help!! algea!! I think.

[Gomer4378]

its been a week and all of a sudden my sand is overrun with diatoms and algea.
let me give all of my specs first.
amm - 0
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 5
ph - 8.2
phos - 0
temp - 79

these readings are from today and the last pwc was 1 1/2 wks ago.
I run 80W total of T5's from 2 pm to 10pm
and 2 250W mh from 3:30pm to 8 pm
I've had the diatoms before and they went away but this time there is a crap load of green also. I almost have no visible white sand left.

I have 2 fish and 4 corals and I feed every other sometimes every 3 days, I also run a reactor in the sump with phosban, only use RO/DI.

On a second thought, my Coral Banded Shrimp just died all of a sudden 3 days ago.
any thoughts would be great and is there anything else that I need to test for, just let me know.

 

[Gomer4378]

What is a good CUC to get for this problem?

 

[Sadielynn]

How old is the tank? It is not done cycling .What is is the size of this tank ?
This is part of the cycling . Since you have fish in there already siphon them off during water changes and keep up on them .. It is a nutrient issue .. They will eventually start to die off in a few weeks .... as everything starts to stabilize out ...For now just cut your lighting time out increase your water changes and monitor your parameters.. No clean up crews will touch this stuff normally .

 

[Gomer4378]

The tank is is about 2 1/2 mo. old.
set up 1-29
cyled ended 2-20
added 4 corals, 2 fish 2-22

all readings have been fine since. never had any spikes, and slowly brought my nitrates down through pwc.
all my readings are great, and i know im not over feeding.
I had a diatom breakout during the 3rd week of the cycle and it went away.

Why would it all of a sudden cycle again with no change in readings?
I do know that my coraline algea is really taken off, ive had to scrubb the glasss 3 times and 90% of the live rock was bleached white from the original cycle and now as you can see in the last pic that its going crazy.

 

[Sadielynn]

Why would it all of a sudden cycle again with no change in readings?
I do know that my coraline algea is really taken off, ive had to scrub the glass 3 times and 90% of the live rock was bleached white from the original cycle and now as you can see in the last pic that its going crazy.

Chances are the 4 fish added are causing the spike . You did not give the bacteria time to catch up as you added fish.. When we add fish to a tank it causes it to "recycle" till the bacteria catches up ..
It is also normal to have them off and on for the 1st year whilst everything stabilizes out and balances . Also you say the rock "bleached out " which indicates to me that you had massive die off .. This can also cause a recycle as the stuff is pushed from the inside out of the rock into the water column..
As for the not changing get a silicate and phosphate kit to test as the diatoms feed off those . What size tank are we talking about here ?

 

[CaptainAhab]

IMO

I doubt you are still cycling, or re-cycling for that matter. Are you using tap water, RO/DI? Is the tank getting any sunlight?

I agree on having the water tested for phosphates and silicates, also might want to have someone double check the A,N,N numbers too while your at it.

Do you have a skimmer? It's hard to tell from your 'my tanks' what equipment you have.

For now, siphon off what you can, lay off adding any new fish and maybe consider going black to get rid of what you have but you need to address the cause.

Adding 2 fish after your cycle isn't going to cause you to recycle. If that was the case we'd all be up ole what's his names creek .. all the time.

 

[thincat]

looks like you could use a little more LR. When did you add the lights? Did you get the Coral banded shrimp out after it died?

 

[melosu58]

FantasyReef Databases-Viewing item "10 Step Plan for Nuisance Algae Control"

 

[Gomer4378]

I'm going to answer all the questions in short sentences since I'm on my phone.

Never tap water, only ro/di since day 1.

120 gal tank and 35 gal sump
200 lbs of LR.

Yes I have a skimmer and it works great, pulls about 1 cup of nasty crap out a day.

A,N,N tests are accurate, I have tripple checked.

Phosphate is 0, don't know about silicate(don't have test kit for it)

Yes I pulled CBShrimp out within 1 hr of dying.

T5's have been there since day 1, MH's have been here for about 1 mo.

I only added 2 fish on 2-22-09 (nemo, and yellow tang)

Everything has been perfect for 1 1/2 mo. and within this last week the diatoms went crazy.

No direct sunlight on tank.

The LR bleached during original cycle. My tank is young but established, I've got worms in my sand bed, copepods swimming about, my refuge has been doing great had to trim my cheato for the first time 2 wks ago.

I hope this answers everyones Q's
I know it's not a cycle, and readings are good, just can't figure out why the outbreak, or why the shrimp died all of a sudden.
Thanks everyone, keep the Q's comming and well figure this out.

 

[Sadielynn]

Are you sure of where the rock came from ? Get a copper test kit just to rule that out .. I say a cycle because every time you add anything to your tank you will have a minute cycle .. You will some times see the diatoms come and go for up to a year .. What kind of sand are you using as many have silicates that will release and leach into the H20 column

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

...

