Nutrients bottmed out and dinos/cyano

[a123h]

I havnt done a water change in over a month yet my nurtinets are bottmed out both at 0 tested with salifert i have also never in the 9 months this tank has veen running ever had a recorded Phosphate level tested with salifert and even dosed at some point as high as 0.05 a day and never got a reading. Long story short battling bad algae cyano dino not sure what exactly and botteemd out nutrients losing hope.

tank info- aqua one reefsys 326 it has been running for around 9 months now aquasvape is all dry rock. I have one sand sifting starfish, one conch and 3 snails for cleqn up crew. I feed the fish once a day at minimum but try to do twice a day pellets one feeding frozen the other but moslty pellets. Tds is 0 of my water i have measured.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Battling algae but dosing nutrients will never eradicate algae, you are feeding it, and by stopping the water changes you allow it to thrive. If algae is growing and taking over the rocks, it is a clear sign that nutrients are available in the water.

Personally I would restart aggressive water changes and I would carefully monitor what I am adding to the tank so as not to increase nutrients needlessly. Everyone has their own way, this is my way.

 

[slingfox]

To get better help you should post more information about your tank conduit size, what you feed and how often, what you dose, what you use for nutrient export, livestock census, and photos of the full tank under white light.

Other basic questions: What do you have for clean up crew? How long has the tank been running? Did you use all dry rock for the aquascape?

 

[a123h]

To get better help you should post more information about your tank conduit size, what you feed and how often, what you dose, what you use for nutrient export, livestock census, and photos of the full tank under white light.

Other basic questions: What do you have for clean up crew? How long has the tank been running? Did you use all dry rock for the aquascape?

Thanks i have now updated the post and posted more information

 

[a123h]

Battling algae but dosing nutrients will never eradicate algae, you are feeding it, and by stopping the water changes you allow it to thrive. If algae is growing and taking over the rocks, it is a clear sign that nutrients are available in the water.

Personally I would restart aggressive water changes and I would carefully monitor what I am adding to the tank so as not to increase nutrients needlessly. Everyone has their own way, this is my way.

So get back to routine water changes and manually remove as much as the cyano or algae ? Do i dose nitrate and phos safely still? Since they are bottened out recording wise. Btw i have not been dose phosphate in months i triee once usee the whole bottle over time and never got a reading at all by salifert.

 

[CHSUB]

So get back to routine water changes and manually remove as much as the cyano or algae ? Do i dose nitrate and phos safely still? Since they are bottened out recording wise. Btw i have not been dose phosphate in months i triee once usee the whole bottle over time and never got a reading at all by salifert.

Yes, get back to maintenance: Wc, turkey basting, manual removal, tooth brushing. Salifert always test “zero” with moderately low nutrients but still magnitudes higher than algae and corals need. Stop dosing, add corals to cover real-estate..
Algae will grow with dust from your house!

 

[ninjamyst]

Dino to Cyano to GHA is a common path. Manual remove GHA. Take a toothbrush to it. Get astrea snails and blue leg hermits and make sure to manually put the snails on the rocks once in a while. If the snails and crabs are working, get more. For my 20g, I started with 5 of each and they are doing the work.

 

[slingfox]

Thanks i have now updated the post and posted more information

What do you use for nutrient export (ie, filter socks, filter roller, protein skimmer, refugium, etc)?

First thing you should do is take the rocks out of your tank and manually scrub of all the nuisance algae. You can do that in-tank if needed but then you need some reliable way to remove the algae scraped off (eg, you can use something like the Marineland Magnum Polishing Filter). You also need a lot more clean up crew. For that size tank you can house at least one tuxedo urchin who are the single best algae consumer. You should also get 20-30 different types of snails and small hermit crabs. Or you can go all snails. Be careful for Mexican Turbo snails since they can get large so you can either avoid them or get only 2-3 and then rehome if they get too big. Get a variety of typws of CUC since they will ba e different preferences.