Vodka dosing and bacterial+GHA bloom question.

taikss

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So a very long story short:

1) I inherited a 230G tank with fish and some softies 3y ago, super bad condition, including the equipment (had to change all eventually)
2) Started testing things properly a year later, came up with high super high nutriets @ 0.7 phos and 150ish nitrate
3) Tried to reduce the nutrients in various ways, nothing helped, finally started dosing vodka, currently adding 20 mil a day total (2,5ml per 100l). It works, 2nd pic tested yday, nitrates are 5-10 range (in the water column, not implying they are in the whole tank!) and phos been undetectable for a month. The latter of course does not mean they are at 0, since nitrates are still declining
4) Most of my liverock been exposed to a 150ish nitrate and high phosphates for the whole period of me having that tank (3ish years)
5) Bacterial blooms are expected and i'm not worried about cyano all that much, but the GHA i see for the first time in my tank and it's a problem. The rocks are slowly (thank god) browning out and getting covered with GHA. 1 of the rocks i bought from a fellow reefer was the first to burst with GHA, but now i see my rocks doing the same.
6) Sand is sifted by a star and goby, crystal clear and "light" all the way since i got them cleaners.

Now the Questions:

1) When should i reduce the vodka dosage to 25% of what i'm currently administering, until the algae on the rocks is gone or until the nitrate shows up as 0 on the kit? I hear 25% is what should be kept as a maintenance dosage.

2) How long can my rocks leech N and P for? Best guesses?

3) Should i change something drastically now before GHA takes over the rocks?

4) What are the rocks leaching the N or the P? Perhaps i should add P so it'd show 0.03 on the kit, to quicker remove N from the rocks?

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JoeD_

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I would do your absolute BEST on the GHA ASAP.. That stuff grows SUPER fast, and can take over in days. With the amount of nutrients you have, it'll explode no problem. Removing it manually works well, but you'll have to do it all the time and it will grow back quickly. Hopefully your tangs help take care of it, it seems hit or miss with them. Your other options are adding more CUC like emerald crabs, a lawnmower blenny, or even a rabbit fish (though they can have a taste for softies)... Lastly you can dose Reef Flux. That seems to work great for most people and as long as you don't over dose it won't harm corals.
 
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taikss

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I would do your absolute BEST on the GHA ASAP.. That stuff grows SUPER fast, and can take over in days. With the amount of nutrients you have, it'll explode no problem. Removing it manually works well, but you'll have to do it all the time and it will grow back quickly. Hopefully your tangs help take care of it, it seems hit or miss with them. Your other options are adding more CUC like emerald crabs, a lawnmower blenny, or even a rabbit fish (though they can have a taste for softies).


yes, but first things first, i need to answer the question as to what causes this and when can it die out. the mere assumption is that it's the leech by the rocks, but think of it this way, maybe somebody has experience with how long they would leech in the first place, i'm still dosing a ton of vodka daily, the drop from 160 to 8 in nitrates happened overnight all things considered.

on a side note, the GHA has been coming very slowly, i'd say the entire time of me dosing the vodka 1.5-2m or so, that's why i'm assuming it will starve out soon enough. just don't want to be wrong with that. i'm rather sure there's no fuel for this thing left in the tank, has to be starving...
 

JoeD_

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yes, but first things first, i need to answer the question as to what causes this and when can it die out. the mere assumption is that it's the leech by the rocks, but think of it this way, maybe somebody has experience with how long they would leech in the first place, i'm still dosing a ton of vodka daily, the drop from 160 to 8 in nitrates happened overnight all things considered.

on a side note, the GHA has been coming very slowly, i'd say the entire time of me dosing the vodka 1.5-2m or so, that's why i'm assuming it will starve out soon enough. just don't want to be wrong with that. i'm rather sure there's no fuel for this thing left in the tank, has to be starving...

I can't answer that for you, we'd all be guessing. The only way is to keep testing your nutrients. . Ive had GHA outbreaks twice. IME, GHA needs very little nutrients + lights to take off. If it's under control already - that's a good sign. One thing I would be really careful of is getting your nutrients undetectable as that would start becoming detrimental to your corals. Which makes the fight with GHA tough considering you're trying to starving it out at the same time as growing/keeping corals healthy.
 
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taikss

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I can't answer that for you, we'd all be guessing. The only way is to keep testing your nutrients. . Ive had GHA outbreaks twice. IME, GHA needs very little nutrients + lights to take off. If it's under control already - that's a good sign. One thing I would be really careful of is getting your nutrients undetectable as that would start becoming detrimental to your corals. Which makes the fight with GHA tough considering you're trying to starving it out at the same time as growing/keeping corals healthy.

agree with all above, that's my problem also. i've read and seen statements everywhere that until you have cyano-gha on your rocks while dosing vodka, don't mind the tests being 0 as there's plenty of phosphorus and nitrate floating around and accessible for corals, once they're gone, you either should cut back or dose. I have a feeling i'm very far away from that, just that i don't want GHA to get too strong while waiting for the good stuff to happen.

My end game would be to keep dosing vodka while adding tiny bits of N+P into the system.
 

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Can be water supply, rock leaching, or something died. If you had this issue for a while, its probally one of the first 2.

Edit: a faulty test kit is also an option
 

Tastee

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I struggled with GHA in my tank for quite a while - first setup in Oct 17, GHA set in after about 3 months. Initially I had high(ish) PO4 but after addressing that the GHA hung on. Even when I had PO4 and NO3 very low it was happily growing. Over 6 months I tried a lot and nothing was working. In Feb this year I dosed Reef Flux and around the same time stopped NoPoX dosing and added some Money Cowries.

That worked very well, the Fluc knocked off the bulk of the GHA, letting nutrients rise let the Corals and Corraline algae improve and the Cowries started mowing down the remaining GHA. It’s pretty much completely gone now and I am generously feeding to raise nutrients (currently NO3 0.25 and PO4 0.8). The only thing I am keeping an eye on is the NO3/PO4 balance - if I feel the PO4 is getting to high compared to the NO3 I may use some Phosguard to drop it a little. For now however everything is happy and GHA free.

Hard to know which of the changes in Feb made the most difference, but the combination worked well for me.
 

JoeD_

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I struggled with GHA in my tank for quite a while - first setup in Oct 17, GHA set in after about 3 months. Initially I had high(ish) PO4 but after addressing that the GHA hung on. Even when I had PO4 and NO3 very low it was happily growing. Over 6 months I tried a lot and nothing was working. In Feb this year I dosed Reef Flux and around the same time stopped NoPoX dosing and added some Money Cowries.

That worked very well, the Fluc knocked off the bulk of the GHA, letting nutrients rise let the Corals and Corraline algae improve and the Cowries started mowing down the remaining GHA. It’s pretty much completely gone now and I am generously feeding to raise nutrients (currently NO3 0.25 and PO4 0.8). The only thing I am keeping an eye on is the NO3/PO4 balance - if I feel the PO4 is getting to high compared to the NO3 I may use some Phosguard to drop it a little. For now however everything is happy and GHA free.

Hard to know which of the changes in Feb made the most difference, but the combination worked well for me.

That has been my experience as well. Everyone says "cut back on the nutrients," but to me that is impossible if you have fish or lighting. GHA seems to be able to grow rapidly with very little nutrients. I really don't like using chemicals or other things like activated carbon/gfo, but I've never beaten GHA by just reducing nutrients. I think you must be super aggressive with it, or it'll easily win.
 

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