the water in my saltwater tank is green.

[torontofc]

I just came back (yesterday), and I saw the water in my saltwater tank green. The coral and fish seems fine now, but my feather duster came out of the tube (prolly dead) and all the drawf feather duster didn't come out. But all my other coral seems fine including my clam.

My protein skimmer keeps getting full every 2 hours. What is going on!!!!! It was green yesterday, today, the "greeness" seems to go away, but the water is still very cloudy. Can somebody help!!!! What can I expect next, fish dying, corals dying? Pls help, thks

 

[pat8you]

Never heard of anything like that. The only thing i can think of that turns your water green would be a phyto bloom. Do you feed phyto to your tank?

 

[Wy Renegade]

torontofc can you tell me if you had in any macro algae in the display of your tank? From your description, the most likely explaination is that you had a macro algae (usually a type of caleupera) that went sexual on you and just released a ton of spores into the water. The other possible explaination is that your tank is experiencing a bloom of dinoflagellates. Neither situation is particularly good, nor is either situation particularly deadly. However, what causes the situation sometimes is. Personally I would add a HOB filter to the system ASAP and fill it with filter floss and start filtering the water to get rid of the green.

Here's a picture of my tank a few years back when I had grape caleupera growing in it;

And here's what it looked like after the caleupera went sexual as the result of a chiller malfunction;

Is yours at all similar to that?

 

[torontofc]

Never heard of anything like that. The only thing i can think of that turns your water green would be a phyto bloom. Do you feed phyto to your tank?

ya, i do, but not the whole bottle at once.

 

[torontofc]

torontofc can you tell me if you had in any macro algae in the display of your tank? From your description, the most likely explaination is that you had a macro algae (usually a type of caleupera) that went sexual on you and just released a ton of spores into the water. The other possible explaination is that your tank is experiencing a bloom of dinoflagellates. Neither situation is particularly good, nor is either situation particularly deadly. However, what causes the situation sometimes is. Personally I would add a HOB filter to the system ASAP and fill it with filter floss and start filtering the water to get rid of the green.

Here's a picture of my tank a few years back when I had grape caleupera growing in it;

And here's what it looked like after the caleupera went sexual as the result of a chiller malfunction;

Is yours at all similar to that?

no, i dont hav any macro algaes. my tank wasn't as green as the pic above, and now it's just cloudy. i put alot of filter floss before this happened, and i added a very fine filter floss too (it gets dirty every 10 mins). But i cant put a HOB filter because its a cube.

 

[Wy Renegade]

sounds like a micro bloom of some type, especially if the very fine filter floss is successfully pulling it out. Real question is what started it? How are your water parameters, including temp?

Keep running the floss, and emptying the skimmer - thats gonna help with removing the microagent. Also keep an eye on the parameters as much as possible.

 

[torontofc]

k, and should i turn off my phosban reactor (vertex biopellets). parameters are 1.023-1.024, 28-29 C. now my blue tang is starting to grow ick.

 

[Wy Renegade]

What parameters are 1.023 to 1.024? I assume that is salinity? How about your nitrate and phosphate levels? pH and hardness? How about flow rate? All these are factors that can contribute to a bloom. If its dinoflagellates, then increasing salinity will sometimes help, but I would only increase it if you know for sure.

Your temperature at 82 to 84 degrees F, seems high to me, but I've heard of people keeping a tank successfully at higher temps - the biggest issue with temperature is maintaining stability.

Also, as stated in your thread here,
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f60/phosban-reactor-150-a-135417.html
Your cloudiness issues could be a result of a bacteria bloom, especially if you put too much of the pellets in.

 

[torontofc]

What parameters are 1.023 to 1.024? I assume that is salinity? How about your nitrate and phosphate levels? pH and hardness? How about flow rate? All these are factors that can contribute to a bloom. If its dinoflagellates, then increasing salinity will sometimes help, but I would only increase it if you know for sure.

Your temperature at 82 to 84 degrees F, seems high to me, but I've heard of people keeping a tank successfully at higher temps - the biggest issue with temperature is maintaining stability.

Also, as stated in your thread here,
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f60/phosban-reactor-150-a-135417.html
Your cloudiness issues could be a result of a bacteria bloom, especially if you put too much of the pellets in.

lol, my bad, ya thats salinity, and I will go to my LFS this week to test my water. But it seems ok now, most things is back to normal.

btw, I thought putting too much pellets in it will not harm anything, should I turn the Phosban reactor back on or pour some of the pellets away. Can I save the used pellets or does it have no more use/reaction ?
thks

 

[Wy Renegade]

lol, my bad, ya thats salinity, and I will go to my LFS this week to test my water. But it seems ok now, most things is back to normal.

btw, I thought putting too much pellets in it will not harm anything, should I turn the Phosban reactor back on or pour some of the pellets away. Can I save the used pellets or does it have no more use/reaction ?
thks

Glad to hear that it seems to be recovering. I, in all honesty, know very little about the pellets, other than what I've read (which indicates that some people have issues with bacterial blooms) - perhaps some more familiar with them will chime in.

 

[torontofc]

thks