Cleaning Rocks

[gstewart]

OK i didn't think my algae bloom was that bad but deciding to have an aquarium maintenance day and thought about getting some excess algae of my rocks. ( green slime and hair kind )

It is now pretty clear just how green my rocks are as underneath the contrast is HUGE ! they were off white and now are green.

What is the best method of cleaning rocks - i have scrubbed them and the excess is removed but they are still green. can you remove all rocks - bar a few until your algae bloom is under control and gone ? then re add new peices of rock so they dont look green !? I am not talking about LR i am coming to that bit !

Right LR ! I have about 5 peices of LR and of course they are a bit green to. But i have no intention of scrubbing the LR do you just leave that alone ?

Help needed guys ! 8O

Thanks

 

[steve-s]

The best way to eliminate unwanted algaes is to remove their food sources. In your case with the two mentioned, it will primarily be phosphates. This can be introduced via impure water source (tap water) or foods. Switcing to RO water, reduce feedings (if you have animals) and add a high quality granular PO4 sponge to elimintae the PO4. Keep up with regular water changes and manual removal of the algaes. Syphon the slime algae and use a toothbrush to pull out the hair algae. If adding animals to take care of the problem they will most times ignore algaes that are too dense or long. If they are kept short and to a minimum by you, the animals will be much more effective at maintaining the rest until the fuel sources are exhausted. If there are no light dependant animals, greatly reducing the photoperiod and/or just running with actinic lighting will also help.

Unless the problem is very heavy, I would just opt for regular intank maintence. I would not remove the rock for any drastic remedies.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Gauge]

As a side note, I would recommend that if you get animals, clean one rock at a time. I had a HUGE algae problem in my tank and I got about 20 crabs and snails to eliminate it. After they failed for a while I spent 3 hours picking up each rock in my tank and pulling the algae off. They didn't manage to clean it all. A few rocks remained clean, but the rest grew back. After a while I finally started doing one rock at a time, and they did the trick after that.

 

[douggiestyle]

my urchin does a great job on alga. cleans about 40-50 sq inches per day down to clean white rock no matter how long the hair is. wow. not sure if all species will perform this way.

 

[gstewart]

Thanks thats pretty much what i am doing. So when the algae dies off do the rocks still stay green ? They look pretty stained to me.

I have only removed two to try and clean them up and I cant see the green ever coming off them.

Does the algae give something back into the aquarium that is helpfull like any bacteria ?

Plan to do a 60 litre water change today - on a 260 litre tank, need to get rid of those nutrients !

Oh and buy a phosphate sponge !

Gary

 

[gstewart]

Right ! Done a nice big water change and added some tropic marine Elimi phos bags to my filter.

The aquarium was second hand so i have a few polyps and a soft trumpet coral so the light has to stay as is. I wouldn't say its really bad but it takes about a week to start to cover the glass - is that bad ?

I have a blue stripe goby - taking care of the sand. And three turbo snails.

We will see what the water change and phosphate sponge will do to it !

Thanks

 

[Gauge]

gstewart, I had the same issue with the green stain on my rock. I can't say it entirely goes away, but it's far, far less noticable than it used to be for me. Hope it's the same for you!