The up and down journey of my 140 gallon reef

[coralchiefreef]

Hey guys! Been a huge fan of R2R for a while now and thought it’s time to start documenting my tank on here. My system has been up and running for a little under a year and a half now and has recently been suffering from multiple issues (most of them being a direct result of stuff I did ). My most prominent issue to begin with is hair/ turf algae. I really saw this algae start to takeover once I began to remove the sand out of my system a few months ago, throwing all things out of whack and giving the algae free reign to takeover. In discovering how much damage was done by removing sand I’ve been starting to slowly add sand back into the system to get it back to where it was. However for the algae I’ve now been dosing vibrant to try to bring this problem down. It has been just under a month of dosing vibrant, with no major results so far it seems like the algae may be slowing down a bit however I did lose a few smaller sps frags which was not too surprising to me as I had prepared myself for the possibility of losing a frag or two through this process. I’m going to keep dosing the vibrant over the next couple of weeks/ months to hopefully get the tank back to where i want it to be! I’m sorry this is such a long intro lol but I look forward to talking to you all, getting my tank back to a thriving reef and sharing my results along the way!

Follow me on Instagram too! @coralchiefreef

 

[Auquanut]

Welcome to R2R. Nice tank. Did you notice a nitrate/phosphate swing when you started removing the sand? Do you tangs show any interest in the algae?

 

[coralchiefreef]

Welcome to R2R. Nice tank. Did you notice a nitrate/phosphate swing when you started removing the sand? Do you tangs show any interest in the algae?

I don’t think it was an immediate change in phosphate and nitrate but shortly before the algae started phosphate got up to 0.2! And also I think I might have some of the worlds laziest tangs the yellow tang grazes the most but the others don’t seem to touch the hair algae too much

 

[Auquanut]

Have you seen any results from the vibrant? Are you still using it?

 

[P-Dub]

Have you seen any results from the vibrant? Are you still using it?

I am curious as well. I used Vibrant for some turf algae that I had. It was Bryopsis like but not. Very hardy and clung to the rocks like cement. When I tried to pull it out it would lift the rock it was on. Nothing would touch it. Used Vibrant for three weeks at 1.5 X's the maintenance dose and it was gone. Fortunately, there was no adverse effect on my corals or my macro algae in my refugium.

 

[coralchiefreef]

Have you seen any results from the vibrant? Are you still using it?

I haven’t had the wow effect of it so far that others have said but it’s still early in the process so I’m gonna keep dosing over the next month or two and hopefully get the reef sparkling again, I’ll keep the thread updated!

 

[coralchiefreef]

I am curious as well. I used Vibrant for some turf algae that I had. It was Bryopsis like but not. Very hardy and clung to the rocks like cement. When I tried to pull it out it would lift the rock it was on. Nothing would touch it. Used Vibrant for three weeks at 1.5 X's the maintenance dose and it was gone. Fortunately, there was no adverse effect on my corals or my macro algae in my refugium.

That’s great to hear! That’s pretty much the type of algae I’m dealing with so hopefully the vibrant can help beat it! If not I might think about a Sea hare or a big boost to my clean up crew..

 

[coralchiefreef]

Changed out my 57 watt uv bulb today which was long overdue after having the same bulb in for almost a year and a half. Hopefully the new bulb helps in the algae battle!

 

[coralchiefreef]

Okay update time! Still dosing the vibrant weekly and still have hair algae but just added a mp40 to the tank on Thursday to help stir everything up a lot more! I’m noticing a lot of detritus on the actual rocks so I think the plan of attack is to go in a few times a week with a turkey baster to keep the surface clean. I also should have a sea hare coming in from the lfs this week so that guy will forsure have enough to chow on for a little while. Has anyone had success with sea hares before??