Will algae fix hurt my tank? Idk what to do anymore

[Oceanman5]

I'm losing the battle to GHA...
I feed once a day (most of the time its frozen)
My light schedule is from 12pm-10pm (from 12-3 its a super week fluval light that ranks up until the main light turns on3pm-10 pm)
I dose nopox 9ml every day
I have a small refugium that is on for about 12 hours
My tank is 140g

Livestock List
Coral/Nems:
Soft/LPS corals
15 RFA

Fish (12):
Hippo tank 5-6 inch
Tomini tang 3 inch
Midas blenny 3-4 inch
starry blenny 1-2 inch
hawk fish 2-3 inch
Melanarus wrasse 4-5 inch
Engineer goby 6-7 inch
Swissguard basslet 2-3 inch
Orchid dotty back 1-2 inch
Flame angel 3-4 inch
clown fish pair 3-4 inch

Am I overstocked? what am I doing wrong? Should I resort to algeafix? Is it safe to use with coral/RHA?
I've been doing water changes where I manually remove a bunch of algae and siphon it out but it just returns.
I will say before I was only dosing about 3 ml of nopox so maybe when I manually removed the algae an influx of nutrients was releseased and therefore made it easy for it to regrow. Should try another deep manually removal and increase my nopox to like 12 mL to eliminate any released nutrients or Algaefix?


Any advise would be helpful
Thanks

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Do you have pictures of your tank? Parameters? CUC? I would try and manually remove as much as I could before dosing anything

 

[Dierks]

Have you checked your Source water to make sure you're not dumping in a bunch of "Dirty" water? I know when I had my algae issues my TDS had claimed well into the 40's before I noticed it. Also how old is the tank? Is it going through the Uglies right now?

 

[lil sumpin]

How old is your tank? I think you can probably run the lights for a shorter duration than what youre currently running

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

What cuc/ algae eaters do you have?

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

so maybe when I manually removed the algae an influx of nutrients was releseased

I'm not sure how this would be the issue -- once you remove the algae, you've exported all those nutrients.

 

[Oceanman5]

Do you have pictures of your tank? Parameters? CUC? I would try and manually remove as much as I could before dosing anything

i don’t have a pic at the moment.
a bunch a blue leg hermits/asters snails
Parameters:
phosphate: .3
Nitrate: 30
everything else is good

 

[Oceanman5]

Have you checked your Source water to make sure you're not dumping in a bunch of "Dirty" water? I know when I had my algae issues my TDS had claimed well into the 40's before I noticed it. Also how old is the tank? Is it going through the Uglies right now?

i do have to check that. My tank is about 4-5 years old. It’s actually growing some coraline algae. It’s important to know my tanks used to be a FWOWLR tank and i’ve transitioned it to soft/lps since november 23

 

[Oceanman5]

What cuc/ algae eaters do you have?

i regular crabs and snails but there’s no amount that will lunch suck large pieces

 

[Oceanman5]

I'm not sure how this would be the issue -- once you remove the algae, you've exported all those nutrients.

My thought is that as i scrube algae it gets broken up and i may not get to siphon every piece leaving it to then die a release its content

 

[Gumbies R Us]

i don’t have a pic at the moment.
a bunch a blue leg hermits/asters snails
Parameters:
phosphate: .3
Nitrate: 30
everything else is good

.3 or .03? .3 is high for phosphates

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

.3 or .03? .3 is high for phosphates

Not necessarily

 

[Oceanman5]

.3 or .03? .3 is high for phosphates

yea 0.3... Really is that actually considered high? I thought past 0.3 was OKAY. 0.1 scares me because it don't to bottom out my nutrients enough to get DINOS

 

[Oceanman5]

Could it also be that 0.3 is a fake result. What I mean is that there is so much algae and I still get 0.3 on an aqua-spin test. Could it be that my phosphate is actually higher but what is left over is what the test is reading?

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

yea 0.3... Really is that actually considered high? I thought past 0.3 was OKAY. 0.1 scares me because it don't to bottom out my nutrients enough to get DINOS

0.3 is not high for soft corals and most LPS

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Could it also be that 0.3 is a fake result. What I mean is that there is so much algae and I still get 0.3 on an aqua-spin test. Could it be that my phosphate is actually higher but what is left over is what the test is reading?

Very possible

 

[Oceanman5]

Very possible

In this case, it would be best to do manual removal, followed by increased nopox?

 

[Dragen Fiend]

I've battled GHA back to back. Just when it all cleared up. It comes back when I'm not looking. I cutback on feedings. So now I drop a bit in and wait until they ate it all before adding anymore. Make sure nothing truely sinks to the ground.

But the biggest thing is CUCs. Man just throwing a few big turbos will destroy that GHA. But remember, you need to manually pull the long stuff. If it can be easily pulled out by hand/tongs. Do it!

CUCs in my 15G tank

1 turbo
1 urchin
3 trochus
4 nassairus snails
4 hermit crabs

 

[Swbvegas]

Are you running a skimmer? Usually GHA is lack of water changes or not large enough changes, too much light, over feeding, inefficient waste removal.

 

[Oceanman5]

Are you running a skimmer? Usually GHA is lack of water changes or not large enough changes, too much light, over feeding, inefficient waste removal.

yes skimmer is running full time