So, no matter what I do, I keep having this reddish/brown coating come back again and again. The system itself has been up and running for 16 months, and I transferred it from a 60-gallon tank to a WaterBox Marine X 110.4 in August of this year. I've tried vacuuming the film off of the sand, it's back 2 days later. I have 2 dozen Nassarius Vibex snails to stir the sandbed, one 4-inch wide Spider Conch, one 2-inch Tiger Conch, three Turbo snails, and various other smaller snails along with 10 blue-legged hermit crabs. Yet, no matter what, this film on my sandbed persists. I would be forever grateful if anyone out there could help me identify this growth and assist me in a plan to eliminate this ugliness.
All requisite tank information is listed below:
I run three AI Prime HDs on the Pennywise Deadlights schedule over a WaterBox Marine X 110.4. The tank is lightly stocked with a couple of leathers, seven Duncans, a medium zoa colony, a small Acan frag, a few blastos, a large wall hammer colony, a branching hammer colony, and a decent-sized Green Digi Montipora. As for fish, it is stocked with three Regal Damselfish, a Foxface Rabbitfish, a Longnose Butterflyfish, a Coral Beauty, a Bartlett's Anthia, and two clownfish. Two 1500gph gyres provide flow positioned five inches down from the waterline on each side wall running a sine wave mode, an AI Nero 5 on the far back wall running on a random mode, and a Sicce Syncra 6.0 return pump. I am running a Nyos Quantum 160 skimmer and two Lifegard Aquatics Medium Side Flow Turbo Reactors (one running BRS Carbon ROX and the other running SeaChem Phosgaurd for filtration.
Current Tank Values are as follows:
All requisite tank information is listed below:
I run three AI Prime HDs on the Pennywise Deadlights schedule over a WaterBox Marine X 110.4. The tank is lightly stocked with a couple of leathers, seven Duncans, a medium zoa colony, a small Acan frag, a few blastos, a large wall hammer colony, a branching hammer colony, and a decent-sized Green Digi Montipora. As for fish, it is stocked with three Regal Damselfish, a Foxface Rabbitfish, a Longnose Butterflyfish, a Coral Beauty, a Bartlett's Anthia, and two clownfish. Two 1500gph gyres provide flow positioned five inches down from the waterline on each side wall running a sine wave mode, an AI Nero 5 on the far back wall running on a random mode, and a Sicce Syncra 6.0 return pump. I am running a Nyos Quantum 160 skimmer and two Lifegard Aquatics Medium Side Flow Turbo Reactors (one running BRS Carbon ROX and the other running SeaChem Phosgaurd for filtration.
Current Tank Values are as follows:
- Temperature: 78.5 F
- pH: 8.32
- Salinity: 1.0262sg (53.7mS)
- ORP: 296mV
- Alk: 8.2dkh
- Calcium: 460ppm
- Magnesium: 1600ppm
- Nitrate: 22ppm (range from 8-25ppm)
- Phosphate: 0.01ppm