refugium help

[nanonøkk]

I'd get rid of him. If he is big and dies, ammonia bomb. If they don't work, away they go. New ones are cheap and they will work.

ok because it’s like a golf ball size compared to my small one that’s like a half an inch

 

[Ippyroy]

ok because it’s like a golf ball size compared to my small one that’s like a half an inch

Big animals dying can crash a small young tank. Any crabs?

 

[nanonøkk]

Big animals dying can crash a small young tank. Any crabs?

i have three hermits and then two nassarius snails

 

[Ippyroy]

i have three hermits and then two nassarius snails

The hermits will eventually eat the snail. They will stop the ammonia bomb so I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[nanonøkk]

The hermits will eventually eat the snail. They will stop the ammonia bomb so I wouldn't worry about it.

ok i’ll probably remove it anyway just to be safe

 

[najer]

ok should i run the light when my tank is completely black

This is subject to debate, I run my refugium light daylight tank hours or 24/7 with breaks, some people run opposite to tank light hours, my way works for me.

 

[nanonøkk]

This is subject to debate, I run my refugium light daylight tank hours or 24/7 with breaks, some people run opposite to tank light hours, my way works for me.

should i try to run it at night because then the algae in the tank would have less light than what’s in the refugium

 

[old salt reefer]

Me and GHA--and it's just in one of my tanks( IM Nuvo 20 gallon). Every week I manually remove as much as I can pull off. Right now it only grows on the 2 biggest rocks in tank. They most likely are leaching PO4. They're covered in zoas and SPS so removal not possible. I have other tanks that I have no GHA in and I don't do anything different with them that I do with this tank.

-Stop feeding to much-no effect on GHA.
-Get snails- most die off as they won't eat the GHA and no other algae can grow due to the GHA sucking up all the nutrients.
-Get FigiCube HOB refugium with cheato, both cheato and GHA grow great.(read here on forum refugium has to be as big as tank to really work at keeping algae out of DT)
-Go to bare bottom on this tank(only tank I had left with gravel in it). No effect on GHA.
-Remove cheato and start dosing Vibrant- this kills most of my coralline algae, kills my RBTA and really ticks off my zoas after 2.5 months of weekly dosing GHA growing better than ever. Stop dosing.
-Dose Reef Flux this kills 99% of the GHA in 3 weeks of treatment. Tank looks great for a couple days then GHA starts growing back.
- Buy IceCap K1 protein skimmer and put it in FigiCube HOB refugium( never had skimmer in this tank) . Start using small bag of GFO in sump for 8 hours a day. Don't want to strip all PO4 out the corals need some.
This is where I'm at now. I've been fight this GHA for 9 months. I've had saltwater tanks for over 5 decades. This GHA is in for the fight of it's life.

 

[nanonøkk]

Me and GHA--and it's just in one of my tanks( IM Nuvo 20 gallon). Every week I manually remove as much as I can pull off. Right now it only grows on the 2 biggest rocks in tank. They most likely are leaching PO4. They're covered in zoas and SPS so removal not possible. I have other tanks that I have no GHA in and I don't do anything different with them that I do with this tank.

-Stop feeding to much-no effect on GHA.
-Get snails- most die off as they won't eat the GHA and no other algae can grow due to the GHA sucking up all the nutrients.
-Get FigiCube HOB refugium with cheato, both cheato and GHA grow great.(read here on forum refugium has to be as big as tank to really work at keeping algae out of DT)
-Go to bare bottom on this tank(only tank I had left with gravel in it). No effect on GHA.
-Remove cheato and start dosing Vibrant- this kills most of my coralline algae, kills my RBTA and really ticks off my zoas after 2.5 months of weekly dosing GHA growing better than ever. Stop dosing.
-Dose Reef Flux this kills 99% of the GHA in 3 weeks of treatment. Tank looks great for a couple days then GHA starts growing back.
- Buy IceCap K1 protein skimmer and put it in FigiCube HOB refugium( never had skimmer in this tank) . Start using small bag of GFO in sump for 8 hours a day. Don't want to strip all PO4 out the corals need some.
This is where I'm at now. I've been fight this GHA for 9 months. I've had saltwater tanks for over 5 decades. This GHA is in for the fight of it's life.

wait vibrant can harm btas

 

[Crustaceon]

Not sure why you added a refugium when you had only 2ppm nitrates in you system.

it’s because i’m fighting gha and also a better filtration than what i had oh also copapods and aphipods or however you spell that

From experience, I can tell you a refugium isn’t going to outcompete existing hair algae in the display. The only real effective means of getting rid of it IMO is manually removing it repeatedly until it’s gone. Also, if you have isolated compartments with filtration media, you have tons of pods. Everytime I change my filter sock, I pull at least a few hundred amphipods out and dump them in my display so the sixline wrasse and mandarin can have some fun.

