The "Uglies"...how long did you have them?

[jgvergo]

So, here are the results so far, along with my interpretation.

It's clear that the Uglies are significantly more common in the first six months of the life of the tank. It's also clear that tank age is not the only culprit. Based on what I see here and the fact that I'm in month 8, I conclude that I'm overfeeding and/or failing to export nutrients adequately. I will reduce my feeding, run GFO and report back to everyone in a week or two. Thanks to everyone who voted and contributed!!

 

[Brew12]

Maintain nutrients and run some GAC. Don't use any other form of nutrient export. It'll clear up.

+1 to this!

Also, have you ever added rotifers, live phytoplankon, copepods or amphipods to your tank?

I'm also a big fan of using a small pump to power wash rocks in a new system. You may be shocked at how much crud gets blasted out from deep within the rocks.

 

[revhtree]

Oh they disappear? COOL!

 

[hotashes]

I had the normal algae uglies and then came dinos.... I fought it with h2o2 and a turkey baster. It took 2-3 weeks but I won. Then I had a gha outbreak which I again I used h2o2 to battle. Again I won. From that point on my tank has really cleaned up.

I have no algae growing anywhere on my rock or sand. My glass stays very clean, except now I have corralline starting to grow everywhere including my glass. I don’t want to jinx it but my tank is ugly free and pretty low maintenance at this point. Corals have now spread to the point they are crowding each other.

It’s takes some time but when you get here and look back it’s all worth it.

I am in month 8 of the uglies and I'm getting worried/frustrated/pi$$ed off. Most of all, I'm wondering if my situation is normal. I've seen posts that say it's common to have the Uglies in the first year. So, how long did you have them?

Any tank I own or advise online has zero allowed uglies phase

Zero, so that we don't purposefully seed our tanks with invaders

An uglies phase, prescribed to us by reef sages and authors, is the worst idea in reefing * not insulting anyone's algae issue, this is a challenge to book authors or advisors who don't run algae correction threads

In one way I love the practice,
Allowing a tank to undergo uglies phase is the reason our algae cure threads number greater than four hundred pages. Reefs that disallow all invasions day one never post in our threads, they're hand guided into coralline and coral scapes.

With no hyperbole, I'm vehemently against anyone in reefing, authors included, advising for uglies phases unless they have giant algae cure threads to post which show no correlation between the two. Used harsh terms bc new reefers are told to start this way, that it’s ideal, that it’s natural, they’re never given any alternative but to undertake a life of invasion. Even if it's always worked for those advisors and writers, we need to see how it's working for others and for losses in our hobby, stop teaching this immediately.

Am linking this thread to our works for algae cures across forums


I will never ever ever be out of the aquarium turnaround machine as long as we teach reefers to be hands off and let the tank decide direction and slowly, hopefully, come up to par.

Uglies phase teaching has wasted more substrata and animals than any paradigm ever taught in reefing , $$$ bigtime wasted

I'm guilty of starting out that way too, in the 90s all we had was books to learn from and they wrote the best they could at the time. In order to quit wasting marine life, let's all agree to ban the uglies phase/same bandwagon as tangs in a nano passion

Vote zero above. Please add in vote option “as I breathe, no uglies phase shall exist, opt out”

@hotashes

What would you guess my blood pressure is up to heh after reading this thread



Excellent thread btw, love it. You’ve captured the real essence of how reefing starts for nearly everyone, and how it progresses as algae challenges for the life of many tanks

The number of people this thread will help prevent and completely reverse algae invasions-thousands.

@John3 your post is the cream of the crop. I also dealt with it this way, from day one... With thanks to @brandon429 who advised that great husbandry was No1 key and provides the hands on approach.

