To make a long story short .... my tank was doing awesome until i bought some supposedly cured LR from a local store. After that my tank went to crap. The stuff is not there at night or in the morning but after the lights come on it shows up. It easily blows off with a turkey baster. At first the LFS said that is cyanosis and i treated the tank a few times with the white powder they gave me. It did no good. They then said i had high Phosphates and i got the Phosbuster pro and treated the tank with that. It did no good.

Obviously my LFS does not have a clue what is going on. So does any one here have any ideas?

I had my water tested and everything was fine except for i had high nitrates. Since then i have done 2-4 gal and 1-2gal water changes. Nothing has died. All fish are fine. 3 clowns and a blenny.

This is what i have.
20L tank
Tunze 9002
Aquafuge 2
2 - Korilia 2
Sunpod 150W HQI

looks like cyano and diatomes.

what are your params? how old is the tank? what is your CUC like? how long do you run lights? how often do you feel and how much? why do you have 3 clowns and a blenny in a 20g tank?

Edit - came on too strong. IMO, too many fish in that tank. You're overstocked and the nutrient excess is causing algae problems.

Your nitrates are probably a little high cause the tank is overstocked, as Dhaut said.
I would do the following:
-Get rid of 1 Clown
-Do a 3 day blackout
Do a 30% WC
Manually remove all of the "junk"
Leave lights off for 3 days and make sure no sunlight reaches tank; cover it if necessary
Feed only once lightly, on the second day; turn lights on only long enough for fish to eat
On 3rd day do another 30% WC

Tank is 7 months. 60lbsof the LR came out of a 2 year old tank. I have 5-6 snails 10 hermits. Run the lights about 11hours a day. Feed the fish once a week. Skim 24/7. I will get the Params when i restock my test kit later today or tomorrow.

This is not my first tank. I also dont think that is too many fish. I say that because i have had smaller tanks with more fish and NEVER had an issue.

Dont think it is cyano. I had that in an old tank and it usually cleared up after treatment and a water change.

Tank was awesome (and stocked with the fish for months) up until i bought the 4 new pieces of LR. Never had this issue before.



I will try that except get rid of the clown.

Your call. Check params and if nitrates/phosphates are reading then that's your algae problem. Try cutting back on feeding and upping your WC amount. I'm not one to harp on overstocking much, but you have to bite the cost of heavier water changes or change it more often.

Thanks. I will keep you updated.

BTW.. I have a friend with a 45 gal with 16 Clowns. It is a beautiful tank and it flourishes.

hmmm? could be a mini cycle. all the decaying bacteria on the new live rock. pull the new rock and recure it? just my thoughts . im no expert just putting in another suggestion. http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/filtersel.../aa111901_4.htm

Looks like cyano. Does it get more bubbles when the lights are on? The best thing for cyano is to shorten the amount of time the lights are on and up the water changes. syphon the cyano from the sand and rocks. Work on reducing nirates and check phosphate. Do you feed frozen foods? Make sure you rinse with RO/DI water before introducing into the tank. that will help keep phosphate from accumulating.

Hmmm, also do a google search for dinoflagellate algae. Look at the pics in the google images. Read about it and see if the descriptions, signs, symptoms, etc..match what you have. I hope not. It nasty stuff! It's usually introduced into the tank.

Over crowding is a very real problem, and is covered in detail on websites, blogs, forums, books, etc. The goal of the keeper is to replicate nature in a beautiful and enjoyable way. Please consider the fish first. depending on the size of the clowns, it may be fine to have 16 in 45g. However, I've always used the rule of thumb that says 1 inch of fish for every 2 gallons of 'display tank' water. If you have a 10 gallon display tank, and rocks are taking up 3 gallons of space, you have 7 gallons of display water, and thus should be able to hold 3.5 inches of fish.

This is my 'very conservative' rule of thumb. Some say 1 inch to 1 gallon, but I find that doesn't leave any room for growth.

In the end it's your call, but beyond the fish you're killing your tanks chem levels.. That is easy to take care of by adding better/more filtration.

I think this is what i have. Probably got it from the LFS.

edit: that looks like dinos to me, as stated above

you probably got it from your own tank.

+1 to dinos!..sorry, but that is them...hard to beat. Increase your alk, cut back on water changes to help limit its ability to draw iron, don't feed foods rich in iron...If you need to do water changes then do them, but salt mixes have iron in them, and that will help the dinos grow. Best of luck!

Is this you?

http://www.maast.org/forums/showthread.php?t=49716

yeah...that thing needs an update bad...

Definately Dinos. I had them and got rid of them and they never came back. I dont think you are overstocked just up your WC a little. How i beat them is just like weetabix stated above lights out for 3 days. But at night I used a turkey baster to get the dinos into the water colum then every morning i changed my filter/floss

lawman-sounds smart. i have the same problem it jus came out of nowhere my tank is like 3 months old. tagging along. i am doing the following steps that i read online

lower temperature
add kalk to topoff to raise ph
3 day blackout
manual removal
replace carbon
wet skimming
no more water changes for a few weeks(they can feed off the nutrients in fresh mixed SW)

and i will probably add scraping them off daily with floss changes daily

thanks and good luck

p.s. wish me luck too

Guess it is time for an update.

The Dynos are 99% gone. I left the lights out for about 5 days. Over the past month i did about 3 water changes. Got some Chemi Pure elite. Changed my light schedule to 6-7 hours a day. Here are the pics.

Can LPS (softies et al) survive without light for 5 days? Based on your pics, they must be able to, but did you loose anything without light for 5 days?

I lost nothing. As you can see everything is doing great. There was light from the room light because it is in my office where i work so it was not total darkness.