Looking for some insight

[i-see-you]

So yesterday I did a 50% water change because this long brown hair algae made its first debut. Today it came back twice as hard. My water change also showed I had a huge drop in alkalinity, dropped to about 6. So changed my salt that I'm using plus the 50% water change and sucked out as much of this algae as I could.

What's the cause of this algae?
Previously I had a red slime attack which was caused by over feeding. That has since stopped. Now this showed up. It's all over my frags. Zoas have been closed for 2 or 3 days now(maybe because of the alkalinity drop), my clover polyps have been closed as well.

Any help is much appreciated!!

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[i-see-you]

I lacked some info here.
PH is 8.2
Nitrates 0
Phosphates .25ppm
Alk around 6(fixing this)
Salinity 1.023

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[Sniperhank]

The phosphates and most likely some hidden nitrates are the cause here and what you are seeing appears to be early onset to more Cyanobacteria, rather than algae. But with that said, both algae and cyano come from the same thing, excess nutrients in the water column.
There are two articles in my signature that discuss these battles, but understand that the 50% water change only cut your levels in half. That .25 phosphate was .5 before the water change. So, more large water changes with ro/di water is in order. This is why algae and cyano battles can last for some time.


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[i-see-you]

Sorry the .25 was before the water change. I plan to do another 10gal change tomorrow.

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[54seaweed]

This is a new tank I presume , its most likely coming from the silicates in the sand otherwise known as new tank syndrome , the water you are using is it ro/di or right from the tap . if it's out of the tap that could also bring on the nasty brown

 

[i-see-you]

I use distilled water due to lack of an RODI unit or space for one. The tank has been running for about 2 months now roughly. I did have a previous red slime outbreak that I pushed through. I used live sand, is there silicate in live sand?

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[i-see-you]

The phosphates and most likely some hidden nitrates are the cause here and what you are seeing appears to be early onset to more Cyanobacteria, rather than algae. But with that said, both algae and cyano come from the same thing, excess nutrients in the water column.
There are two articles in my signature that discuss these battles, but understand that the 50% water change only cut your levels in half. That .25 phosphate was .5 before the water change. So, more large water changes with ro/di water is in order. This is why algae and cyano battles can last for some time.


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Sniper, I took a look at your articles. At this point I will be redoing my aquascape come the weekend. I lean my rock against the back glass and will probably find exactly what you did... I didn't fully understand best way to arrange the rock though. My thoughts are to create two side "pillars" and a low middle section. My main concern is getting the rock to stay on top of one another and potentially falling one way or the other and cracking or breaking the glass.

Since the post I've done two 50% water changes, sprung a half gallon leak and I'm still fighting this algae. I've barely been feeding the fish in my tank in hopes to starve out the algae. I am running chemi pure elite in my filter sock, skimmer at full blast, phosgaurd/carbon combo. Whenever I see any of the algae I grab my turkey baster and start blasting it off the rock and/or corals. Something has to be feeding it from somewhere, but where. I ordered more clean up crew to add to my tank in hopes to slow down or stop this algae. My ATO is running a kalkwasser mix, my ph sits right about 8.3 range.

I am currently doing some tests regarding the rest of my parameters so I will post those shortly.

 

[i-see-you]

About a week later and what do ya know. Rearranging my rock, getting a new higher rated skimmer(hang on back) and the algae is gone!! Skimmer has been creating some raunchy skim mate. My other skimmer never even compared. For reference, I switched from the tunze 9001 to a eshopps 75psk

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[Sniperhank]

I run the 75psk too. Great skimmer. Glad things are working out.