Hello,
I've been experiencing trouble dealing with algae, specifically hair algae. My tank is on the smaller end (30 gals) so I've tried adding invertebrates such as a camel shrimp, snail and sea urchin. It seems they struggle to keep up with it. To help, I've been manually removing it via siphoning and I added poly-filter to my canister filter to reduce nitrates and phosphates. Now my corals appear to be suffering (see attached photos). One of my torches hasn't opened up much lately. I noticed the root/stem of the torch has also started growing a green film on it, which I'm assuming is some sort of encrusting type of algae? I'm thinking that could be the culprit. My hammer coral is also not as plump. Not sure what to do (dip, or try a less aggressive approach). To give some better context, here are my water parameters right now:
- Salinity = 1.025 s.g.
- Ammonia = 0 ppm
- Nitrate = 10 ppm
- Nitrite = 0 ppm
- Phosphate = Somewhere between 0-0.25 ppm (I have the API reef master test kit)
- KH = 9
- Calcium = 360 ppm
- pH = 8.1
Mind you, these have been my parameters for months and my corals have been doing just fine until now. I also have a pulsing xenia, another torch, and a zoanthid which all seem to be doing ok. Any tips on how to proceed with this? I have a reef dip for corals by seachem which contains iodine but I don't want to jump the gun if other, less aggressive solutions are available.
I've been experiencing trouble dealing with algae, specifically hair algae. My tank is on the smaller end (30 gals) so I've tried adding invertebrates such as a camel shrimp, snail and sea urchin. It seems they struggle to keep up with it. To help, I've been manually removing it via siphoning and I added poly-filter to my canister filter to reduce nitrates and phosphates. Now my corals appear to be suffering (see attached photos). One of my torches hasn't opened up much lately. I noticed the root/stem of the torch has also started growing a green film on it, which I'm assuming is some sort of encrusting type of algae? I'm thinking that could be the culprit. My hammer coral is also not as plump. Not sure what to do (dip, or try a less aggressive approach). To give some better context, here are my water parameters right now:
- Salinity = 1.025 s.g.
- Ammonia = 0 ppm
- Nitrate = 10 ppm
- Nitrite = 0 ppm
- Phosphate = Somewhere between 0-0.25 ppm (I have the API reef master test kit)
- KH = 9
- Calcium = 360 ppm
- pH = 8.1
Mind you, these have been my parameters for months and my corals have been doing just fine until now. I also have a pulsing xenia, another torch, and a zoanthid which all seem to be doing ok. Any tips on how to proceed with this? I have a reef dip for corals by seachem which contains iodine but I don't want to jump the gun if other, less aggressive solutions are available.
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