This is what John from Reefcleaners.org recommends for a 30g system. I used to think his recommendations were crazy high. I've learned he is on the mark more often than not. If anything, I feel the 330ish snails he recommends for my system aren't enough.
The only reason to wait to build your CuC is if you worry about them starving. Seems they would have plenty of food.
mine came right after diatoms also..i started with 3 month cured pukani so my diatoms only lasted about a week then this stuff popped up a week later. I test my phosphates weekly and they have been at zero since day 1. nitrates fluctuate between 5-10. Im going to get more snails this weekend.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Good work.
I thought I’d ID’ed this stuff as Licmophora sp. but now that I’ve let it grow out, I’m not so sure. It’s a brown-ish white looking feather protruding from the live rock in mostly high light intensity areas and emerging from what looks like existing algae.
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 78.6
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrates: 0
Phosphates: 0.141
pH: 8.2
dKH: 9.6
Cal: 460
Mag: 1300
Dosing aminos and 3-part. Light GFO (Rowaphos) in a minireactor. Chaeto in a reactor. Barely feeding fish. Feeding coral lightly once a week but cutting back until this stuff is gone.
The problem is lack of nutrients. These bacterial strains thrive in low nutrient environments. Take the phosban reactor off line dose nitrate and phosphate daily (with testing) and see if after a couple of weeks of detectable levels if this has gone.I thought I’d ID’ed this stuff as Licmophora sp. but now that I’ve let it grow out, I’m not so sure. It’s a brown-ish white looking feather protruding from the live rock in mostly high light intensity areas and emerging from what looks like existing algae.
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 78.6
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrates: 0
Phosphates: 0.141
pH: 8.2
dKH: 9.6
Cal: 460
Mag: 1300
Dosing aminos and 3-part. Light GFO (Rowaphos) in a minireactor. Chaeto in a reactor. Barely feeding fish. Feeding coral lightly once a week but cutting back until this stuff is gone.
I'm glad the CuC worked for you! It's looking good!Ended up adding 3 turbo snails, 10 more trochus snails, and a lawnmower blenny. These guys have absolutely decimated the algae. All that’s left is some growing at the very top of the live rock and they’re still working on it. I bet it’ll be all gone in the next few days. Phosphates dropped a tiny bit, I’m wondering if that’s due to the algae removal. I may dose in some Phosphate Rx to really knock it down once my skimmer stops going nuts from the epoxy I used while mounting frags yesterday. The clowns were very interested that I was taking a photos of the tank, the blenny is still pretty skittish.
The Chaeto will only grow if there is phosphate, nitrate and iron along with a few other trace elements.
this gives me hope lol...yesterday i added like 30 cerriths and 15 nerites..ill monitor over the next few days and go pick up 10-20 more trochus this weekend if necessary.I am HAPPY to report...the algae is 100% GONE!!!
@NoobReeefer I know you were dealing with this too. All I did was manually remove, added 15 snails (trochus and turbo) to my existing cleanup crew, and added a lawnmower blenny (who I believe did most of the work on the longer stuff). The algae could not keep up with these guys. I may have to take the turbos back to the LFS as I think the tank is way too clean now for this large of a cleanup crew and I don’t want one of them to die in my tank (I had to flip them back over multiple times already when they’d fallen off the glass or rockwork). I didn’t change my GFO and reactor yet and my phosphates are still high so attacking that issue is next. Thanks for the help everybody!
