, and algae in a mature tank. For the latter, my scopas tang does an excellent job on rear glass &rock GHA with some help from bicolor blenny and sand sifting gobby that prevents cyano build up. I do have cyano in my refuge, valonia in my tank, and pieces of cheato sticking to rock and growing in my DT but I don't think it's an issue. I use all export methods (skimmer chaeto carbon tlf carbon beads reactor), and I dose KZ sponge power which is probably some silicon in acetic acid.

 

[ReefGeezer]

I did it all... chemicals, BS bottles of what I though was magic bacteria, blackout, carbon dosing, huge clean-up crews, UV, Algae Scrubbers, and etc.. Nothing worked. The offending ugly always went away only to return or be replaced by something else later. I decided to take the long term approach... manual removal, creation of better nutrient processing pathways, and waiting it out. It is working, but slowly.

 

[Freenow54]

Waiting it out so far is in decline. Want to follow this as I am not a doser

 

[SlugSnorter]

This is my newest upload. It’s a 30 second YouTube Short of my new tiger conch snail, Carlos. My previous conch snail, Alberto, died recently and my sandbed has suffered ever since. I had a light dusting of cyano pop up (and now a Dino outbreak, but that was for different reasons), and I soon realized the importance of conch snails in my reef. I defeated the last phase of cyano several months back by deploying one of these conch snails. It’s easily one of the best purchases I have ever made. But I want to hear from you. How did you defeat the ugly phase? I included a poll for you can vote, and made it unlimited choices, because some people may have had multiple factors that ended your ugly phase.

I would appreciate if you gave my video a like, subscribed to my channel, and commented on my video. Let me know you came from R2R! My channel is really starting to get a lot of traction over the past few uploads, and I want to continue to push these uploads out to more and more reefers. The best way you can support my channel is simply viewing my videos. I spend many many hours making some of these videos, so I encourage you to check out some of my previous uploads! Trying to reach my goal of gaining 100 subscribers by the end of February, and it’d make my day if you express your support for I can continue to make these uploads for you guys!

Channel link (go subscribe!):

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCEWCIj6yc7Goxg-ez80CbuA

Fully beat the dinos only for GHA to show up, drop my nutrients, and bring them back

 

[SlugSnorter]

small conch/large cerith.