Tim's 120g Mixed Reef

[stefan09w]

I had a similar problem with my reefer 170. looks like hair algae to me. What I noticed is the herbivories wont touch it unless its nearly completely removed. So what I did is manually remove as much by hand first then take a 1/2" hose and connected it to a filter sock and went in with the hose and a tooth brush ( found a better brush for this at the hardware store). I scrubbed the rocks for roughly 10 mins every week before a water change. collecting as much as I could in the filter sock. I restocked my clean up crew. What I noticed is that once I got it this clean the fish and inverts have kept those areas clean since. I also removed all white, red and green from my lighting spectrum. This kind of weakened it before removal. Good luck!

 

[chimbo84]

I had a similar problem with my reefer 170. looks like hair algae to me. What I noticed is the herbivories wont touch it unless its nearly completely removed. So what I did is manually remove as much by hand first then take a 1/2" hose and connected it to a filter sock and went in with the hose and a tooth brush ( found a better brush for this at the hardware store). I scrubbed the rocks for roughly 10 mins every week before a water change. collecting as much as I could in the filter sock. I restocked my clean up crew. What I noticed is that once I got it this clean the fish and inverts have kept those areas clean since. I also removed all white, red and green from my lighting spectrum. This kind of weakened it before removal. Good luck!

Thanks for the suggestion. I do believe it is Derbesia and therefore the fluconazole treatment should have an effect but so far, I am seeing nothing. I took two rocks out this morning to scrub and dip in H2O2 but unfortunately, I have discovered that most of my rockscape is fused together with the sand and my sand bed has turned rock hard. This never happened in my last tank so I am not sure what other options I have at this point other than rebooting the tank if the fluconazole doesn’t work.

 

[chimbo84]

I’ve been seeing some significant improvement on the algae since dosing the fluconazole. It’s definitely turned grayish in a lot of places and noticeably thinned out. Unfortunately, this also coincides with discontinuing my auto water changes so it is difficult to say for certain whether it was the fluconazole or if my RODI and/or salt mix was contributing. It’s only been 1.5 weeks since dosing the remainder of the fluconazole but I will do a specific post related to this once my treatment and final impressions are complete.

On another topic, I have decided to take the tank a bit “back to basics”. When I had my Fluval Evo, there was a one year period where it was simple and easy and looked consistently great. I was topping off with kalkwasser and did monthly water changes. That was it. It wasn’t until I started experimenting and getting into the “gear junkie” habit that my tank went downhill.

In an effort to recreate a bit of that success, I have decided to stop dosing two part, stop dosing nitrate, stop screwing with my flow and lighting, stop auto water changes, and aside from feeding the fish, essentially forget about the tank for a while. For calcium and alkalinity, I am going back to kalkwasser and got an Avast K1 and this will be the only thing dosed to the tank for at least the rest of the year. I need to eliminate variables and reestablish a baseline of success.

I don’t want to do the math but I would guess that I have lost close to $1000 in coral just in the last three months so something is definitely not trending correctly. I need to pull things out and reset a little before I attempt new corals/techniques/processes.

 

[chimbo84]

I decided to go nuclear. Things just have not been going well and I keep dealing with one thing after another. GHA, cyano, now three different strains of dino all at the same time. My sand bed had turned to stone, my snails keep dying, and the algae is still an ongoing issue. So this morning I basically did a mini reset. I tore down the aquascape, removed all the calcified sand that I could, and stirred the sand bed. I am running a heavy skim, UV and will be changing my filter socks every day over the next week. I need to get back to a baseline and get rid of the Dinos that keep poisoning my snails. The lack of a sustainable snail population is causing my algae issue to get out of hand again.

 

[chimbo84]

Not much in the way of updates lately because I have simply been waiting for the tank to stabilize and for things to get back to a reliable baseline before I get back to adding coral. I am still reeling a bit from this past fall when I lost $800 in SPS frags to some still unidentified contaminant.

Anyways, the current state is at least healthy-ish. The corals are bouncing back, the dinoflagellates are gone but the GHA has been an absolute beast to get rid of. Even running gfo and my refugium 24/7, I am still getting 0.1 to 0.3ppm in phosphate. I have been running all blues on my lights and still the algae is dominating. Manual removal and hydrogen peroxide are temporary solutions but at least I haven’t lost any more coral.

To help battle the algae, you might notice a spotted grey blob in the above picture. That is the newest addition; a dolabella sea hare that I am hoping and praying will help finally get this tank back in line. So far it seems to be doing it’s job which is more than I can say for any of the urchins, snails, tangs, and crabs I have put in this tank.

 

[chimbo84]

Still battling the algae and making headway I think. The sea hare is doing its job admirably and I am seeing a lot more whitish hair algae than healthy green stuff.
I did however notice a patch of reddish brown algae that I decided to take a close me look at under the microscope and my worst fears are confirmed.

Ugh. Ostreopsis dinoflagellates. Anyways, I have my UV hooked back up and am getting ahead of this. Seems like I might have caught it early before it took over my tank.

 

[SinkyShippy]

Still battling the algae and making headway I think. The sea hare is doing its job admirably and I am seeing a lot more whitish hair algae than healthy green stuff.
I did however notice a patch of reddish brown algae that I decided to take a close me look at under the microscope and my worst fears are confirmed.

Ugh. Ostreopsis dinoflagellates. Anyways, I have my UV hooked back up and am getting ahead of this. Seems like I might have caught it early before it took over my tank.

Any updates? Did you get rid of the derbesia?