vabchreef Posted June 15, 2007 Share Posted June 15, 2007 Hey there everyone. I've had my BC29 up and running for about 4 months now. Water params perfect since day 1, light bioload, no mods except lighting upgrades. I've got alot of brownish, somewhat hairy algae starting to take over the sandbed and some of the LR. I do weekly water changes, stirring the sandbed and dusting off rocks daily, but the algae just keeps coming back stronger! A few pieces of rock have small purple coraline patches, but not nearly as much as I expected this far. Any advice on getting rid of the algae and encouraging more coraline growth? Link to comment
jmitchell Posted June 15, 2007 Share Posted June 15, 2007 Hey there everyone. I've had my BC29 up and running for about 4 months now. Water params perfect since day 1, light bioload, no mods except lighting upgrades. I've got alot of brownish, somewhat hairy algae starting to take over the sandbed and some of the LR. I do weekly water changes, stirring the sandbed and dusting off rocks daily, but the algae just keeps coming back stronger! A few pieces of rock have small purple coraline patches, but not nearly as much as I expected this far. Any advice on getting rid of the algae and encouraging more coraline growth? Ive had the same problem before, and a posting of your water parameters would help, but the best ways Ive found for solving it is: 1) Nass Snails and/or Blue legged hermits- stir the sand and clean it, I honestly wouldn't recommend manually stirring the sand bed. 2) Drop the temp 2-4 degrees, the livestock wont mind it for the most part (unless you have very fragile creatures) but the algae will. 3) Stop feeding and keep the photoperiod to a bare minium for 2-3 days, this should take away a food source for the algae. Hopefully I have been of help, the corraline algae question im not sure about, but I'd test for calcium so someone with better knowledge on the subject can give you a better answer! -LJ Link to comment
Kool-cat Posted June 15, 2007 Share Posted June 15, 2007 Well if you have hair algae it is hard to get rid of. I have been battling red hair algae for quite some time now. This stuff never really goes away, and once spores of chunks of it floats to new locations in the tank it grows. Cyano bacteria and green hair algae may go away with the use of ro/di water for top offs and water changes. For film algae I recommend nerite snails. For hair algae and film I recommend the golf ball sized mexican turbo snails, however their downside is they always die on me. Nassarius vibex snails are good for left over food. And I recommend scarlet hermit crabs as they may eat hair algae. I think some of my red scarlets hermit crabs ate the red hair algae off of my live rock because I have noticed that their are some clean spots on my live rock, where there once have been red hair algae. Link to comment
vabchreef Posted June 15, 2007 Author Share Posted June 15, 2007 jmitchell Thanks for the feedback. I will try dropping the temp a couple degrees. I doubt my livestock would be impacted by that. I have a variety of snails and hermits but could add 1 or 2 more each to see if that helps I feed every other day so I wouldn't want to lower this but I will try to lower the light exposure time for a few days. Thanks a lot! water params (consistent since day 1): sg: 1.022-1.023 pH: 8.2-8.3 amon: 0.0 ite: 0.0 ate: 0.0 I dont have a ca test kit... I dose part A and B at about 1/4 kool-cat I do weekly water changes and top off with distilled but could try r/o. thanks for the input! Link to comment
vabchreef Posted June 15, 2007 Author Share Posted June 15, 2007 Well if you have hair algae it is hard to get rid of. I have been battling red hair algae for quite some time now. This stuff never really goes away, and once spores of chunks of it floats to new locations in the tank it grows. Cyano bacteria and green hair algae may go away with the use of ro/di water for top offs and water changes. For film algae I recommend nerite snails. For hair algae and film I recommend the golf ball sized mexican turbo snails, however their downside is they always die on me. Nassarius vibex snails are good for left over food. And I recommend scarlet hermit crabs as they may eat hair algae. I think some of my red scarlets hermit crabs ate the red hair algae off of my live rock because I have noticed that their are some clean spots on my live rock, where there once have been red hair algae. I believe I've got a few small patches of cyano bacteria too! Was reading up on that this afternoon... Link to comment
yoitsarson Posted June 16, 2007 Share Posted June 16, 2007 I had it for awhile and the snails werent even putting a dent in it so my LFS told me to get a conch and sure enough it rips thru the stuff. Link to comment
vabchreef Posted June 16, 2007 Author Share Posted June 16, 2007 Really... i've had 2 conch's in there for months... guess mine arent too hungry for the stuff Link to comment
Drez Posted June 16, 2007 Share Posted June 16, 2007 Using Distilled is fine if you can't get a hold of RO/DI as easily. That switch really shouldn't make any difference. Link to comment
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