It’s killing my coral, NEED HELP

[Kasrift]

Looking at your old thread you got some less than choice advice. For starters, a 25 gallon is fine for a tuxedo urchin, especially with that much algae. Secondly, you posted your nutrients at 50 nitrates and 1 phosphates (I know this was awhile ago), you need to identify why they are so high. With so little livestock, at those levels with that algae, either you are way overfeeding, using tap water not RODI, or something else. You need more clean up crew. Get a conch, get 10 different snails, a few emeralds and see what happens. Remove what you can manually.

 

[Chris_Noles]

Looking at your old thread you got some less than choice advice. For starters, a 25 gallon is fine for a tuxedo urchin, especially with that much algae. Secondly, you posted your nutrients at 50 nitrates and 1 phosphates (I know this was awhile ago), you need to identify why they are so high. With so little livestock, at those levels with that algae, either you are way overfeeding, using tap water not RODI, or something else. You need more clean up crew. Get a conch, get 10 different snails, a few emeralds and see what happens. Remove what you can manually.

Thanks, I will test my phosphates and nitrates and keep you posted. As for the RODI, thats the only water I use, I do buy it from my LFS though. For clean up crew I have 3 hermits, 1 Astera and 1 Mexican Turbo. None of these guys will touch whatever is on my rocks though.

 

[Timfish]

System is about 2 years old, I used dry rock and sand. I do a 5 gallon water change every month.

I would overhaul your tank at this point. To start I would make up 10 -15 gallons of new saltwater and let it age a day or two with small water or air pumps. Using a tooth brush or small scrub brush I'd pull out the rock, scrub off the algae in a new saltwater then set in abucket of aquarium water. Once all the rock has been removed and scrubbed siphon off the algae and whatever sand comes with it, it can be cleaned with H2O2, rinsed and returned after drying for a day or two. Once the top layer of sand and algae has been removed you can re- aquascape your tank. On a continueing basis do 20% - 30% water change monthly (I like to do small weekly ater chagnes adding up to 20% - 30%) Water chages are essential as they remove Dissolved Organic Carbon, DOC, that builds up in systems and is not removed with carbon or skimmers.

You will need to get some good algae eaters, a Sallylightfoot crab, Tuxedo urchin and/or thin strip hermits would be my choices.

I would srtonlgy encourage you to get some quality maricultured live rock and also suggest some live sand (aquabiomics is a good source). TBS, KP Aquatics or GiulfLiveROck all have good live rock. You don't need much to itnrtoduce sponges and other stuff beneficial to reef systems that can't be cultured and stuck in a bottle.

Here's some links on establisihing healthy microbiomes:

Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock

About this article This article describes an experiment documenting the effects of live rock in a newly established aquarium. While I’ve tried to tell the story as briefly as I can, it’s the story of a month-long study of replicated tanks, with analysis of both water chemistry and the microbial...

www.reef2reef.com

BActeria and Sponges


Maintenance of Coral Reef Health (refferences at the end)


15 Answers

 

[Chris_Noles]

I would overhaul your tank at this point. To start I would make up 10 -15 gallons of new saltwater and let it age a day or two with small water or air pumps. Using a tooth brush or small scrub brush I'd pull out the rock, scrub off the algae in a new saltwater then set in abucket of aquarium water. Once all the rock has been removed and scrubbed siphon off the algae and whatever sand comes with it, it can be cleaned with H2O2, rinsed and returned after drying for a day or two. Once the top layer of sand and algae has been removed you can re- aquascape your tank. On a continueing basis do 20% - 30% water change monthly (I like to do small weekly ater chagnes adding up to 20% - 30%) Water chages are essential as they remove Dissolved Organic Carbon, DOC, that builds up in systems and is not removed with carbon or skimmers.

You will need to get some good algae eaters, a Sallylightfoot crab, Tuxedo urchin and/or thin strip hermits would be my choices.

I would srtonlgy encourage you to get some quality maricultured live rock and also suggest some live sand (aquabiomics is a good source). TBS, KP Aquatics or GiulfLiveROck all have good live rock. You don't need much to itnrtoduce sponges and other stuff beneficial to reef systems that can't be cultured and stuck in a bottle.

Here's some links on establisihing healthy microbiomes:

Establishing a Healthy Microbiome in a New Aquarium Using Live Rock

About this article This article describes an experiment documenting the effects of live rock in a newly established aquarium. While I’ve tried to tell the story as briefly as I can, it’s the story of a month-long study of replicated tanks, with analysis of both water chemistry and the microbial...

www.reef2reef.com

BActeria and Sponges


Maintenance of Coral Reef Health (refferences at the end)


15 Answers

Thanks @Timfish , I did a procedure like this less than a year ago and my tank looked solir for a month ago and then went back to look awful. I did use “live sand” in the beginning but it was that Caribsea sand from amazon. I started my tank initially with the bottled bacteria and was able to get some pineapple sponges but they all disappeared. Last thing I want to do is completely teardown the tank again, because at that point I would completely restart the entire tank with new sand, rock and live stock.

