Too Much Live Rock - Red Sea Reefer 250

[Chortanator]

Time to share the ugly, I guess

I'd like to say I don't know what happened but I got busy and couldn't do water changes for about 2 months. What started as a little patch of hair algae ballooned out of proportion. Everything is gunky and slimy and even growing on the surface. I'm at a complete loss, and I don't know if I can come back from this. I'm sure people have battled with worse, but I'm not sure I have the time or energy to do so.

 

[blaxsun]

You need a cleanup crew for your cleanup crew...! I run my system without water changes and find a UV and a massive cleanup crew has been key to keeping algae under control.

 

[Chortanator]

You need a cleanup crew for your cleanup crew...! I run my system without water changes and find a UV and a massive cleanup crew has been key to keeping algae under control.

Did some manual removal today, I have no idea what it is. I thought it was GHA at first but it's more like a slime/green sludge. I can pull it off the rocks easily but none of my clean up crew wants to touch it, lol

 

[blaxsun]

Did some manual removal today, I have no idea what it is. I thought it was GHA at first but it's more like a slime/green sludge. I can pull it off the rocks easily but none of my clean up crew wants to touch it, lol

Sounds like what's on the sides and a few of the edges of my tank at the waterline right now (my parrotfish is chomping at the bit for me to scrape it off so he can devour it!)

 

[Chortanator]

This has been a wild ride! And a slow but steady recovery process. I upped GFO and the hair algae died off, only to be replaced with cyano. I tried manual removal for a few weeks before I decided chemiclean was the way to go. It worked like an absolute charm, only my skimmer and nems aren't too happy. Need to do some manual removal of the residual algae and some more water changes, took 5 gallons out via the skimmer and added a bunch of carbon. Space invader frag has surprisingly done great through all of this and now has 3 more mouths

 

[Chortanator]

Another update after the water cleared finally back where I was 6 months ago, less some zoas

 

[Chortanator]

Some pictures and a video from today - snow day means deep clean day! The heater and wavemaker had weird fuzz on them so I soaked them in 50/50 vinegar/RO and scrubbed them off, then I gave the glass a good scrape. Scrubbed the filter socks as best as I could, they probably need replacing, and put in fresh carbon and GFO. Cleaned the RO resevoir as well. I have no idea what the stringy algae is, I clean it off every day but it comes back every morning. It comes off easily like diatoms but I've never seen diatoms in long strings.

Also started up my phyto again and took some pods from the filter sock and placed them in a pod growing jar. I hope I didn't shock them, the phyto I used was refrigerated and I dumped them right in before realising they probably need a heater, so I stuck a heater in there.

The first video is of a runaway nem that climbed over my overflow and went down the pipe into my sump. He seems to be doing fine, it's a sump/refugium so he's got some light down there. It will definitely make it easier to sell them if he decides to grow and split down there, just not between those pipes where I can't reach him

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Some pictures and a video from today - snow day means deep clean day! The heater and wavemaker had weird fuzz on them so I soaked them in 50/50 vinegar/RO and scrubbed them off, then I gave the glass a good scrape. Scrubbed the filter socks as best as I could, they probably need replacing, and put in fresh carbon and GFO. Cleaned the RO resevoir as well. I have no idea what the stringy algae is, I clean it off every day but it comes back every morning. It comes off easily like diatoms but I've never seen diatoms in long strings.

Also started up my phyto again and took some pods from the filter sock and placed them in a pod growing jar. I hope I didn't shock them, the phyto I used was refrigerated and I dumped them right in before realising they probably need a heater, so I stuck a heater in there.

The first video is of a runaway nem that climbed over my overflow and went down the pipe into my sump. He seems to be doing fine, it's a sump/refugium so he's got some light down there. It will definitely make it easier to sell them if he decides to grow and split down there, just not between those pipes where I can't reach him

Tank is looking really good!