...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!
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!