- Joined
- May 3, 2019
- Messages
- 55
- Reaction score
- 39
I seem to be losing the battle against this "stuff" in my tank! Tank is a 3 month old LPS/softies tank with 2 clowns and cleanup crew consisting of crabs, turbo, cerith, and nassarius snails. Has Marco dry rock and Caribsea Fiji Pink substrate. Running an HOB protein skimmer for filtration and no direct light from windows. I haven't seen any bubbles in the diatoms/cyano/whatever it is and 80% of it disappears at night only to fully reappear a couple of hours after the lights come on. Its been bad like in the pics for the past 2 months. Only seems to really be affecting my zoas, as they are closing up more often than usual until I blow them off with a turkey baster then they open fully until the stuff comes back. I did a 3 day blackout while running my skimmer wet which seemed to knock it back for a couple of days then it came right back in full force. I have reduced my lights to 7 hours, increased flow with a Nero 5 (which made my corals happier), increased water changes to 10% every 2 weeks vs every 3 weeks, decreased feeding slightly, started running my skimmer more wet, and threw in a UV sterilizer. This has had NO effect on it. At first I tried leaving it alone, figuring I was in the "ugly stage", then I got tired of it and started blowing the rocks and substrate with a turkey baster daily for 3 days straight which filled up the skimmer with brown/dark green waste. When I do this, the rocks and substrate look perfect the rest of the day, then the next day after a couple of hours of lights the stuff comes back in full force! My LFS suggested Chemiclean if "all else fails" but I hate to resort to using chemicals unless I have to. Any ideas?
pH: 8
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 5 ppm
pH: 8
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 5 ppm