jimv
Member
I have a new algae outbreak in my tank that I am trying to get out of control. Its been about a week and unfortunately I have made several changes to my tank recently so I really don't know what has caused it. It looks like I have both Cyano and Diatoms starting to show up. This has not changed but is worth noting that the Diatoms are in the back left hand corner of the tank where the tank gets very little natural light and the Cyano is in the front right corner of the tank where it gets some natural light. Here are the changes I recently made:
1. cleaned out the back chambers of my RSM 130 for the first time since I set up the tank (8 months)
2. replaced the Chemi Pure Elite
3. replaced the purigen
4. cleaned the skimmer body
5. replaced the black sponge about a week after doing (1-4)
6. started dosing B-ionic 2 part (last 3 weeks)
7. have been increasing the intensity of my LED's
8. have been doing regular 10% weekly water changes
Interestingly my skimmer worked great for two days after I cleaned it and has not produced any foam since. I only had two fish (added a third after the outbreak started) and feed sparingly. My parameters are as follows:
Temp: stable at 80-81
Salinity: 1.025
PH: 8
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0
Calcium: 500
KH: 9 (was 7 before I started dosing)
My CUC consists of 10 blue leg hermit crabs and about 30 small cerith snails. I have tried adding other types of snails but the always parish and my crabs get new shells. I think the ceriths are too small for them to bother with.
The tank had little to know algae on the sand previous to this. To combat the issue I have cut the lights back to 6 hours but not reduced the intensity, did two water changes this week instead of 1, manually removed the red algae but it returned the next day, cranked up my mp 10 and took a turkey baster to the rocks to see if it would get my skimmer going (it did not).
I am not really sure how to proceed from here. I'm about to dump the stock skimmer but it was working well enough for me before.
1. cleaned out the back chambers of my RSM 130 for the first time since I set up the tank (8 months)
2. replaced the Chemi Pure Elite
3. replaced the purigen
4. cleaned the skimmer body
5. replaced the black sponge about a week after doing (1-4)
6. started dosing B-ionic 2 part (last 3 weeks)
7. have been increasing the intensity of my LED's
8. have been doing regular 10% weekly water changes
Interestingly my skimmer worked great for two days after I cleaned it and has not produced any foam since. I only had two fish (added a third after the outbreak started) and feed sparingly. My parameters are as follows:
Temp: stable at 80-81
Salinity: 1.025
PH: 8
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0
Calcium: 500
KH: 9 (was 7 before I started dosing)
My CUC consists of 10 blue leg hermit crabs and about 30 small cerith snails. I have tried adding other types of snails but the always parish and my crabs get new shells. I think the ceriths are too small for them to bother with.
The tank had little to know algae on the sand previous to this. To combat the issue I have cut the lights back to 6 hours but not reduced the intensity, did two water changes this week instead of 1, manually removed the red algae but it returned the next day, cranked up my mp 10 and took a turkey baster to the rocks to see if it would get my skimmer going (it did not).
I am not really sure how to proceed from here. I'm about to dump the stock skimmer but it was working well enough for me before.