GHA will not go away...

[Scorchx1245]

12 gallon aquapod...  GHA slowly taking over....can't rid it....as so on as I got rid of cyano by adjusting flow. My timer switch got tripped to always on somehow, lights on for 36 hours straight. corals are ok, my torch isn't happy but is recovering. Soooo...

 

Basically I've been doing 25% w/CS every 4 to 7 days. Nitrate is almost 0 (api) very slight hint of color, nitrite 0, phosphate at 0.1 ( kind of high I feel) on my buddies hannah. Salinity 1.024. 

 

Light cycle actinic 10 hours, white 10k for 6. Equipment; GFO passive, carbon passive, wood air stone skimmer (does ok) and filter floss in media rack, ATO. Gfo changed every 2 to 3 weeks. Carbon every 4. 

 

Livestock : 2 occ. Clowns, 1 watchman only an inch long. 4 blue leg hermits, 3 nassarius, 2 turbos that have been in for 3 months. The hermit even has algae on its shell....😔 2 hammers, colony of 5 star polyps, and GSP.

 

Every water change I manually pluck it aggressively. Even went lights out 72 hours and manually plucked it afterwards still came back. Still plucking daily not as thorough on water change days. But keeping at it. I'm at wits end...about to set up my quarantine tank again transfer live stock. And reboot. So what am I doing wrong =( please help tank is 8 months old. If it wasn't for my lights stuck on it would have never got a hold I think.

 

 

I'm setting up a 40 gallon that just finished cycling but have only flourecents over it and no livestock. No skimmer just an empty sump. But don't want to touch it till I'm ready.

[Scorchx1245]

[Clown79]

The best and fastest way to get results is removing the rocks, scrub them with a new toothbrush, rinse in sw, then dip them in a hydrogen peroxide (3%), rinse well in sw and return to tank.

 

This will kill the gha.

Do a search on hydrogen peroxide treatments.

 

Any equipment with gha on it should be removed and scrubbed clean.

 

 

 

Do you use rodi or distilled water?

 

Do you vacuum your sand and blast rocks with a turkey baster during waterchanges?

 

What filter media do you use and what's the maintenance of it?

 

Do you scrub the back chambers and siphon them out?

[Nocturnal]

People use flucanozole to treat GHA as well. I'd use that as a last resort personally. Manual removal and peroxide is what I would do next. Keep in mind that your are showing low nutrients because the GHA sucks it up all before you can register it. Once it's there it is very hard to starve out.

[Scorchx1245]

I use rodi water, and vacumn sand bed, Turkey baster rocks, filter media is just filter floss, then carbon, then through gfo. All passively. And yes I siphon the back chambers out. Gfo and carbon changed every 3 weeks, filter floss every 3 or 4 days. I feed every other day. I just never had a nutrient problem really before this. What about corals will the 3% hydrogen peroxide be ok on them?  

[Clown79]

I'd remove corals from the rock if possible or spot treat the rock as to not get any on the coral

[Nocturnal]

15 hours ago, Scorchx1245 said:

I use rodi water, and vacumn sand bed, Turkey baster rocks, filter media is just filter floss, then carbon, then through gfo. All passively. And yes I siphon the back chambers out. Gfo and carbon changed every 3 weeks, filter floss every 3 or 4 days. I feed every other day. I just never had a nutrient problem really before this. What about corals will the 3% hydrogen peroxide be ok on them?  

I'd avoid it if you can but it didn't seem to cause a ton of damage with some minor exposure. I was unable to remove my rocks so I drained the tank down half way and applied peroxide in tank directly to the algae. Seems like the peroxide breaks down quickly into harmless stuff. 

[StephDaReefer]

I had gha in my tank for a while and I had no idea why it kept coming back so I just accepted it and hoped it would go away on its own. I ended up switching to only RODI (which I should’ve done from the start) and I also built a refugium in the middle chamber of my fluval 13.5 using chaeto and a plant growing light from amazon which ran me about 24 dollars now all the gha is gone. Occarionally I’ll find it on a snail or 2 but I just put another snail on top of it and they’ll eat it off of each other.

[Clown79]

20 minutes ago, StephDaReefer said:

I had gha in my tank for a while and I had no idea why it kept coming back so I just accepted it and hoped it would go away on its own. I ended up switching to only RODI (which I should’ve done from the start) and I also built a refugium in the middle chamber of my fluval 13.5 using chaeto and a plant growing light from amazon which ran me about 24 dollars now all the gha is gone. Occarionally I’ll find it on a snail or 2 but I just put another snail on top of it and they’ll eat it off of each other.

What light is that?

I want to put chaeto in my IM chamber but looking for a cheap light.

19 hours ago, Scorchx1245 said:

I use rodi water, and vacumn sand bed, Turkey baster rocks, filter media is just filter floss, then carbon, then through gfo. All passively. And yes I siphon the back chambers out. Gfo and carbon changed every 3 weeks, filter floss every 3 or 4 days. I feed every other day. I just never had a nutrient problem really before this. What about corals will the 3% hydrogen peroxide be ok on them?  

I've done spot treatments straight in my tank without draining. 

 

It's easier if the rock is covered to remove it for treatment as in tank you can only do small sections with small amounts of peroxide.

[StephDaReefer]

23 hours ago, Clown79 said:

What light is that?

I want to put chaeto in my IM chamber but looking for a cheap light.

I've done spot treatments straight in my tank without draining. 

 

It's easier if the rock is covered to remove it for treatment as in tank you can only do small sections with small amounts of peroxide.

This light (which is a small fraction of the price of a “chaeto growing light”) x 3M double sided tape works absolute wonders, I also have one of those dial timers on it so it’s a set it and forget it type deal. My chaeto grows uncontrollably sometimes. I trim it down to the size of a tennis ball every week and the chaeto still fills up the whole chamber by the time i have to trim it again. My suggestion would be to get some tongs and turn the chaeto every 1 or 2 days so most of it will be exposed to the light. The only down side is that small pieces of chaeto will end up in your display tank which gets annoying but it’s well worth it. 🙂

[Tamberav]

That is a cool light, looks like a few people on amazon using it for a fuge. 

[StephDaReefer]

41 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

That is a cool light, looks like a few people on amazon using it for a fuge. 

I highly recommend it.

[Scorchx1245]

I do have a spare empty chamber I could try a fudge in always wanted to. Only thing in it is little bit of rubble. Hmmm 🤔 but I'm going to remove the trouble rocks and scrub them then 3% HP mix.

[Scorchx1245]

So I'm building my fuge as we speak tons of manual removal and it keeps coming back....but not spreading. So I did a 48 hour black out and it easily plucked off today. But now I'm going clean my rocks in a hydrogen peroxide solution. I have a bottle of 3% food grade. Do I dilute this? Also is it a quick dip then scrub or a scrub then dip? Also how long do I leave it in the solution for? I want to minimize coraline algea loss. 

[Scorchx1245]

So, I tore all the live rock out, manually removed as much as I could in a bucket with a coarse brush and pick. Did a 30 second dip in 3% HP solution diluted to 1:10 ratio, Rinsed in SW real well. Felt bad cause I lost some pods and micro fauna. Now the back wall....I want to remove it but dont want to brush it to keep it from spreading, so I do I keep manual removal up?