Losing battle with turf algae.

[OMGdavid]

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.

 

[OMGdavid]

Typo in post. Supposed to be turf

 

[Nano man]

Post some pics please.

 

[hers0109]

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.

I used Brightwell Razor on a previous tank with turf and a few other algaes. After following the directions and continuing with maintenance dosing for a week or so longer, it cleared everything up.

 

[OMGdavid]

Post some pics please.

Here it is coming back in. This is after pulling rocks and cleaning everything very recently. Very hard to remove.

 

[slingfox]

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.

After two years of running a mixed reef and dealing with a very annoying black turf algae for 9 months, I did a tank reset where I replaced all my rock with ocean live rock. It has been only two months but it has been smooth sailing so far! I have had minor bouts with Dino’s and algae but I did very little and they just went away.

 

[slingfox]

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.

If you want better advice you should post more details about your tank:
- Size
- how long has it been running
- What do you feed and how much
-Livestock
- what do you use for nutrient export
- What do you dose
- have you used any chemical treatments to try to combat the algae
- Parameters from testing
- full tank pictures
- what cleanup crew do you have?

The more info the better. Your original post has almost no info people can use to provide advice.

 

[BryanM]

@OMGdavid

^^ this above. Gold.

Pics under white light are much better than blues as well. I can't quite tell whats up with this algae in that pic.

But you can get a ton of great advice here.

 

[OMGdavid]

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.

 

[BryanM]

@OMGdavid

can we get a couple side pics of algae as well?

Honestly, Nitrate and Phos numbers are solid, no reason to lower... and yea, dinos, been there done that.

UV, check, I run that as well.

One of these pics looks like GHA to me, the other looks a lot more leafy.

I would get this thread to ID the algae accurately (and I am GUESSING), and when ID'd, I'd sprint to reefcleaners with the algae and get a CUC to address it, possibly even aggressively.

Everything else to me looks pretty solid bud. No reason to give up.

 

[slingfox]

Please post full tank shot for better perspective but the algae doesn’t look too bad to me for a tank that has had livestock for 1 year. Interestingly your rocks don’t have much / any coraline algae yet which means it is still maturing. The parameters seem fine.

I assume the algae don’t look bad because you scraped the rocks outside the tank. For that size tank I would recommend getting two tuxedo urchins. You stated that you have snails but are you sure you have enough? When my tank was going through uglies I had 8 turbos snails, 20+ small medium snails, 40+ very small cerith, 10 hermits, 4 emerald or pithos crabs, three conch for the sandbed, 2 urchins, and 3 tangs. The tangs in particular are always picking at the rocks. Eventually I had so little algae I gave away all the turbo snails away since they had grown to 2 inch in size and I was afraid they would starve.

At this stage in your tank you need the cleanup crew (which includes you) to keep the algae under control so that coraline can grow over your rock work. Eventually the coraline will limit the space where nuisance algae can grow and the tank should stabilize. When you have coraline growing everywhere then you won’t need as many snails and you can rely on the fish and smaller CUC to do much of the maintenance work.

 

[MBruun]

I have been struggling with turf algae's for like nine months before I found the way to go, at least for my tank. I got rid of the turf algae's by dosing live phyto daily. After a month or so of daily dosing phyto (Tetraselmis) they slowly disappeared and never returned :-)
I dosed 700 ml phyto per day in a 700 liter (total water volume) tank, and I added lots of copepods when I started the phyto dosing

 

[Shibaken3]

Add more cleanup crew. I recommend few blue hermit crabs, few pitho crab, and maybe 1 urchin.

 

[Steventnguyen]

My tuxedo urchin mows down turf like there’s no tomorrow

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

The pictures are out of focus, but I don't see algae on the rocks. Are you just trying to stop the rocks from turning green? Thats impossible, all our rocks look green under white light, this is biofilm and micro algae, its perfectly natural and shouldn't try to stop it.

 

[OMGdavid]

Please post full tank shot for better perspective but the algae doesn’t look too bad to me for a tank that has had livestock for 1 year. Interestingly your rocks don’t have much / any coraline algae yet which means it is still maturing. The parameters seem fine.

