Restarted Nano with recurring algae

[tbates]

...sigh...

Have had a 12g nano up and running for 12-14 of months. After everything settled in and looked "mostly" good for a number of months, but continued to battle some algae issues - mostly green stuff growing on glass. Had a sudden outbreak of hair algae (I think - pictures attached for viewing) that I couldn't resolve or even reduce with minimal feedings, water changes (5+ gallons a shot), changing salt, increased filtering, etc, etc, etc. Got so bad that it began crowding out the small collection of 'shrooms from their rocks.

Decided to do a general reset by giving away the two percs (general consensus was that they were too big for 12g anyways), keeping just a handful of hermits and snails as well as the mushrooms - I figured there wasn't much of a bio-load left. Took out all the rocks and gave them a good scrub (being sure to avoid the mushrooms) and did a 10 gallon water change (have always used R/O-DI).

Have done zero feedings (nothing to feed except the snails and hermits anyways) but continue to have issues - hair algae has cropped up in a couple of spots and seems to be doing well rather than reducing and going completely away as I had hoped.

My set up today is as follows:
-Live rock in both back chambers for filtering
-About 10-12lbs of live rock in the front
-DSB of about 1.5-2 inches
-6-8 hermits
-5-6 ceriths (hide in the sand and climb the glass at night)
-Three 'shrooms (Double Nuclei Orange Ricordia , Caribbean Corallimorph, and Single Green Ricordia). All appear healthy and have continued to grow
-1 turbo (always patrols the back wall)
-New compact fluor. lights - on about 9 hours per day (mostly for the -mushrooms)
Zero feeding of anything
2.5g water changes for the past few weeks after the big cleanup

Any thoughts about how to nuke the algae and get things settled back in so I can re-populate???

Thanks!

 

[DJLiquid]

Two things come to mind. Cut the lighting back to 8 hours and get some Turbo snails. The snails wiped out my algae over night!

 

[DJLiquid]

What do you want to re-populate with? Also how often and much did you feed your clowns?

 

[tbates]

going for a "two-fer" and answer both...

Was thinking of turning out the lights and blackout conditions for a week to see if that would help get rid of the algae, but was worried that the mushrooms wouldn't have enough light for photosyn and would end up harming them. Thoughts?

The one turbo I have seems to avoid the hair algae - maybe I need a big sign with "eat here" !!

Was going to go with maybe a blenny of some sort and maybe a firefish or two. Of course that's once I can keep things stable for a month or so and not have to scrap the windows or rocks...

 

[tbates]

Oh yeah - should have been a three-fer...

Was feeding clowns blender mush (very small cubes - less than 1/4" square on average - rinsed with R/O water and soaked in selcon) every three or four days with VERY occasional flake as a "treat". Always made sure that they were fed slowly so as to make sure they ate as much as possible without too much ending up as waste (although the hermits were pretty good about finding any loose bits). I felt bad feeding them as infrequently as I did but need to ensure that feedings were adding to the problem.

 

[melosu58]

I think the black out would be a good idea. Your mushrooms will be OK. Another thing I would suggest is doing weekly PWC`s and when you do rubberband a toothbrush to the end of your siphon hose and gently scrub the algea off and siphon it up as you do the PWC. HTH

 

[tbates]

I'll give the blackout a shot - as soon as I find some heavy paper to block out the ambient room light.

Any thoughts on what might be feeding the algae? I wonder if the membrane on the R/O unit could be "leaking" nasties??? Carbon, pre-filter and DI resin were changed in June and the membrane last winter...

Thanks,

 

[buddha_red]

do you happen to have a tds meter or a phosphate test kit?

 

[tbates]

Inline TDS meter showing zero on the output side (averages 220 on the input) so from that perspective things seem to be working. PO4 testing supplies need to be refilled - was using them fairly regularly to test when the algae first came up so vigorously. All tests came up with no/low readings - I figured either the algae had already consumed it or that it wasn't present. New water showed zero on several tests. On the list for my next shopping trip however...

 

[buddha_red]

well getting a zero on the output is good evidence its still working fine. How are your water readings? post them if you dont mind.

 

[tbates]

Planning a PWC this evening and will pull numbers before/after...will visit the LFS today and restock the PO4 test supplies so I can get a complete set of number.

 

[tbates]

Water temp: 75
Salinity: 1.024
Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0
Phos: 0

I'm assuming that if there is any PO4 that the existing algae has consumed it as there was some additional green on the glass.

Manually removed as much hair as I could reach, cleaned the glass, and did a 2.5g PWC. Put tank in blackout mode - will keep it this way for a week or so and see what happens.

 

[sooju]

I know it's frustrating, but it sounds like you're doing all the right things. Good luck and keep us posted!