Newish reefer - struggling with brown algae

[Little Fishy]

Hi Everyone!

I have an ELOS 120 (4ft 90 gallon) with 2x hydra AI 26 lights, tunze 9012 skimmer (not sure the exact number), tunze osmolator auto top up, 2x mp40. Its been running for a couple of years. I have had poor success with most LPS except for my ricordia and a massive rose BTA.

I have 4 clown fish, 1 yellow tang, 1 blue tang, 1 small kole tang, 1 flame angel and most annoyingly a mantis shrimp which has eaten through all my clean up crew.

We had a power failure for 8 hours about 6 weeks ago and now I am struggling with diatoms - well i assume they are as I can't see any bubbles and its not stringy. I also had a clam semi die in my tank which I am not sure helped my cause!

I have been doing a water change (10%) 2x per week to try and combat the algae. I have ordered replacement cartridges for my ro/di unit just in case that might be it and will switch to new salt as well when I get the cartridges. I try and syphon out as much algae as I can off the rocks and the sand when I do the water change. The skimmer has been working well and I have to change it daily.

I have added a bag of phosguard and 2 bags of chem pure elite which have taken the smell out of the water and also cleared the colour of the water but I still have the dreaded things. Any tips would be very much appreciated.

I have a leather coral that its polyps came out for one day and then nothing - its been in my tank for 1 week - when do I give up on it as I don't need any other decaying coral in my tank.

Thanks for everyones help in advance.

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

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Start a tank thread & share your tank with us so we can follow along, we love pics

Sounds like you are doing a lot of things right - might be sure your not over feeding... and replace the cuc snails to help

see what others suggest...

 

[FishNerd]

What are your current water parameters?


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[DaveK]

Here are my thoughts...

You have a tank that has has a lot of disruption due to the power failure. It is likely some smaller things died. For the time being I would do larger partial water changes, about 25%, because you may want to change a large percentage of your water by the time your done.

The best thing to do for diatoms is to just let them run their course. Yes, they look ugly, but they usually go away on their own. Keep up the water changes and tank maintenance and this problem should go away.

The amount of material removed by your skimmer would seem to indicate that you have something dead in the tank. Check everything carefully.

If your in doubt about the leather coral, look for black decay areas on it. You can also give it the smell test. A healthy leather will smell bad, a dead one will smell really foul and rank. Leather corals often retract, shed a skin like material, and then open up again. This process can take quite a few days. Leather corals do this to grow.

You have 3 tangs in a 90 gal tank. That is asking a lot of a thank that size. Consider removing 1 or 2 of them. Tangs are big dirty fish that create a lot of waste products. This in turn can cause algae issues.