I assume the algae don’t look bad because you scraped the rocks outside the tank. For that size tank I would recommend getting two tuxedo urchins. You stated that you have snails but are you sure you have enough? When my tank was going through uglies I had 8 turbos snails, 20+ small medium snails, 40+ very small cerith, 10 hermits, 4 emerald or pithos crabs, three conch for the sandbed, 2 urchins, and 3 tangs. The tangs in particular are always picking at the rocks. Eventually I had so little algae I gave away all the turbo snails away since they had grown to 2 inch in size and I was afraid they would starve.

At this stage in your tank you need the cleanup crew (which includes you) to keep the algae under control so that coraline can grow over your rock work. Eventually the coraline will limit the space where nuisance algae can grow and the tank should stabilize. When you have coraline growing everywhere then you won’t need as many snails and you can rely on the fish and smaller CUC to do much of the maintenance work.

I try to scrape coraline off of glass when I can. Most of my rocks were pretty well covered in coraline but I've killed a lot of it between using a steel tooth brush and peroxide.

I have 30+ snails. None of them will touch it. I've pulled out algae covered rocks and put them in a small qt tank with different snails and they still dont touch it. Haven't tried any urchins.

 

[OMGdavid]

@OMGdavid

can we get a couple side pics of algae as well?

Honestly, Nitrate and Phos numbers are solid, no reason to lower... and yea, dinos, been there done that.

UV, check, I run that as well.

One of these pics looks like GHA to me, the other looks a lot more leafy.

I would get this thread to ID the algae accurately (and I am GUESSING), and when ID'd, I'd sprint to reefcleaners with the algae and get a CUC to address it, possibly even aggressively.

Everything else to me looks pretty solid bud. No reason to give up.

When it grows out it looks like a tradional turf algae but im not 100%. Under more blue lights it looks brown but its 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.

 

[Arkayology]

I recommend getting a couple tuxedo urchins.

 

[slingfox]

I try to scrape coraline off of glass when I can. Most of my rocks were pretty well covered in coraline but I've killed a lot of it between using a steel tooth brush and peroxide.

I have 30+ snails. None of them will touch it. I've pulled out algae covered rocks and put them in a small qt tank with different snails and they still dont touch it. Haven't tried any urchins.

I feel your pain. I thought I had gotten through the ugly stage once my tank looked like it was stable at month 9. After that I gave away all my large turbo snails (I thought the would starve) and didn’t replenish the snails since things looked under control. Then a few months later a very dark green / almost black turf algae started to grow and eventually took over 70% of the rockscape surface. I pulled out and scraped down with a wire brush three separate times and also sprayed the rocks with peroxide. The turf algae kept coming back and nothing would eat it. The turf algae would peel off easily and were like clumps of moss. After I got tired of scraping I did nothing for 6 months and coraline started to very slowly outcompete the turf algae. At the rate of takeover I believe it would have taken a year (maybe two) or more for the coraline to become the dominant surface covering. It is possible that the turf algae would never go away completely since it seemed immortal.

When my tank hit the 2 year mark (with 9 months dealing with the black turf algae), I replaced my entire rockscape with Australian ocean live rock.

You don’t have the black turf algae I had. If you did it would probably be game over since all the threads on the subject on Reef2Reef showed no solution other than waiting it out or doing a tank reset.

I hope you can find a fix to the issue here without going to the extreme of replacing all the rockscape like I did.

One note: I don’t see any fish in your full tank photo. In the long run I believe herbivore fish are more important than snails or crab for a SPS-dominant system. Once your tank stabilizes there should not be much algae growth so it can be hard to feed the snails and crab. Urchin are okay since they can eat coraline apparently.

 

[BryanM]

I don't have that algae so I don't technically know what eats it. But I definitely recommend what slingfox said above, some herbivore fish. My lawnmower blenny is a big algea eater. Blue hippo tang also eats well. And an urchin would do well too, and adds some hilarity to the tank sometimes.