LittleFish
New Member
For the last ~9 months I have had this cloudy, brown water that will not go away. It is an algae bloom (I think a diatom of some kind) and I think i just have enough water movement and a large enough bloom to have it suspended in my water. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get rid of it so PLEASE HELP! There should be a picture of the tank and I also took a sample of water to work with me to look at it under a microscope (I work in a marine lab) and have added pictures of the cells too.
Background: RSM 130D
~35-40lbs live rock, assorted snails, sand sifting sea star, assorted soft corals, 2 clowns, 1 yellow tang (yes I know it is too small of a tank. I inherited all these fish plus a blue damsel in a BC14 so this is definitely an upgrade and is what I can afford right now. Please focus )
It has been going for 3 years. It went through an ugly hair algae stage for a couple months right after the cycle, but after that cleared up it ran beautifully for over 1.5 years. In late December 2013, we had a really bad ice storm that knocked out our power for 2 days and I don't have a generator and was visiting my family while it happened. Thanks to the heroics of my boyfriend, my fish and most of the coral survived. He pulled the fish and as much of the coral and rocks out as he could and put them in buckets to bring them somewhere with heat. I arrived home afterward and got everything introduced back into the tank slowly. It went through a cycle like I expected but it was much smaller of jumps than I expected so I was happy. It was looking good for 6 months and around June the bloom began. It showed up quickly and has been steadily ugly since then. The fish and corals seem to be acting normal and doing fine although I'm sure it is an unpleasant environment to live in.
Parameters:
Salinity: 1.026
pH: 8.6 (this is usually around 8.0-8.2 it has just recently gone up)
Alk: ~3.0 (this has also just recently gone up)
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0
Calcium: 500ppm
KH: 8 (143.2ppm)
In the back I have an inTank media basket with their filter floss pad and a 50 micron filter in the top, chemipure elite in the middle, and carbon and nitrasorb in the bottom. I have 5 mangrove seedlings doing very well, I got a small ball chaeto as one of my latest attempts to do something a couple months ago but that is still struggling right now. I tried some Marine SAT additive stuff that my LFS suggested but that was just a waste of money. For a couple months I did weekly 30% water changes and that did nothing. The bloom just came back full force the next day. I tried leaving the lights out for a couple days and that didn't help at all. My recent experiment is letting it go and doing 30% water changes once a month like I used to do to see if whatever is feeding it will become depleted, but that isn't working either. I use tap water with conditioner, but that is what I have always used in my 5 years of owning these fish and haven't had problems. I can't find anything online about changes to the town water supply so I don't think that's it.
Lower Mag. (100)
Highest Mag (500)
Background: RSM 130D
~35-40lbs live rock, assorted snails, sand sifting sea star, assorted soft corals, 2 clowns, 1 yellow tang (yes I know it is too small of a tank. I inherited all these fish plus a blue damsel in a BC14 so this is definitely an upgrade and is what I can afford right now. Please focus )
It has been going for 3 years. It went through an ugly hair algae stage for a couple months right after the cycle, but after that cleared up it ran beautifully for over 1.5 years. In late December 2013, we had a really bad ice storm that knocked out our power for 2 days and I don't have a generator and was visiting my family while it happened. Thanks to the heroics of my boyfriend, my fish and most of the coral survived. He pulled the fish and as much of the coral and rocks out as he could and put them in buckets to bring them somewhere with heat. I arrived home afterward and got everything introduced back into the tank slowly. It went through a cycle like I expected but it was much smaller of jumps than I expected so I was happy. It was looking good for 6 months and around June the bloom began. It showed up quickly and has been steadily ugly since then. The fish and corals seem to be acting normal and doing fine although I'm sure it is an unpleasant environment to live in.
Parameters:
Salinity: 1.026
pH: 8.6 (this is usually around 8.0-8.2 it has just recently gone up)
Alk: ~3.0 (this has also just recently gone up)
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0
Calcium: 500ppm
KH: 8 (143.2ppm)
In the back I have an inTank media basket with their filter floss pad and a 50 micron filter in the top, chemipure elite in the middle, and carbon and nitrasorb in the bottom. I have 5 mangrove seedlings doing very well, I got a small ball chaeto as one of my latest attempts to do something a couple months ago but that is still struggling right now. I tried some Marine SAT additive stuff that my LFS suggested but that was just a waste of money. For a couple months I did weekly 30% water changes and that did nothing. The bloom just came back full force the next day. I tried leaving the lights out for a couple days and that didn't help at all. My recent experiment is letting it go and doing 30% water changes once a month like I used to do to see if whatever is feeding it will become depleted, but that isn't working either. I use tap water with conditioner, but that is what I have always used in my 5 years of owning these fish and haven't had problems. I can't find anything online about changes to the town water supply so I don't think that's it.
Lower Mag. (100)
Highest Mag (500)