Everything has been perfect for 1 1/2 mo. and within this last week the diatoms went crazy....

No real answer for ya, but just a comment regarding the above quote...

When you first start up a tank, it takes months for a tank's parameters to even out. In reality, until you stop adding livestock, you tank is continually trying stabilize. Think of it as a really out-of-whack cruise control on a car that is going up and down hills - it really can never establish a stable speed. That's a lot like our tanks.

So the first thing to help solve the algae issue is to not assume that everything has been "perfect" for the first 45 days since cycling. In reality, your tank was just trying to figure things out. Algae (or cyanobacteria, as some of that appears to be) doesn't happen overnight. So don't knock yourself out trying to figure out "what changed" to make this happen... most likely it was happening all along but just took a month or two to become apparent.

When fighting algae issues, nitrate/phosphate readings will often read zero because the algae is consuming those nutrients as soon as they're produced. But they're there, or you wouldn't have algae issues. The fact that it sounds like your skimmer is producing quite a bit of skimmate kind of points to excess nutrients, since I wouldn't expect much from just two fish in a 150g system.

Are you feeding the coral anything? If so, what... and what are the corals?

 

[Ziggy953]

I tend to agree with Kurt here. Cyano was my thinking as well and it will build itself up over time and before you realize it your sand is covered. During that time you probably will get very low readings on phosphate and nitrate. When I upgraded to my 120 I dealt with the same issues for a while and what I did was siphon out a lot of my sand bed during weekly pwcs. (the top of the sand with the cyano in it) Since you are using RO/DI you may want to test your TDS before and after the RO/DI and see what you get. When I was going through this I tested my source water, my pure RO/DI water and then my newly mixed water to see if I was adding anything to the tank during PWCs.

What kind of flow do you have in the tank? I saw what looked like a koralia in one of your pics, how many do you have in there? I found that increasing the total flow of my tank helped to keep any detritus in the water column so it could be pulled out via my skimmer. I have 4520gph flow in my tank. Also keep in mind that you did recently change something you added the MH bulbs to the system a month ago, sometimes the changes we make take more time then others to cause issues or at least present issues. The addition of that light could have triggered the cyano to go into overdrive.

 

[Gomer4378]

Thanks all.

I have tested for copper and it is 0.
I have done all the before and after tests on my ro system and everything is great.
I would agree with extra nutrients being the cause but I feed every 3rd day ( formula 2 pellets ) just enough till nemo stops eating.

I dont feed the corals.
1 Frogspawn
1 Mushroom - ricordea - green
2 10+ zoos
1 star polyp

I have a chunk of seaweed in the corner for the yellow tang to nip at.

I have 4 powerheads totaling about 4200gph in the tank and 1200gph running to sump..( it has been a pain in the arse to get the powerheads set right to not blow the sand around.

I will do another pwc tomorrow, I still have the water circulating today.
heres a pic of my skimmer and a whole shot of the tank, parts of the sand look white but its from the camera.

 

[Gomer4378]

I dont want to cut out the light all together because of the coral but I have cut my T5's down to 5 hrs and the MH to 3 hrs.

Where else can the nutrients be coming from besides pwc and feeding? if anywhere.

I will have to agree with excess nutrients since I have a heavy growth of feather dusters and started to get some pinapple sponges.

My RO/DI system is only 2 mo old and I have a TDS meter on it which is 0.
I have only used Reef Crystals and keep it at 1026
I feed every 3 days.

The only things that have changed are the new MH a mo ago and the various times I have rearranged the powerheads.

I'm going to do another pwc and vacuum out as much as I can, and I have cut the lighting down, so hopefully I will see a change sometime soon.

 

[roka64]

The new lights may be the cause for the new growth. If that is the case, keep up with the PWCs and in about a month you should be good.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Maybe I missed it in there somewhere, but Sadielynn was wondering what kind of sand you used when you set up your tank? Was it sand specifically meant for aquariums or did you use play sand?

 

[Gomer4378]

White Fiji sand from online.
This is what it looked like the day I put it in (after it settled of course).
Theres a little over 3" in there.

 

[drillsar2]

Phosphates/Nitrate can be misleading since ALgea eat this it is usally higher then kit is showing thats one problem

This usually happens once your done cycling since nutrients are high, One thing that will help you is to use a phosban reactor with Rowaphos, I put money on it you have phosphates.

A good thing to get if you dont have is a Tiger Tail Cucumber, Nassarius snails(30 in that size tank)

Tiger tail will sure help you

 

[Gomer4378]

I do have a phosban reactor on the tank.

Everything seems right but something is still off, and as far as I have figured, it must be due to the 500W of my that I put in a mo. ago- thanks roka, and everyone else for your time and patience.

Due to work, I will not get to my Pwc till tomorrow but I will keep y'all posted.

 

[Ziggy953]

Was your sand dry when you got it or was it "live sand"?