Pale, dying corals and algae

ZaneTer · Jun 16, 2019

ReefSlice said:
Nope, no progress sadly. Even added 10 lbs of TBS rock. All of my tanks are now full of cyano and algae, despite very light feeding and huge weekly water changes. All of my sps have stned and I just have tiny patches of what they used to be surrounded in cyano and bubble algae. I've tried every possible solution I can think of and the tanks are just going downhill. Sadly I think it's time I leave the hobby for now, as I really don't have the money to dump into a cyano refugium and this tank has killed my love for this hobby. It just seems like the tank gets worse over time, even though I haven't made any changes, just 15g water changes once a week and dosing alk and calcium. Got a small amount of coralline a month ago, and then it all died overnight again. Really stumped! I use 0 tds water out of the same ro/di unit that ran multiple algae free, successful reefs in the past, but something is obviously horribly wrong with my water. Not sure how else to put it. Bubble algae overflowing out of every crevice, hair algae blocking my overflow to the point it needs to be cleaned every week, and cyano slowly killing my corals.
Still sitting at 15 no3, 0.00-0.04 po4. Feed a 1/2" piece of LRS daily, my skimmer hardly even produces anything, but something is fueling the algae like a wildfire, and the corals obviously don't like it. My last attempt would be to add 2 more DI stages and another carbon block, but I just don't see the point in spending the money because my TDS is always 0, only 2 coming out of RO.

Sorry to hear you are having so many troubles. I’m only commenting as I had a similar experience. Long story short I thought I had PO4 but it turns out it was undetectable even with ICP.

I should have realize when I couldn’t grow green algae on the glass that something was wrong. That and a bag of fresh carbon turned it all around for me.

ReefSlice · Jun 16, 2019

ZaneTer said:
Sorry to hear you are having so many troubles. I’m only commenting as I had a similar experience. Long story short I thought I had PO4 but it turns out it was undetectable even with ICP.

I should have realize when I couldn’t grow green algae on the glass that something was wrong. That and a bag of fresh carbon turned it all around for me.

I was positive that dosing po4 above 0 would be the solution here, but I spent months keeping it above 0 (as high as .2 at the end) and the tank only got worse, no improvement in coral and tons of algae growth.