Looking for help ridding algae...

[Excelsior856]

Hi everyone - I appreciate your help in advance as I'm completely out of ideas on what to do here.

I've have my reef tank (RSM 34g) up and running for almost 2 years now. For the first 12-14 months everything went great. Good coral growth, all fish and inhabitants were happy. For the last 8-12, however, I've seen my coral growth slow and I've been battling algae that I cannot rid. Here's a pic from 1 year ago:

And here's today:

Here's a closeup of the algae:

From the first month in, I've done habitual 7 gallon water changes every 2 weeks. I change out the T5 bulbs every 6 months. I run CPE and Purigen in my media rack that I change every 3 months. My skimmer is always running and pulls a wet skimmate. I've only ever used RODI water from a BFS 6 stage system that I've changed filters on regularly. As I said, everything was great the first year and I've never been able to get it back to being as clean as it once was.

Parameters are all good - no nitrates on a low-level test kit. Ca is 420,kH is around 8-10 (I dose a little sodium bicarbonate as needed), ph is 8.1, mg 1300.

I've tried all of the below with no avail:
- added a BRS media tumbler for GHO
- black out the tank with a towel for 7 days (done this twice)
- weekly 7g water changes for 6 weeks in a row, removing as much algae as possible
- treated with Kent M Tech (mg levels up to 1500 for 2 weeks straight) - thought it was bryopsis


Can anyone please help? I cannot seem to rid whatever type of algae this is no matter what I do. I'm open to anything!

Thanks again!

 

[mr_tap_water]

Hi there first of all what is your Phos readings.
Here a few things worth trying increasing your circulation, adjusting the time period of your lighting, feeding less, and if you're using a phos remover make sure you're changing it before it gets exhausted, and try to clean as much of it off manually as you can as well as what's been said,
Also a sea hair or a urchin my help get rid as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Excelsior856]

Thanks for the ideas!

My Phos always show up at 0 on my API kit but I know that doesn't mean much.

I run my lights from 1p-8p every day. The tank is in a room that has 2 windows although the directy sunlight never hits the tank (plus I had the tank in teh same room for a year without the algae issues) I feed frozen Reef Frenzy daily - about a pea size piece the gets eaten pretty quickly - I have a clown, coral beauty, royal dottyback, CB Shrimp, CUC and the corals you can see. I've tried feeding less but the dottyback gets very aggressive when he's hungry...

 

[cracker]

Hello Exselsior, I had the same issues with hair and bubble. I did all the things You are trying. My tests and the lfs showed no nitrates or phosphates. I believe they were there just taken up by the algae . I finally ran a biopellet reactor. It definitely did a number on the algaes but I over did it and my corals didn't like it. So if You try, go slowly and good luck !

 

[Excelsior856]

Thanks for the ideas. After thinking about it more and fooling around tonight I noticed that the flow from both my return and my cheapo wavemaker was very light. I think that may be the issue. I just overed an vortech - we'll see if that helps!

 

[Oxylebius]

Here are some others things you can look into, if you hadn't already.

Seems like there must have been some change that happen is all of a sudden there was an issue with algae where none was before. After a year w/o any and all of a sudden having some means that you did something different. Or something died and was left to rot. Or maybe detritus finally built up to the point that algae took advantage of the poor water quality.

After over two years I had a cyano outbreak that took a good 4 months to get rid of. Poor lights in combo of other factors contributed to it. I finally got in under control by changing the lights and many water change siphoning it out and buy a couple hermit crabs that eat it.

You are going to get low readings for phosphate b/c that algae is taking it up as soon as it hits the water.

Maybe it is time to change the RODI membrane. You mentioned changing the filters regularly, but maybe the membrane is spent. Make sure that the water it is creating has a TDS reading of zero.

Bump up water changes to once a week for 3 months. When doing water changes blow the detritus off the rocks prior to the water changes and siphon the sand to help to get this detritus out of the tank. Make sure the sump or any sump-like areas is cleaned of detritus build up. The point of this is to try to rid the tank of any detritus build up that may have been happening the first year.

Buying a variety of hair algae eating inverts can help in the meantime. 1 or 2 each of a number of different species. And pull out any long strands of hair algae, as the rasping tongues of snails usually can't eat long strands, but are great at rasping the short strands off of rocks.

 

[Excelsior856]

thanks for all the suggestion. After thinking about it more I ordered an MP10 that will dramatically improve flow (primarily to help coral growth) and an upgrading to Steve's LED's.

I need to get a few more members of my CUC as it's been a while since i've refreshed. Can anyone ID what type of algae I have and make any suggestions on crew?

Thanks

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

any suggestions on crew?

I like snails for cuc - theres are some of my favorite snails, Ceriths, Nassarius, Margarita Turbos, Astrea & Banded Trochus, Mexican Turbos - also like Skunk Cleaner shrimp