advice needed...

[jonathan543]

hi all... me currently having a bad case of diatom & hair algae outbreak... now considering to take out all the liferocks to cure myself as they're covered wit algae!

my setup specs- 2x1.5x2ft tank wit a 2x1x1ft refugium filled wit 1inch mud & ceramic rings. 4x 20000k t5 tubes on main tank & 1x 36w pl on refugium. the t5 are on timers for 6hrs a day while the refugium stayed on. currently keeping some seahorses, pipefishes, some nano fishes & 4 cleaner shrimps; mostly soft corals, lps & few frags of sps.

the life rocks are uncured when i 1st bought them- algae all over- & using either the redsea or corallife marine salt with untreated tap water. the freshly mixed water were made to stand for a couple of hours be4 changing out the tank water. been doing a 5% water change every week too.

wad should i do now? oh and the waterflow rate through the refugium is 2000l/hr, almost 10times the tank's capacity per hr, not much headloss as the pump was pretty high up. water turnover rate is slow @800l/hr using a hangon filter with fritz phosphate resin. been using the fritz for a week liao but no improvements can be seen. fed once a day wit 2cubes of mysis(finished up pretty fast) & aquaz pytho every other day.

should i...

1. take out all life rocks and cure them, give a gd scrub & resetting the whole tank again,

2. try to water change using quality marine salt & treated water(advice pls),

3. use more efficient phosphate remover like rowa(?) media or a reactor(recommendations pls),

4. or heck care & live wit having to scrub the glass every otherday since the detritus will settle back on the rocks(slow water flow) & the algae will come back again? for now the corals are in pretty gd health though the algae will cover & outgrow any unhealthy corals. heard using too much phosphate media aren't too gd for sps too... pls advice

[Gouldian]

Personally I would not advise you scrubbing the rocks and risk another ANN spike.

What I would do if I were you is to:

1) Ensure that I used only DI or Distilled water for mixing with the corallife salt you are curretly using (distilled water can be bought off the shelf at a major supermarket).

2) Remove, scrape and pluck out any many algi as I can.

3) Get a FR with Phosphate remover, if on budget get the Aquaz purephos - good enough.

4) Increase the flow within the tank by installing a powerhead such as Rio Seio 620.

5) Stopped adding anymore LS.

6) Patiently wait for the tank and refugium to mature (it may be new tank syndrome).

Good luck!

[hotlemond]

Also, cut down on feeding and photoperiod meantime. There may be too much nutrients in the system.

you can also do some regular partial water change but a good suggestion is to invest in a water purification system, apart from a FR

[jonathan543]

ahhh! juz bought a salifert phosphate test kit today & did a check on the tapwater & tank water... boy am i surprised! tapwater- 0ppm, tankwater 1ppm! even after i used double the watersample & reagents for greater sensitivity, as suggested in the user guide, on the tapwater, it was barely detectable, almost having a crystal clear solution! and bought a can of rowaphos too... hopefully can bring down the PO4 level... would be checking the level of PO4 of redsea salt tomorrow...

[ervine]

i also came back after my 3 week trip to see my tank overrun by some green mosslike algae..

What I did so far was:

1. raise kH values above 8 (i read this in a book at bio-ocean)

2. took all infested rocks out and scrubbed them down OUTSIDE of the tank, rinse them down a little then put them back

3. run carbon in the sump

I think about 1 week since i did all these, looks OK so far.. never see the remaining strands of algae explode yet...

[jonathan543]

haahaa i muz say rowaphos really works... used 1/4 of the content in a improvised fr & the level of PO4 dropped to almost undetectable levels in juz 2days! tested 3times wit same results using salifert PO4 kit... great product! but on the down note, i have a refugium wit 1 inch of miracle mud growing macro algae, the algae are noteably dying off in great numbers(they used to multiply like crazy)... but there are few strands dat are seemed to be going strong. hope dat they'll revive soon... however in the main tank the xenias are notably more extended & showing signs of pumping, & the faded colours of the zoo colony are slowly coming back too....

[jonathan543]

and juz tested the level of PO4 in the redsea marine salt solution, undetectable level of PO4 too... so guess the uncured liferocks might be the main culprit in the algae & diatom outbreak....