Seeking advice

southerndiesel23

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I have a 65 main display.

I am battling hair algae and a brown film on the glass and I am getting bubble Algea. I believe it is from not enough water flow internally in the tank. I have two Jabo wave makers and I would like to upgrade to a crossflow. Have been looking at the Hegar 25 W crossflow wave maker. Was wondering if anyone can help or give advice. Tank is 6 years old. I have been dealing with this issue for a while and I also have a bad aptaisa all over the tank. Please help.

image.jpg image.jpg
 
More flow is almost never bad, but flow doesn't have much to do with hair algae. Cyanobacteria (could be your brown film) can certainly grow when you have insufficient flow.

One thing I've heard about the Hygger pumps (and not owning them myself, I can't comment beyond this statement) is that they lack the ability to do a simple random flow program with a custom min/max flow level. For me, this would be a dealbreaker, as I consider that to be the bare minimum that any programmable powerhead should be able to offer.

Hair algae is usually caused by a combination of excessive nutrients and insufficient export. What makes diagnosing this difficult is that your hair algae will often act as the nutrient sink, so your water looks like it has lower nutrient levels than it actually does.

What does your CUC look like? What do you do to get nutrients out of you water?
 
I have a bubble magus curse 5 protein skimmer and I had cheato. My CUC is peppermint shrimp and some bumble bee snails and nass snail.
 
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I had a horrible hair algae problem and with advice from a good friend of mine this is what i tried and it wiped out all of my hair algae, you may have to go through the dosing twice if its bad enough but it worked wonders for me
 
This probably isn't the issue, but if/when tanks are near natural light sources you end up with algae issues almost every time.

I might try blacking out that window even though the blinds are closed, just to see if it helps.
 
I have a 65 main display.

I am battling hair algae and a brown film on the glass and I am getting bubble Algea. I believe it is from not enough water flow internally in the tank. I have two Jabo wave makers and I would like to upgrade to a crossflow. Have been looking at the Hegar 25 W crossflow wave maker. Was wondering if anyone can help or give advice. Tank is 6 years old. I have been dealing with this issue for a while and I also have a bad aptaisa all over the tank. Please help.

image.jpg image.jpg
In part water flow yes, and main cause likely tank by the window. Despite blinds closed, UV will penetrate shades-blinds-curtains. Placing black construction paper at the side of tank facing window will reduce this drastically. Please do not add flux to tank which is often an alternative and not a solution and ive seen over many years cause problems for others.
You can pull rock, scrub in container with tank water and return them to tank with construction paper added as mentioned and also add cleaners such as :

SNAILS: Astrea-turbo grazer, margarita, nassarius and even a couple of fighting conchs

Pencil urchin or two
8-10 Blue leg carribean hermits which are tiny

Are you using any tap water for mixing salt or top-off?
 
I have one blue legged hermit and a blue eyed like tang. No to the rest.
Well, there's your problem. Or at least part of the problem. You have very little in your tank that's interested in eating algae. With nothing to mow it down, it just keeps growing.

For reference, in my 75g display, I have 2 enormous zebra turbos, 6-8 Mexican turbos, about 12 nerites snails, 5-6 cerith snails, 20-30 astrea snails, a half-dozen hermits of various species, three conches, 2-3 money cowries, hundreds of both asterina starfish and micro-brittle starfish, dozens of dwarf ceriths, uncountable micro-chitons, and... so much more.

Start by beefing up your CUC and doing manual removal of hair algae and take it from there.

And agreed with @vetteguy53081 - don't jump to fluco. It's a tool to use, but it's not without its risks and it won't prevent future outbreaks if you don't address the root causes.
 
I have a 65 main display.

I am battling hair algae and a brown film on the glass and I am getting bubble Algea. I believe it is from not enough water flow internally in the tank. I have two Jabo wave makers and I would like to upgrade to a crossflow. Have been looking at the Hegar 25 W crossflow wave maker. Was wondering if anyone can help or give advice. Tank is 6 years old. I have been dealing with this issue for a while and I also have a bad aptaisa all over the tank. Please help.

image.jpg image.jpg
In part water flow yes, and main cause likely tank by the window. Despite blinds closed, UV will penetrate shades-blinds-curtains. Placing black construction paper at the side of tank facing window will reduce this drastically. Please do not add flux to tank which is often an alternative and not a solution and ive seen over many years cause problems for others.
You can pull rock, scrub in container with tank water and return them to tank with construction paper added as mentioned and also add cleaners such as :

