Been battling it for quite some time. Tank is full of acros that are doing great but the turf algae is making me want to tear down the tank and leave the hobby. I've tried every snail imaginable. None will touch it.
I've pulled all the rocks out of the tank and scrubbed them clean. It is very hard to remove so basically have to remove the outside layer of the rock to get it. It all comes back. Whenever I lower my nutrients and think I have a hold on it. I get dinos. Have dealt with 3 dino outbreaks in this process. Washed outside of rocks with peroxide and got them looking good. But it came back.
Honestly have no idea what to do at this point. Any input is appreciated.
One green algae grows out big enough to see, it's too big for the snails.
Pulling the rocks and scrubbing them is false progress – what you're really doing it priming the surface for new algae to settle.
Gotta learn the lesson on Dino's – stop trying to use nutrient levels as a control for algae. Algae are superior competitors for N&P than any of the critters we try to keep like corals. It's a lose-lose battle.
sorry for lack of information.
-Tank has been running 2 years. 125 gallon. 1 year with coral. Sat 1 year before I added any coral.
- I feed algae sheet and mysis cube daily
- hippo tang, scopas tang, small melanurus and sixline wrasse. 1 firefish
-Phosphate measures about .04 and nitrate around 10ppm.
- I use skimmer and waterchanges for export. I can get nutrients low and improve the algae but I get dino outbreaks so it always ends up with me raising nutrients to fight the dinos which makes the algae worse
-not currently dosing anything other than kalk, alk, mag and calcium
- clean up crew consists of trochus snails, astrea snails, 2 large turbo snails and a few cerith
- have not dosed any chemicals but I do run UV.
Here are some better pictures in 100% white light. Its not terrible right now because I scrubbed most rocks with a stainless steel wire brush a couple weeks ago.
I would ease up on the nori (even stop for a while) and see if the fish help out more on the rocks.
Agree with
@Hans-Werner to please allow PO4 ≥0.10 ppm. (NO3 ≥ 5 ppm)
Skimmer and water changes are fine, but stop doing water changes if N&P levels are already low.
For a tank this size, that's barely any CUC. For a heavy bioload with lots of algae, you might want upward of 2 Turbo snails
per gallon. Don't add that many at once, but
that gives you an idea as to how outmatched your CUC probably is. Especially more Turbos and more Astreas....add a mix of 5-6 at a time, but allow enough time to judge their progress before you add another batch.
How: Clean a spot (hopefully clean LOTS of spots), put a few snails right on that spot, and see if algae still comes back. If it does, the system still needs more snails.
Check the status of your UV. Still on? Bulb old or new? How is it installed? This algae spreads through the water, so it's not working well
if it's working at all. We might be able to tell you why if you can share more pics. :)
When it grows out it looks like a tradional turf algae but im not 100%. Under more blue lights it looks brown but it's green under natural light. I've had a little bit of GHA but fish got rid of that quickly.
CUC don't touch it. I've put rocks and snails in separate tank no type would touch it.
They won't....you'd have to try with your fish, but don't.
Here's some more pics. If it's not turf I have no idea what is it. The fact that nothing will eat it and it's incredibly hard to remove led me to belive it was turf algae.
I have 2 tangs ( scopas and blue hippo) 2 large turbos. 25+ astrea, trochus and cerith. 5 blue legged hermits. I also had 2 pitho crabs but had to pull them from the tank because they were messing with the corals. I've put different types of snails , some hermits and pitho crabs in a small qt tank with bad rock and they didn't do anything there either. I have had bits of green hair algae in the past but the tangs took care of that no problem. They dont touch this stuff even when its long.
Gonna pickup an urchin this weekend.
I would add a six-pack of Turbos and see how they do before "going nuclear" with an urchin.
I like urchins, but they can be bulldozers, even compared to turbo snails.
Green algae have "roots", so it's often difficult to remove – especially if it's growing on freshly scrubbed rock. Seriously, it would otherwise be growing much more weakly on an "under turf" of various periphyton.
Snails only have tongues, BTW, no teeth – so they have to lick up the algae. Consequently, they really only go after freshly sprouted algae....but they hunt for it 24/7 for it so when they have sufficient population, it's an excellent control. Their size is their weakness –
a reef has A LOT of surface area – so they make up for it in numbers....
