Massive Algae -- Green Water

[psalzman]

Hey everyone,

I'm pretty new to this game... and have only been running my tanks for a short time. Well, I bought a protein skimmer and a few days afterwards my fish came down with a horrible case of Marine-Ich. I lost 'em all, except one which I put into a QT (who eventually died a few days later.)

Since I ran the tank a while without the protein skimmer, I knew that my tank had a lot of junk in it... so without thinking I turned turned up the settings high enough that bubbles were going throughout the tank, but foam was flowing out, which I had being syphoned away.

Well now, two or three days later, I have a tank that you cannot see 3 inches into.

I built a filtering system out parts from Home Depot using a simple water purification filter for a Refrigerators faucet, clear latex tubing, and the Power head I took off of the Protein Filter.

This isn't working too well. The water coming out of the other end is still green, and it's pretty slow (1/6th [or whatever] inch tubing can't push much liquid.)

Do you guys have any suggestions on what I can do quickly? I have some coral in there that is probably not getting nearly enough light, and several invertebres that are could be loving these conditions, and it's just plain disgusting looking... not what I was going for when I decided to create this setup.

Thanks for anything you can come up with!

 

[sumphead]

Can you give more details on your setup? i.e. age, water testing, lighting, size...

 

[reefrunner69]

Turn off your lights for 24 hours, and reduce your photo period to 4 hours per day for a week, the corals won't be happy about it, but should be OK. Do a fairly large waterchange 30-40% and start a series of smaller twice per week or once per week waterchanges, using RO/DI water, top off for evaporation with RO/DI water. Your system has to many nutrients, which is fueling the bloom.

 

[ReefLady]

Also run some GAC - I would change it at least every-other day.

 

[psalzman]

It's a 44 gallon (long) tank with about 40lbs of LR and has been up for around 5 months. The water testing has been stable with zero ammonia, and zero nitrite. There has been a bit of nitrates in it, although I do not recall the ppm.

The lighting system is a 48" 260 watt Coralife Aqualight (4-65 watt lamps.) Two of the lamps are Actinic, and the other two are the 10,000k's. This runs for about 13 hours a day, with the blue lights starting 30 minutes before, and ending 30 minutes after the whites.

The filter is a Penguin Bio-Wheel 170, and I also have a power head circulating the water. The protein skimmer is a SeaClone 100 that I cannot quite get to not dump bubbles into the tank and produce foam at the same time.

 

[two11devan]

I would lower your lighting time to about 8 or 9 hours untill you get the bloom under control. I had to cut back to about 9 hrs of light when I upgraded to my PC's to help with the algae bloom.