SNAILS: Astrea-turbo grazer, margarita, nassarius and even a couple of fighting conchs

Pencil urchin or two
8-10 Blue leg carribean hermits which are tiny

Are you using any tap water for mixing salt or top-off?
I mix my own salt water. I do have a 5 stage RODI that I use for fresh water. 104ppm coming into the filters and 3pm coining out to my fresh water trash can. I went to my LFS yesterday and he said that I should remove the sand little bit at a time and place power head towards the bottom of the tank so it pushes the poop and stuff up into the water Column so that it can go out and into the filter. Also would running a UV stabilizer help at all? I also have a bad aptaisa that I can not get under control.
20250829_134909_C7221937-2CD7-4769-9A86-CAFDD7ECA3EF.png
 
I mix my own salt water. I do have a 5 stage RODI that I use for fresh water. 104ppm coming into the filters and 3pm coining out to my fresh water trash can. I went to my LFS yesterday and he said that I should remove the sand little bit at a time and place power head towards the bottom of the tank so it pushes the poop and stuff up into the water Column so that it can go out and into the filter. Also would running a UV stabilizer help at all? I also have a bad aptaisa that I can not get under control.


If you're running Reverse Osmosis + DI resin the output after your DI resin should show zero tds. So that is something to figure out; you could have a blown out ro membrane, or your DI resin is used up.

Why did the LFS tell you to take the sand out? Do you have an issue on the sand?

Thats a lot of aiptasia, I would go with some berghia nudibranchs.

Also I agree you should have a clean up crew, rabbit fish are great algae eaters, see if you can get a small one. Urchins, conchs, trochus snails, nerite snails, turbo snails, algae blenny are all good too.
If It was my tank I would get an algae blenny, rabbit fish, and a bunch of snails.

I really don't think flow is your main issue, it really seems like poor water quality and not enough clean up crew. Have you posted your water parameters? Nitrate, phosphate, Alkaline, etc.

Fluconazole does work but it can cause other issues, my sps took awhile to recover from it. And it is only a short term fix, the problem will come back if other issues are not fixed.

Remember you don't keep fish and coral, you keep water.

As for the wave makers, I haven't used hydor but I like my jebos, hard to beat for the price.
 
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When was the last time you replaced the filters in your RO/DI? You should be getting 0 TDS out of that at the end, that 3 ppm that you're getting has all the minerals and pollutants from your tap water still in it. Over time those will build up in your tank. Those chemicals could be benign, but they could also be... not. I'm not going to say that it's the cause of your problems, but it probably doesn't help.

Other than the corals, what fish do you have in your tank? What type of corals are you primarily interested in keeping, long-term? The answers to these questions might change my advice to you.

Based on what you've shown, this would be my plan of action for you:

First: Replace whatever parts of your RO/DI system you need to produce 0 TDS water. Your tap water contaminants may or may not be causing you problems, but they probably are and it's best to eliminate that variable. So whatever you need to replace here, do it.

Second, figure out your solution for the aiptasia. They're the most persistent pests you have in your tank and the hardest to address with simple husbandry, in the sense that just improving your habits won't do anything to them. You have options here, depending on what other animals you have in your tank. Peppermints will (supposedly) eat aiptasia, though I personally have never had success with them. Berghia nudibranches can be a one-time solution, but they'll usually not get all of your aiptasia before eventually starving out, and they might themselves be eaten by peppermint shrimp. Either an aiptasia-eating filefish, Australian Stripey or Pyramid Butterfly could also work in your size of tank, but all of them present some risk of also eating corals. Finally, there are some chemical methods you can use, such as kalkwasser pastes. Aiptasia can be a long-term problem with your tank, so decide how you want to address it and start working on it.

Third, add some herbivores to your CUC. Easiest thing to do is to go to reefcleaners.org and select a package. Pick up the diverse CUC - it'll include an emerald crab, which is one of the few animals that will eat bubble algae. You already have a tang in your tank, and he'll be the workhorse. But he can't do it all on his own, so the extra CUC will help him stay on top of it.

Fourth, do as much manual removal of the long hair algae as you can. Long strands are tough for your CUC to eat, so if you keep things short they can prevent the algae from growing longer. You can and should also use a turkey baster to blow off your rocks on a regular basis.