I also got to work using h2o2 and went from this

to this

Using a stake knife and h2o2

Initially I only had corals to begin with and my rock was skip cycled ( @brandon429 has a thread) The microbiology of reef tank cycling.

https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sh...gy-of-reef-tank-cycling..214618/&share_type=t

So this gave me time to work on any disturbance, leaving me a clean set up, and plenty of life still in tact eg. Microorganism such as pods, fanworms, and even a medusa. Remember I only used 3% h2o2 which was pleasing to know it didn't kill off the life and just the algae

Just a quick snap for reference of how my tank currently looks

@jgvergo I can link my tank thread for anyone to know how my journey has been these 3-4 months since set up. Even my 1" maxima clam is still going strong (touch wood).

@brandon429 again thanks for your input and my tank may well just be kaput without your assistance! As you know I've never run a reef tank, it's been an exciting experience

Peace, hang in there b

A.

 

[Sailingeric]

I had a cyano outbreak about 4 or 5 months in and have been fighting it for a couple months, I did a couple rounds of Red Slime Remover which helped but it still lived on my sand. I did several things so I am not sure if one thing did it or a combination- I ran phosphate remover, got a sleep banded goby to sift the sand, I cut back on my feeding amount, raised the Alk to 11-12 dkh. I was running some bigger powerheads but last week I got a Reef Octobus Varios 4 pump that really bump up my water turn over through the sump and removed one of the power heads. This week it really seems to have died off

 

[Jason Schwend]

Here's my biocube 14 after 4 months and I still got the ulgies, but it will change just takes time. Corals still growing like crazy tho.

 

[Jason Schwend]

Here it was at the end of march.

 

[brandon429]

Ash won't think I'm flipping sides when I say this, we've already chatted about it: there is nothing wrong with also developing the nimble skills to control invasions through time and water controls, the classic approach I just railed on

we are well practiced at implementing a complete tank cleaning when needed, after the initial mass has already set in

that's what makes up the large peroxide threads


the challenge point is not featuring opt-out methods, pure skip uglies option, alongside the invaded option as part of all reefing reference material. to purposefully farm any number of happenstance imports, place them under full production lighting immediately and then slowly respond to new rooted invasions is one possible option, but it is better reserved for your third tank or for practice making large tanks run uninvaded

If anyone as option b chooses to hand guide all substrates all the time into complicance, coralline and coral flesh and never excluded by plant except where purposefully arranged, that's a mode of opting into deliberate action vs the wait and hope..must be fully validated. If this is featured literally in writing from every reef sage from here on out, then I'll be placated and they'll be off the hook for having no large algae work threads.




Taricha-I like his science regarding Dino invasions. Based on what I read from his large work threads this engrained early inaction is associated with most or all of the presentations he sees for dino correction along with use of gfo and nutrient imbalancers, water actions. Dinos do well in early establishment if they're brought into a hands off system with a sandbed intended not to be touched, and given full on production lighting and feed and refuge and nonremoval right from the start. Add to that the commonality of using nutrient stripping to starve algae (an indirect control means/patterns of invasion) and you have the right settings for his giant dino invasion thread, all based off trends we copy from each other that lead to invasion by happenstance and allowance.


We take chances with hands off reefing, take less chances if we don't have time to trifle with amphidinium...removing mats and anchored invaders long before space takeover simply must be featured as reef learning materials from here on out, consider not even using a sandbed until your tank matures, how different is that compared to how we usually start


Absolutely anyone can clean a reef into compliance, follow a posted order of ops, doesn't fail. Easier on smaller reefs, practical.

only the nimble can water guide a reef back into compliance, what large tankers need,
it's a valuable skill set. I'd never knock it

see Revs big reef work he beat dinos, cyano subsides over time and action and by UV much easier, he's practically won the hardest challenge here. I'm off to discover who did that dino work on Revs tank

 

[Donavon]

I am in month 8 of the uglies and I'm getting worried/frustrated/pi$$ed off. Most of all, I'm wondering if my situation is normal. I've seen posts that say it's common to have the Uglies in the first year. So, how long did you have them?