 

[Crustaceon]

Just grabbing vl

Me and GHA--and it's just in one of my tanks( IM Nuvo 20 gallon). Every week I manually remove as much as I can pull off. Right now it only grows on the 2 biggest rocks in tank. They most likely are leaching PO4. They're covered in zoas and SPS so removal not possible. I have other tanks that I have no GHA in and I don't do anything different with them that I do with this tank.

-Stop feeding to much-no effect on GHA.
-Get snails- most die off as they won't eat the GHA and no other algae can grow due to the GHA sucking up all the nutrients.
-Get FigiCube HOB refugium with cheato, both cheato and GHA grow great.(read here on forum refugium has to be as big as tank to really work at keeping algae out of DT)
-Go to bare bottom on this tank(only tank I had left with gravel in it). No effect on GHA.
-Remove cheato and start dosing Vibrant- this kills most of my coralline algae, kills my RBTA and really ticks off my zoas after 2.5 months of weekly dosing GHA growing better than ever. Stop dosing.
-Dose Reef Flux this kills 99% of the GHA in 3 weeks of treatment. Tank looks great for a couple days then GHA starts growing back.
- Buy IceCap K1 protein skimmer and put it in FigiCube HOB refugium( never had skimmer in this tank) . Start using small bag of GFO in sump for 8 hours a day. Don't want to strip all PO4 out the corals need some.
This is where I'm at now. I've been fight this GHA for 9 months. I've had saltwater tanks for over 5 decades. This GHA is in for the fight of it's life.

Just grabbing clumps ain’t gonna cut it. You have to get in there with an old toothbrush, forceps and attack every last trace of algae. You want to see coralline algae and coral on those rocks and that’s it. Otherwise it will come back. The key it making its habitat as inhospitable as possible.

 

[Crustaceon]

If you guys can get the algae knocked down to the rock surface, that’s when you can add some big turbo snails to do the rest. They typically won’t touch long strands of hair algae but will demolish surface algae. Just make sure to rehome them if you get the algae under control. Forcep and then toothbrush what you can get to. Snail whatever the toothbrush can’t reach.

 

[nanonøkk]

Not sure why you added a refugium when you had only 2ppm nitrates in you system.

From experience, I can tell you a refugium isn’t going to outcompete existing hair algae in the display. The only real effective means of getting rid of it IMO is manually removing it repeatedly until it’s gone. Also, if you have isolated compartments with filtration media, you have tons of pods. Everytime I change my filter sock, I pull at least a few hundred amphipods out and dump them in my display so the sixline wrasse and mandarin can have some fun.

i don’t have a ton of pods that’s the main reason also i can do a water change every two weeks instead of one

 

[nanonøkk]

Just grabbing vl


Just grabbing clumps ain’t gonna cut it. You have to get in there with an old toothbrush, forceps and attack every last trace of algae. You want to see coralline algae and coral on those rocks and that’s it. Otherwise it will come back. The key it making its habitat as inhospitable as possible.

yea i use a toothbrush and put into the water i’m taking out and scrub it of there instead of in the tank

 

[nanonøkk]

If you guys can get the algae knocked down to the rock surface, that’s when you can add some big turbo snails to do the rest. They typically won’t touch long strands of hair algae but will demolish surface algae. Just make sure to rehome them if you get the algae under control. Forcep and then toothbrush what you can get to. Snail whatever the toothbrush can’t reach.

yea that’s what i’ve been doing

 

[Crustaceon]

yea i use a toothbrush and put into the water i’m taking out and scrub it of there instead of in the tank

You can also do it in-tank. I always made sure to do a water change when I did this. It can take a few months of repeating this process before you start seeing progress.

 

[nanonøkk]

You can also do it in-tank. I always made sure to do a water change when I did this. It can take a few months of repeating this process before you start seeing progress.

yea that’s what i did but it always came back so then i did it outside of tank that seemed to work better for me because my rocks used to be coated in it

 

[smacbride]

I have a couple of fake plastic plants and some fake coral made from resin in my tank that the GHA likes to grow on. Sort of an "in tank algae scrubber" when the algae gets long on those, I just remove them and clean them off. So far it's the only place left that has GHA on it.

 

[nanonøkk]

I have a couple of fake plastic plants and some fake coral made from resin in my tank that the GHA likes to grow on. Sort of an "in tank algae scrubber" when the algae gets long on those, I just remove them and clean them off. So far it's the only place left that has GHA on it.

yea i dont have any of those in my tank but i thought of an algae scrubber is there like difference between algae scrubber and a refugium all i know is that a refugium is a copapod breeding ground

 

[smacbride]

yea i dont have any of those in my tank but i thought of an algae scrubber is there like difference between algae scrubber and a refugium all i know is that a refugium is a copapod breeding ground

If you have an AIO tank, then the chambers might not get enough light for the macro algae to grow.

An algae scrubber could be hung on the side of the tank and it has it's own light source to grow algae.