Vibrant with sludge?

[Susan Edwards]

My tank has what I call sludge. It's almost like spider webs throughout my rock and now on back glass.

History;
a) I replaced all the fine sand with medium sand so a tank reboot. Also removed most rocks that I could and brushed and cleaned. They were kept in tank water in a qt tank while I did the work so did not die

b) I also noticed that if I ran my blade scraper down the back wall, the coraline flaked off and was white beneath. I think a lot of it has died. Not sure if I need to scrape it all off but it is in bigger chunks that do not syphon out so don't want to add debris to my tank

c) I have what I think is cyano-on rock and sand. Just did chemiclean. It didn't get it all--I only had enough for about 95 gal. I think my tank, with sump is 150 gal or closer to 125 minus rock and sand. Hard to figure that out.

So question-should I do another chemi clean round after a week or so, or will vibrant take care of the "sludge". Can they be used together? I will add that until september, the tank was very neglected

Po4 is .1ish No3 still at 40

this is one corner of the back. It actually waves in the flow

This is on a rock. Hard to get a good pic. But it is enough to wave in flow

 

[Kal93]

If you just replaced your sand, it could be dino from silicates

 

[Susan Edwards]

If you just replaced your sand, it could be dino from silicates

There is no "snot". Just a brownish looking algae. And it's not lack of flow as I can see the algae strings flowing. I washed the sand good, and it is reef sand. It's also on the rocks, that reddish-brown tint.. The chemi clean I used was older, so not sure if I didn't use enough, or if what I used was expired. Also, when I took out all the carbon and purigen, I missed two bags of purigen and got them out as soon as I saw.

Lights were also replaced. 60 or 65 blue/5 or 7 white

Stringy but no snot bubbles.

 

[CMMorgan]

That looks basically like my tank. I have a sleeper goby that dumps sand everywhere. I call him Chernobyl because my tank resembles a nuclear winter. I suspect he is messing with the silicates and that's why I can't kick my dinos. I went three wounds of chemiclean thinking it was cyano... it's dinos.

 

[Uncle99]

How old was the previous tank?

To me, Nitrate is a tad out of balance with phosphate.

I would expect that with a .1ppm phosphate, nitrate should have been in the 2-5ppm trance.

While zero is not an acceptable level of N and P, some trace must exist to feed corals, but, I have found if either one is more elevated, I get pest algae’s.

I’d scrape that stuff off and siphon it out, followed by 20% WC once a day for 4 days, lights off, and maybe start or increase a carbon dose like Nopox to increase the bacteria and over time, drop nitrate. If you can add surface area like marine pure type blocks or spheres that, combined with a carbon source will definitely lower nitrates.

Sure, Vibrant at recommended dosing levels is fine.

I run UV which significantly lowers any stuff in the column.


If it is silica related, in time, they will run out of this food source, diminish, and disappear.

 

[Susan Edwards]

@Uncle99 The previous tank, which is the same tank just with new sand, was started Feb 2018.Lot of "life" happened 2018 thru most of 2020 so it got neglected. Previous to replacing the fine sand, NO3 was 160 or higher and PO 4 was very high, so numbers have come way down. Sand is a very thin layer. Last PO4 test was back to .2 but (still better than .3 or 4) I'll do another to be sure it did go back up. Might need to replace some phosguard if it has climbed.

I have marine pure blocks in sump, a bag of denitrate, rocks and rubble in the refugium--removed the sand from there as well. I also have 2 bags of chemipure elite, a couple bags of purigen and carbon and some algone.

When I started this reboot end of Sept. by removing sand and redoing most of the rocks (and trying to clean them), I ended up doing more than a complete water change over 2-3 weeks. Right now I'm doing 20% once a week and am close to having done 2x's water change out. Also vacuumed out sump of what I could get--removed the marine pure blocks and swissed in water.

I do tend to feed heavy but am trying to cut down

Can I do carbon (vodka) and vibrant? I also ordered the brightwell stuff for the 45 gal observation tank which is a new tank set up to see which works better.