Most of my tanks got through the uglies within two months, however my very first tank probably 4 months or so.

Is this your first reef tank?

Every time you make a change; add fish, New corals, feed more, change food, the chemistry changes. With new tanks (New rock, sand) we usually are making changes frequently while the stuff is still “braking in”maturing, sobefore it even stabilizes...we make another change, that throws is all off kilter again.

I set up a 65 gallon tank from scratch in October 2017, had coral and fish in by New Years and never got the uglies, other than a few light spots of diatoms in the sand. I have yet to see cyano in this tank.

It really just depends on the order in which you do things, and how often/fast you make changes.
I’m not saying you do but sometimes we get impatient and try to change/correct things before allowing things to correct themselves.

My experience has been much better results letting the tank “mellow” in between additions/changes

 

[drblakjak55]

Uglies started one year in and lasted six months. I started GFO, vodka dosing, and very aggressive turkey basting all the rocks every other day and eventually the uglies run out of stuff to grow on that accumulates in the cracks. Each turkey basting less and less comes back. Worked for GHA, Bryopsis and cyano. Alcohol wipes our dinos. Btw my phos sits at 0.2.

 

[jgvergo]

Most of my tanks got through the uglies within two months, however my very first tank probably 4 months or so.

Is this your first reef tank?

Every time you make a change; add fish, New corals, feed more, change food, the chemistry changes. With new tanks (New rock, sand) we usually are making changes frequently while the stuff is still “braking in”maturing, sobefore it even stabilizes...we make another change, that throws is all off kilter again.

I set up a 65 gallon tank from scratch in October 2017, had coral and fish in by New Years and never got the uglies, other than a few light spots of diatoms in the sand. I have yet to see cyano in this tank.

It really just depends on the order in which you do things, and how often/fast you make changes.
I’m not saying you do but sometimes we get impatient and try to change/correct things before allowing things to correct themselves.

My experience has been much better results letting the tank “mellow” in between additions/changes

This is my second tank. I have definitely learned to take everything very slow. Stability is key.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Ouch- some scary numbers listed. Alk- Too high. Mag- Fairly high Salinity- Quite high (1026) is new best medium Phosphates- very high

YOULL NEED TO BRING THESE LEVELS TO A NORM AND MAINTAIN THEM. START WITH WATER CHANGE(S) AND LOWER THAT PHOSPHATE.
Salinity WILL HAVE TO BE LOWERED GRADUALLY AS WITH MAG ALSO. DONT ADD ALK UNTIL THEY REACH NORMAL LEVELS

 

[Donavon]

This is my second tank. I have definitely learned to take everything very slow. Stability is key.

Good luck dude, I hope you get it straightened out soon

 

[Rich Klein]

More photographic detail...

Looks like Dyno to me - speaking from experiance

 

[livingcolors]

are you using some kind of cyano remover?, also boosting flow might help with that

 

[RobertE]

Vibrant. Stuff works. Better living thru chemistry.

 

[jgvergo]

+1 to this!

Also, have you ever added rotifers, live phytoplankon, copepods or amphipods to your tank?

I'm also a big fan of using a small pump to power wash rocks in a new system. You may be shocked at how much crud gets blasted out from deep within the rocks.

I have added live phytoplankon, copepods and amphipods to my tank. I have not added rotifers. Do they have a specific advantage I should be aware of?

 

[jgvergo]

are you using some kind of cyano remover?, also boosting flow might help with that

I am in the process of repairing an Apex WAV that stopped functioning a week ago. I have a second WAV and have increased the flow on it to (hopefully) compensate for the temporary loss of the broken one.

 

[jgvergo]

are you using some kind of cyano remover?, also boosting flow might help with that

I am not using a cyan remover. I was doing vodka for a while but my nitrates and phosphates became undetectable. I guess I prefer to get my feeding levels and nutrient export (skimmer) "right" and have things be in balance naturally.

 

[jgvergo]

Updated graph: