What am I doing wrong?

[Heabel7]

What is the source of your water for ATO and water changes? I’m assuming you are using RO/DI, if so, what is your TDS? In my opinion, it should be at or very close to 0 ppm. Do you start out with well or city water? Well water seems to be most problematic.

Have you tried a good UV sterilizer? I added one and it keeps my fish healthier and kills nuisance algae, like red slime, that is in the water column. I think the benefits of running one, outweighs any potential negatives.

What are your Alk levels? Your calcium levels are ok, but a bit high in my opinion. I’m betting your Alk is low.

What is the source of your water for ATO and water changes? I’m assuming you are using RO/DI, if so, what is your TDS? In my opinion, it should be at or very close to 0 ppm. Do you start out with well or city water? Well water seems to be most problematic.

Have you tried a good UV sterilizer? I added one and it keeps my fish healthier and kills nuisance algae, like red slime, that is in the water column. I think the benefits of running one, outweighs any potential negatives.

What are your Alk levels? Your calcium levels are ok, but a bit high in my opinion. I’m betting your Alk is low.

My alk hovers around 8. I actually don’t know my PH (typo above). I have been thinking that most problems arise late winter and maybe low PH from the house being closed up may create problems. But, I can’t measure it yet (apex on the way).
Water is high iron softened city water, that goes through an rodi system. 2 sediment filters, carbon block, 3 resins.
I did run UV for a while because I got dinos multiple times and it took care of that no problem. But no impact on cyano or other algae’s.

I do have more actual red algae than green. But the cyano drives me crazy. Harder to get rid of then dynos for me. I’ve used chemiclean before. But I wait months before doing so. I feel like I’m just covering a problem (possibly making another) that I cannot identify.

 

[Heabel7]

Use hanna nitrate checker rather than a color compare chart so you have actual results. Same goes for phospates

I use Hanna for ULR phosphate. Phosphate levels have never correlated to algae in my system. I can run a gallon of GFO, not feed for a week, turn the lights out and still grow algae while my corals die. I’m sure it keeps it at bay. But I’ve seen plants grow in a sealed bunker with no light. Mother Nature is crazy.
And no matter how stable my big three are I can’t grow coraline effectively on the rocks. ACTUALLY. It grows in the shaded areas but nowhere with intense light.

 

[Tony the Fish]

"Phosphate levels have never correlated to algae in my system"

You may be wrong, As many have said, your barely detectable phosphates and nitrates is what is stressing your corals and causing your algae issues

 

[Lavey29]

You have been provided good info from the posters and I agree you need to dirty the tank up a little. You need higher nitrates and phosphate for balance. My tank is slightly smaller but went through various algae stages like yours. Only as I neared the one year point did things really start to balance out and algae gone. Stabil parameters are key. I highly recommend dosing PNS probio to which is a natural bacteria that helps your eco system. It really seemed to help balance my tank for me.

 

[Heabel7]

Only a 10% water change since post and took gfo offline. Nothing too negative so far. One of my corals is darkening in color. Deeper red or near brown. Worried about brown out. But, everything else looks same so far. I do have some new frags that showed up completely brown and thought they may not make it. However they are starting to color a bit. I feel like that’s a good sign.

Cyano continues to get worse however. I have been sucking it out into a filter sock rather than water changes to try and keep stability. But it all just comes back in 24 hours.

 

[LiverockRocks]

Diversify the microorganisms in your system with diver harvested live sand and live rock...solves lots of problems naturally.

 

[sixty_reefer]

My gut feeling is you're doing too much to try to maintain a stable environment. I'd suggest cutting back on the sizes of water chagnes so the monthly total is 20% to 30%. With each water change siphon out nuisance algae but don't increase the size of the water change if you haven't gotten everything, idea is just to reduce what's visable. Stop adding anything except fish food and whatever supplements you're using to maintain alkalinity, calcium and magnesium. Personally I would add sand, as pointed out above it helps buffering and there's lots of biology that happens in the sand that's likley beneficial, but I know it's an easthitic thing for some people so maybe add some to your sump/refugium. If you're specifically adding food for your corals stop for now until things look better THEN carefully start traget feeding and CLOSELY observing the results, corals can be surprisingly finicky about feeding and what one coral likes another will hate, best leave this variable out of hte picture for now.

When you think of "nutrients" don't think of it in terms of "nitrate" and "PO4". Think of nutrients in terms of Particulate Organic Carbon, Dissolved Organic Carbon and Dissolved Inorganic Carbon; Particulate Organic Nitrogen, Dissolved Organic Nitrogen and Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen; Particulate Organic Phosphorus, Dissolved Organic Phosphorus and Dissolved Inorganic Phosphorus. Yes, I know we can only test for just the inorganic stuff. But that just shows how inadequate our tests are. But it does help expain why "everything" can be "ideal" and corals won't do well and why beautiful tanks can be way out of whack.

FWIW most of the ocean is ~.2mg/l PO4. Upwelling will expose many reefs to those levels and the reason some reefs do test very low is because corals are sucking up the phosphorus and are probably relying on particualte organic and dissolved organic forms to keep from becoming deficient. Without duplicating the food webs I would not try to keep PO4 low.

Here's some refference stuff if you're interested:

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecm.1217?casa_token=ziDzrEEJ8g0AAAAA%3AHnfuGTIntMdqOtx2ij-lnoTh7qVg8VBhYFz98e60zfBEvx5IcIVGhmlpUYmzIJuqUNVm0sG8_0vth6lq

Fig 4 from "Phosphorus metabolism of reef organisms with algal symbionts"

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Fig 3 from "Context-dependant effects of nutrient loading on the coral-algae mutualism"


"Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas" This video compliments Rohwer's book of the same title (Paper back is ~$20, Kindle is ~$10), both deal with the conflicting roles of the different types of DOC in reef ecosystems. While there is overlap bewteen his book and the video both have information not covered by the other and together give a broader view of the complex relationships found in reef ecosystems


Changing Seas - Mysterious Microbes


Nitrogen cycling in hte coral holobiont


BActeria and Sponges


Maintenance of Coral Reef Health (refferences at the end)


Optical Feedback Loop in Colorful Coral Bleaching


Richard Ross What's up with phosphate"

I would agree with you, the reason the op sees improvement in is tank is mainly because wend the Cyanobacteria re establish in the tank they will be reducing the abundance im Doc, the bad thing is that the abundance im Doc will be feeding the Cyanobacteria letting it colonise most surfaces in the system. A possible good way for the to stop having the Cyanobacteria to re appear and improve the coral health would be by reducing the availability of Doc in the overall system. This could be as simple as adding more nitrogen to the tank for a small period of time and then let the tank balance it self.

 

[Heabel7]

I would agree with you, the reason the op sees improvement in is tank is mainly because wend the Cyanobacteria re establish in the tank they will be reducing the abundance im Doc, the bad thing is that the abundance im Doc will be feeding the Cyanobacteria letting it colonise most surfaces in the system. A possible good way for the to stop having the Cyanobacteria to re appear and improve the coral health would be by reducing the availability of Doc in the overall system. This could be as simple as adding more nitrogen to the tank for a small period of time and then let the tank balance it self.

I still dont get it. The general rule is that if your tank has an abundance, shortage, or imbalance you should do water changes to correct the issue. My maitenace schedule for the majority of 10 years has been immaculate. To be told you have nusiance algae and cyano bacteria because you are too clean still seams counter intuitive. My bristle worm, brittle star, filter feeder, sponge, population is high. Where do these things come from if i vacumm a barebottom tank with every water change, change out socks every 2-3 days, have an oversized skimmer, tons of flow. All along running GFO and GAC. To be fair to myself, i do not have alot of green algae, but seeing tanks with zero algae drives me crazy. I ask how do you not have algae. Usually they just say its a mature tank. Is 10 years not mature?

when you say add nitrogen, how do i do that?

Really since I have not gotten the results from what i thought was the best possible situation, im just trying to back off and let things go a little from the advice i have been given here. Heck doing a 10% water change seemed to promote cyano. kinda like it does for dynos. so weird.

I apologize if my frustration is showing as ungrateful for the advice given so far.

 

[sixty_reefer]

I still dont get it. The general rule is that if your tank has an abundance, shortage, or imbalance you should do water changes to correct the issue. My maitenace schedule for the majority of 10 years has been immaculate. To be told you have nusiance algae and cyano bacteria because you are too clean still seams counter intuitive. My bristle worm, brittle star, filter feeder, sponge, population is high. Where do these things come from if i vacumm a barebottom tank with every water change, change out socks every 2-3 days, have an oversized skimmer, tons of flow. All along running GFO and GAC. To be fair to myself, i do not have alot of green algae, but seeing tanks with zero algae drives me crazy. I ask how do you not have algae. Usually they just say its a mature tank. Is 10 years not mature?

when you say add nitrogen, how do i do that?

Really since I have not gotten the results from what i thought was the best possible situation, im just trying to back off and let things go a little from the advice i have been given here. Heck doing a 10% water change seemed to promote cyano. kinda like it does for dynos. so weird.

I apologize if my frustration is showing as ungrateful for the advice given so far.

Firstly let me tell you that I understand the frustration you are feeling right now, I have been there many times as I first started the hobby, where I’ve asked one question and I had a million different things that could be causing that issue. We still don’t know what causes most common problems in the hobby today although I feel we getting much closer to understand how to avoid most unwanted situations. Now I understand you have been in the hobby for a long time and I will try and expand on the breve observation I done above, I was trying to keep it simple as I didn’t wanted to confuse you more than you already are probably.

the reason I got to the above conclusion is based on some thought on the nutrients that you have posted on the opening statement. Although you have not clearly posted all your parameters besides being low and some times zero wend you run a reactor, in addition you gave a indication to something I was suspecting it could be in abundance in your system wend you mentioned that your corals look happy wend the Cyanobacteria returns.
all this clues point that your system may be abundantly in carbon, now carbon can be devised in organic carbon (Doc) and inorganic carbon (N-Doc). Bacteria in your tank uses organic carbon to get energy from and algaes can use the inorganic carbon (co2) to get energy from.
The unbalance in nutrients that let carbon be in abundance is most likely due the amount of Nitrogen and phosphorus available in a system and it only becomes a problem wend things like Cyanobacteria or pest algaes get into a system.
Let me expand on this. The reason it becomes a problem is because Cyanobacteria has a very high demand in carbon compared to the demand of nitrogen and phosphorus to thrive, making organic carbon the main nutrient they need to survive, if the other nutrients are low (no3 and po4) it means that the Cyanobacteria will be utilising most of the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus before your heterotrophic bacteria can. The way that I believe we can beat Cyanobacteria is by increasing the no3 and po4 (if too low) to give a chance for the heterotrophic bacteria to grow and start feeding on carbon and starving the Cyanobacteria by outcompeting the Cyanobacteria for food, at this point because the Cyanobacteria is already in dominance in the tank we can’t just add a carbon source to help the heterotrophic bacteria to grow as the Cyanobacteria will use it faster than the heterotrophic bacteria can. By making more no3 and po4 available in the system the heterotrophic bacteria will eventually win and reduce the availability of carbon in your tank. Wend that happens just keep your parameters as stable as you can to fully remove the Cyanobacteria of your system.

all the above is just anecdotal and not fully proven yet, I hope it sheds some light on what you are currently experiencing and won’t confuse you even further. But mainly what I’m trying to say is keep your light on as normal, heterotrophic bacteria needs light to convert organic carbon into energy and raise your parameters of no3 a bit more momentary wile you dealing with Cyanobacteria to give the heterotrophic bacteria the energy to repopulate the tank again.
In addition as your tank gets stable again and organic carbon availability reduces you will notice that your algae may stop growing as fast because the availability of inorganic carbon (co2) will also reduce in portion to organic carbon. You may even see a improvement on ph.

edit: the reason a lot of reefers are successful in fighting unwanted pests with phytoplankton is mainly because as phytoplankton decomposes amino acids will be processed by bacteria and making nitrogen available for other bacteria like heterotrophic to feed on.
The release of nitrogen can be observed in one of my videos that I have posted before wile studying the effects of decomposition of phytoplankton at a hobby level, the carbon content of phytoplankton takes longer to be released as nitrogen becomes almost instantly available 8-12 hours after addition.

 

[Heabel7]

Firstly let me tell you that I understand the frustration you are feeling right now, I have been there many times as I first started the hobby, where I’ve asked one question and I had a million different things that could be causing that issue. We still don’t know what causes most common problems in the hobby today although I feel we getting much closer to understand how to avoid most unwanted situations. Now I understand you have been in the hobby for a long time and I will try and expand on the breve observation I done above, I was trying to keep it simple as I didn’t wanted to confuse you more than you already are probably.

the reason I got to the above conclusion is based on some thought on the nutrients that you have posted on the opening statement. Although you have not clearly posted all your parameters besides being low and some times zero wend you run a reactor, in addition you gave a indication to something I was suspecting it could be in abundance in your system wend you mentioned that your corals look happy wend the Cyanobacteria returns.
all this clues point that your system may be abundantly in carbon, now carbon can be devised in organic carbon (Doc) and inorganic carbon (N-Doc). Bacteria in your tank uses organic carbon to get energy from and algaes can use the inorganic carbon (co2) to get energy from.
The unbalance in nutrients that let carbon be in abundance is most likely due the amount of Nitrogen and phosphorus available in a system and it only becomes a problem wend things like Cyanobacteria or pest algaes get into a system.
Let me expand on this. The reason it becomes a problem is because Cyanobacteria has a very high demand in carbon compared to the demand of nitrogen and phosphorus to thrive, making organic carbon the main nutrient they need to survive, if the other nutrients are low (no3 and po4) it means that the Cyanobacteria will be utilising most of the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus before your heterotrophic bacteria can. The way that I believe we can beat Cyanobacteria is by increasing the no3 and po4 (if too low) to give a chance for the heterotrophic bacteria to grow and start feeding on carbon and starving the Cyanobacteria by outcompeting the Cyanobacteria for food, at this point because the Cyanobacteria is already in dominance in the tank we can’t just add a carbon source to help the heterotrophic bacteria to grow as the Cyanobacteria will use it faster than the heterotrophic bacteria can. By making more no3 and po4 available in the system the heterotrophic bacteria will eventually win and reduce the availability of carbon in your tank. Wend that happens just keep your parameters as stable as you can to fully remove the Cyanobacteria of your system.

all the above is just anecdotal and not fully proven yet, I hope it sheds some light on what you are currently experiencing and won’t confuse you even further. But mainly what I’m trying to say is keep your light on as normal, heterotrophic bacteria needs light to convert organic carbon into energy and raise your parameters of no3 a bit more momentary wile you dealing with Cyanobacteria to give the heterotrophic bacteria the energy to repopulate the tank again.
In addition as your tank gets stable again and organic carbon availability reduces you will notice that your algae may stop growing as fast because the availability of inorganic carbon (co2) will also reduce in portion to organic carbon. You may even see a improvement on ph.

edit: the reason a lot of reefers are successful in fighting unwanted pests with phytoplankton is mainly because as phytoplankton decomposes amino acids will be processed by bacteria and making nitrogen available for other bacteria like heterotrophic to feed on.
The release of nitrogen can be observed in one of my videos that I have posted before wile studying the effects of decomposition of phytoplankton at a hobby level, the carbon content of phytoplankton takes longer to be released as nitrogen becomes almost instantly available 8-12 hours after addition.

Firstly let me tell you that I understand the frustration you are feeling right now, I have been there many times as I first started the hobby, where I’ve asked one question and I had a million different things that could be causing that issue. We still don’t know what causes most common problems in the hobby today although I feel we getting much closer to understand how to avoid most unwanted situations. Now I understand you have been in the hobby for a long time and I will try and expand on the breve observation I done above, I was trying to keep it simple as I didn’t wanted to confuse you more than you already are probably.

the reason I got to the above conclusion is based on some thought on the nutrients that you have posted on the opening statement. Although you have not clearly posted all your parameters besides being low and some times zero wend you run a reactor, in addition you gave a indication to something I was suspecting it could be in abundance in your system wend you mentioned that your corals look happy wend the Cyanobacteria returns.
all this clues point that your system may be abundantly in carbon, now carbon can be devised in organic carbon (Doc) and inorganic carbon (N-Doc). Bacteria in your tank uses organic carbon to get energy from and algaes can use the inorganic carbon (co2) to get energy from.
The unbalance in nutrients that let carbon be in abundance is most likely due the amount of Nitrogen and phosphorus available in a system and it only becomes a problem wend things like Cyanobacteria or pest algaes get into a system.
Let me expand on this. The reason it becomes a problem is because Cyanobacteria has a very high demand in carbon compared to the demand of nitrogen and phosphorus to thrive, making organic carbon the main nutrient they need to survive, if the other nutrients are low (no3 and po4) it means that the Cyanobacteria will be utilising most of the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus before your heterotrophic bacteria can. The way that I believe we can beat Cyanobacteria is by increasing the no3 and po4 (if too low) to give a chance for the heterotrophic bacteria to grow and start feeding on carbon and starving the Cyanobacteria by outcompeting the Cyanobacteria for food, at this point because the Cyanobacteria is already in dominance in the tank we can’t just add a carbon source to help the heterotrophic bacteria to grow as the Cyanobacteria will use it faster than the heterotrophic bacteria can. By making more no3 and po4 available in the system the heterotrophic bacteria will eventually win and reduce the availability of carbon in your tank. Wend that happens just keep your parameters as stable as you can to fully remove the Cyanobacteria of your system.

all the above is just anecdotal and not fully proven yet, I hope it sheds some light on what you are currently experiencing and won’t confuse you even further. But mainly what I’m trying to say is keep your light on as normal, heterotrophic bacteria needs light to convert organic carbon into energy and raise your parameters of no3 a bit more momentary wile you dealing with Cyanobacteria to give the heterotrophic bacteria the energy to repopulate the tank again.
In addition as your tank gets stable again and organic carbon availability reduces you will notice that your algae may stop growing as fast because the availability of inorganic carbon (co2) will also reduce in portion to organic carbon. You may even see a improvement on ph.

edit: the reason a lot of reefers are successful in fighting unwanted pests with phytoplankton is mainly because as phytoplankton decomposes amino acids will be processed by bacteria and making nitrogen available for other bacteria like heterotrophic to feed on.
The release of nitrogen can be observed in one of my videos that I have posted before wile studying the effects of decomposition of phytoplankton at a hobby level, the carbon content of phytoplankton takes longer to be released as nitrogen becomes almost instantly available 8-12 hours after addition.

This actually makes sense to me. You say not fully proven, but it would explain why I tend to get the worst more often than not.
I’ll have to do some research on phyto. It’s not a usual buzz word I put research time into. Do you have a good link to start with?

 

[sixty_reefer]

This actually makes sense to me. You say not fully proven, but it would explain why I tend to get the worst more often than not.
I’ll have to do some research on phyto. It’s not a usual buzz word I put research time into. Do you have a good link to start with?

Unfortunately most of the information I mentioned it’s just anecdotal at this point.

Triton has this article

https://www.triton-lab.de/fileadmin/user_upload/support-uploads/TRITON_RATIOS/Triton_Tech_Paper_-_TRITON_Ratios_1.2.pdf

It’s a good start to understand the importance of nutrients in our systems and how they can affect the overall balance.

you don’t have to use phytoplankton although it contains aminos eventually it will break the carbon content and be detrimental for your particular situation, you could look at many sources of N03 or nitrogen available on the market right now that will give you instantly the nutrients I believe you may need.

 

[BitReef]

Just following along. This is an interesting thread. With my first tank I was VERY stingy with food because I was afraid of feeding nuisance algae. My Nitrates and Phosphates were always undetectable. I always battled algae of all kinds and had trouble with all coral. In my new tank I bought an automatic feeder and feed a reasonable amount of pellet food daily. I only run my skimmer a few hours a day and took my fuge offline. My corals are doing great and so far, nuisance algae has not been an issue. Looking back, I think I was starving my first tank.

 

[Heabel7]

Just following along. This is an interesting thread. With my first tank I was VERY stingy with food because I was afraid of feeding nuisance algae. My Nitrates and Phosphates were always undetectable. I always battled algae of all kinds and had trouble with all coral. In my new tank I bought an automatic feeder and feed a reasonable amount of pellet food daily. I only run my skimmer a few hours a day and took my fuge offline. My corals are doing great and so far, nuisance algae has not been an issue. Looking back, I think I was starving my first tank.

Odd how you can be starving your tank and yet have all the problems that you are not supposed to have if you starve your tank. I’ve cut back as I said and cyano continues to get worse

 

[Heabel7]

2 months with reduced care and no change in cyano, however although getting good polyp extension I have lost some color in my acros.

-Changes made
* ran skimmer hose to exterior to increase PH. Got an apex and I was peaking at 8.1 and going as low as 7.75 at night. Currently peak at 8.3+ and never fall below 7.98
- reduced water changes to 10 gallons every other week.
- cut down on filter sock changes
- continue to vacuum out cyano but into a a floss sock recycled back into tank so not to disturb water balance. (If I do a water change while vacuuming out cyano it would be 10 gallons every three days).

More algae than normal, cyano covers the rock so quickly all my cleaners won’t touch the algae.

 

[sixty_reefer]

2 months with reduced care and no change in cyano, however although getting good polyp extension I have lost some color in my acros.

-Changes made
* ran skimmer hose to exterior to increase PH. Got an apex and I was peaking at 8.1 and going as low as 7.75 at night. Currently peak at 8.3+ and never fall below 7.98
- reduced water changes to 10 gallons every other week.
- cut down on filter sock changes
- continue to vacuum out cyano but into a a floss sock recycled back into tank so not to disturb water balance. (If I do a water change while vacuuming out cyano it would be 10 gallons every three days).

More algae than normal, cyano covers the rock so quickly all my cleaners won’t touch the algae.

What’s your nitrates and phosphates looking now?

 

[Heabel7]

What’s your nitrates and phosphates looking now?

Nitrates 10-15. Phosphates have fluctuated but hovering just below .03

 

[sixty_reefer]

Nitrates 10-15. Phosphates have fluctuated but hovering just below .03

How did you raise them, they were quite low initially?

 

[Heabel7]

How did you raise them, they were quite low initially?

I’m assuming just lack of water changes and reduction of changing filter socks. I have two filter socks and I would usually change them both every three days. But the second in line was usually fairly clean and the first clogged up. So now I still change the first every three days and the second every 6th day. Feeding schedule is the same.