Water for topping off...

[Poisson]

I have way too much brown algae (the slimy looking kind) which is probably from excess phosphates in the water. I am told that using RO water to top off the tank will help this. Is Culligan bottled water RO water? Their website talks about water softeners (bad), but doesn't specify what is in the bottles.

 

[BillyZ]

I've wondered the same thing when I considered doing a nano for my office at work but I couldn't really find out. You could try contacting them, or you could take a sample of the water and use your test kits on it and see if there's phosphates, nitrates and you'll want to do a TDS test on it as well.

 

[Poisson]

Thanks Billy Z. I'll email them and let you know what they say...

PS I DO live in Ontario!

 

[Brad]

Canadian Springs....

I have been using Canadian Springs bottled water. (it's a small tank so that is almost affordable).

But I also have a bit of a brown algae problem. The tank is still pretty new, however...so I'm not going to conclude that it is the water just yet. As time passes, the problem seems to be going away and I have not changed anything.

Canadian Springs sells two types of water...R/O and distilled. The R/O is clearly designed to be drinking water. I may try some distilled and see. As near as I can figure, distilled water is the most pure.

At the moment, I don't have an accurate phosphate test to measure the water...

 

[Anemoneman]

Brown slimey algae isnot good. It may be dinoflagellates or snot algae. Here is an excerpt from the algae control page jere on our very own web site.
"Dinoflagellates (brown slime, snot algae)

Dinoflagellates are closely related to the endosymbiotic algae in our inverts; zooxanthellae. It is called snot algae because it has the consistency of nasal mucus; it is transparent to brown in color. It lays down stringy sheets, similar to Cyanobacteria, which trap air bubbles in their tissue. This is a very dangerous alga because it has the ability to quickly remove oxygen from your system. It has also been hypothesized that the algae is toxic to herbivorous fish and snails. The treatment is much the same as Cyanobacteria, with an addition, try to keep you ph elevated above 8.6 during the day and above 8.3 at night and you should see it crash pretty quickly."

Try to get this under control as quickly as possible.

 

[Poisson]

The description grom the Snot Algae excerpt tells me that my problem is not dinoflagellates (luckily). The algae looks like slime, but doesn't feel like it. It is a thick, carpet like layer of algae (some brown, some red, some green). When I vacuum it, it comes off in chunks, not snot like.

By the way...Culligan bottles are supposed to be RO according to the label on the seal at the top.

Thanks all!

 

[marcos77]

I used to have a 55 gallon reef tank that experienced a problem with dinoflagellates. The thick slimy mucus was all over my tank, mainly located in the prefilter box and in the wet/dry filter, where gas exchange occurs. The mucus would clog up my filters in my wet/dry in as little as 24 hours, repeatedly, even after replacing with new sponges. It was a nightmare, that's when I decided to just give the hobby up. I don't know how I got it? Now, i'm back but with a smaller tank 18 gallon. It's been up and running for 3 months now. The weird thing is that today I've noticed some long stringy substance clinging from my hang on filter into my tank. I hope it's green hair aglae. It's about 2 inches in length. I only use distalled water, it's about a dollar a gallon but I just don't want to go through that problem again.