 

[Aqua Man]

I’ll try another blackout, this algae usually comes back in a day or 2 after

Looks like green cyano bacteria. After the blackout, did you do a large water Change? Killing the cyano and leaving it the tank is not good.

 

[Chris_Noles]

Looks like green cyano bacteria. After the blackout, did you do a large water Change? Killing the cyano and leaving it the tank is not good.

Hey man, no I did not. That might be an issue lol, I’ll give that a shot and post my current parameters ASAP

 

[Kasrift]

Thanks, I will test my phosphates and nitrates and keep you posted. As for the RODI, thats the only water I use, I do buy it from my LFS though. For clean up crew I have 3 hermits, 1 Astera and 1 Mexican Turbo. None of these guys will touch whatever is on my rocks though.

That is too few, and you are right, once it gets to this Armageddon level they don't touch it. It will need some manual intervention to trim it down. Two snails for a 25 gallon isn't cutting it though. I have a 32 gallon with 5 trochus, 5 astrea, 5+ lightning dove snails, 4 cerith, one strawberry conch, a tuxedo urchin, and one bumble bee snail with two hitchhikers that I forget, one Mexican turbo, 5 nassarius, and whatever colonista snails there are. I don't have massive algae problems like you, but they are fine and keep things clean.

 

[Kasrift]

Other things to do, on your other thread at the time you stated you did a 5 gallon water change once a month. I'd change that to weekly. Add some microbactor clean and follow the instructions, it is bacteria and will take four weeks to even notice a difference, but it is worth it. 5 ml daily, just put it as part of your routine.

 

[Timfish]

I don't see why you would completely tear down the tank and start over when you have animals and a lot of the microbial stuff already going. You just need to give the corals a hand up by reducing the algae and shifting the microbial processes so they benefit corals and not algae. When I'm contacted to remdiate a tank even large tanks (200-300) only take 2-3 hours.

Algae and corals compete with each other and cryptic sponges moderate the processes by removing labile DOC (and they remove it a lot faster than bacterioplankton). Here's some links:


"Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" This video compliments Rohwer's book of the same title (Paper back is ~$20, Kindle is ~$10), both deal with the conflicting roles of the different types of DOC in reef ecosystems. While there is overlap bewteen his book and the video both have information not covered by the other and together give a broader view of the complex relationships found in reef ecosystems


Maintenance of Coral Reef Health (refferences at the end)


BActeria and Sponges

 

[Chris_Noles]

Other things to do, on your other thread at the time you stated you did a 5 gallon water change once a month. I'd change that to weekly. Add some microbactor clean and follow the instructions, it is bacteria and will take four weeks to even notice a difference, but it is worth it. 5 ml daily, just put it as part of your routine.

Sounds like a plan, I’ll up the clean up crew and water changes. I have dosed microbactor to get rid of bubble algae (along with Razor). I’ll post my parameters in here ASAP

 

[Chris_Noles]

As mentioned here are my phosphate and nitrate parameters both seem really high. Nitrites and Ammonia are 0, I can test alkalinity and calcium if needed as well.

 

[Chris_Noles]

Zooming in on your pics it almost looks like byropsis.. need some better pics under white lights to be exact.

Here are some better pics of the algae

 

[Reefing Reefer]

Here are some better pics of the algae

What type of rock is that?

 

[salty_dawg]

I set up a tank for my mom a while back she maintained it great for a while corals did well and she let it go aptasia and ghA very thick . She gave the tank to my son because she was overwhelmed. So we took it home set it up and then we took out all the rock and scrubbed it used f aptasia to blast those away and changed lighting to more blue. I also added a refugium light and chaeto, from my understanding chaeto does chemical warfare on other algae kind of like corals do and it also out competes them for nutrients . So hopefully it doesn’t come back tank looks good for now if I run into more issues uv next step

 

[Chris_Noles]

What type of rock is that?

Just regular dry rock

 

[salty_dawg]

Just regular dry rock

Your nitrates and phosphates are elevated what spectrum light are you running ? A white light with red and green in the spectrum will grow algae with elevated levels of po4 no3

 

[Chris_Noles]

Your nitrates and phosphates are elevated what spectrum light are you running ? A white light with red and green in the spectrum will grow algae with elevated levels of po4 no3

I have an AI Hydra 52 only running 5% white lights, blue, dark blue and UV spectrum I can post my exact lighting later. I dont run green/red light at all though

 

[CK00020]

Some of the algae looks like bryopsis, didn’t you run flux a while back? Probably came back

 

[Chris_Noles]

Some of the algae looks like bryopsis, didn’t you run flux a while back? Probably came back

Here is a close up pic, i’ve ran flux twice in this tank so far.

 

[CK00020]

Other than the spikes, it just looks like film algae on new rock. I get the same when I throw some in the sump till it gets covered in coralline.