Finally, get yourself on a regular water change schedule and stick to it religiously. 10% a week is a good long-term plan, 20% a week can be suitable for getting over problems like this.

For other concerns:

Personally I'm not in favor of removing sand from an active tank. You can do it, but it's very easy to do too much, and sand can trap some really nasty stuff in it, especially if you don't have any animals that stir up the sandbed (like conches). If you do this, do it VERY slowly, and only take a little bit off the top of the sandbed. I speak from experience when I say that messing with your sandbed can kill your livestock.

UV wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't do much to the hair algae. It might help with your film algae, and if you have dinos it will help with those.

What likely would help is adding an algae turf scrubber, but those are a big step up in expense and you should be able to get everything under control without one. The Santa Monica Surf2 (which is what I have) runs about $300. I am a big believer in the turf scrubbers, but not everyone has success with them and you don't need one to beat algae.

Finally, like I said in my first post, more flow is almost always a good thing, but don't add it with the expectation that it will help with your algae problems. Add it because it will benefit your corals and your overall tank health.
 
When was the last time you replaced the filters in your RO/DI? You should be getting 0 TDS out of that at the end, that 3 ppm that you're getting has all the minerals and pollutants from your tap water still in it. Over time those will build up in your tank. Those chemicals could be benign, but they could also be... not. I'm not going to say that it's the cause of your problems, but it probably doesn't help.

Other than the corals, what fish do you have in your tank? What type of corals are you primarily interested in keeping, long-term? The answers to these questions might change my advice to you.

Based on what you've shown, this would be my plan of action for you:

First: Replace whatever parts of your RO/DI system you need to produce 0 TDS water. Your tap water contaminants may or may not be causing you problems, but they probably are and it's best to eliminate that variable. So whatever you need to replace here, do it.

Second, figure out your solution for the aiptasia. They're the most persistent pests you have in your tank and the hardest to address with simple husbandry, in the sense that just improving your habits won't do anything to them. You have options here, depending on what other animals you have in your tank. Peppermints will (supposedly) eat aiptasia, though I personally have never had success with them. Berghia nudibranches can be a one-time solution, but they'll usually not get all of your aiptasia before eventually starving out, and they might themselves be eaten by peppermint shrimp. Either an aiptasia-eating filefish, Australian Stripey or Pyramid Butterfly could also work in your size of tank, but all of them present some risk of also eating corals. Finally, there are some chemical methods you can use, such as kalkwasser pastes. Aiptasia can be a long-term problem with your tank, so decide how you want to address it and start working on it.

Third, add some herbivores to your CUC. Easiest thing to do is to go to reefcleaners.org and select a package. Pick up the diverse CUC - it'll include an emerald crab, which is one of the few animals that will eat bubble algae. You already have a tang in your tank, and he'll be the workhorse. But he can't do it all on his own, so the extra CUC will help him stay on top of it.

Fourth, do as much manual removal of the long hair algae as you can. Long strands are tough for your CUC to eat, so if you keep things short they can prevent the algae from growing longer. You can and should also use a turkey baster to blow off your rocks on a regular basis.

Finally, get yourself on a regular water change schedule and stick to it religiously. 10% a week is a good long-term plan, 20% a week can be suitable for getting over problems like this.

For other concerns:

Personally I'm not in favor of removing sand from an active tank. You can do it, but it's very easy to do too much, and sand can trap some really nasty stuff in it, especially if you don't have any animals that stir up the sandbed (like conches). If you do this, do it VERY slowly, and only take a little bit off the top of the sandbed. I speak from experience when I say that messing with your sandbed can kill your livestock.

UV wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't do much to the hair algae. It might help with your film algae, and if you have dinos it will help with those.

What likely would help is adding an algae turf scrubber, but those are a big step up in expense and you should be able to get everything under control without one. The Santa Monica Surf2 (which is what I have) runs about $300. I am a big believer in the turf scrubbers, but not everyone has success with them and you don't need one to beat algae.

Finally, like I said in my first post, more flow is almost always a good thing, but don't add it with the expectation that it will help with your algae problems. Add it because it will benefit your corals and your overall tank health.
I replace them once a year. I don’t mention but I do dose all for reef. I was looking at CUC on line. My LFS does not offer the packs. Not sure but I do have a Chinese black box. That is set at 75 blues and 10 whites. Most of the whites are taped over it was a used light. My lights are on from 12:30pm to 10:30pm. Not sure if any of this information is useful.
 

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