CADlight's 45g Shallow

[ReefGoat]

Just now, micoastreefing said:

Unless you just cleaned all other areas, this looks like it could be a lack of flow issue?  Maybe others can chime in about the pics. Seems to be concentrated in that alcove/bay area and the “shadow” of the far right side. How many powerheads do you have? 

 

Also, if this is only month #3 for the tank, I think your issue will pass with just a good routine maintenance of sandbed and wc. It happens to most tanks. Yours may just be a bit slower cuz you’ve been removing extra nutrients thru skimming.  

 

You can try to ease the nutrients removal by running skimmer less, or none at all, depending on your feeding habit. Is there any fish in the tank? 

Yes there's a clown that managed to not be in the picture and a sleepy Melenarus wrasse that's hiding in the sand bed. I use mp-10 and a Reef octopus varios 2 on power setting 4 of 5.  I didn't clean any of the areas at all this is just after 1 day lights out. It didn't seem to change much from one day lights out either. Just a little less mat like and more like diatom look. 

[ReefGoat]

2 minutes ago, Weikel said:

Doesn’t this just look like diatoms?   My tank didn’t get them for 3 months..

The only reason I didn't think it was diatoms was because they kinda matted in some places and had that silky wave kinda thing that cyano does. 

[mitten_reef]

Just now, Weikel said:

Doesn’t this just look like diatoms?   My tank didn’t get them for 3 months..

I never knew the difference haha 😂. And it’s been so long since I had a brand new tank. Been transfers after transfer. But I just had cyano bloom and nipped it right the way with a few extra wc during the holidays. Now it’s fading away, with a little help from about a tablespoon of phosguard. 

[FISHnChix]

Just now, micoastreefing said:

I never knew the difference haha 😂. And it’s been so long since I had a brand new tank. Been transfers after transfer. But I just had cyano bloom and nipped it right the way with a few extra wc during the holidays. Now it’s fading away, with a little help from about a tablespoon of phosguard. 

I was gunna say you prob dont remember bc it's been so long..

 

Its diatoms @ReefGoat.. check out my thread maybe a few pages back same shit.. then boom over night gone.. once they eat up the silcates they will be gone.. no biggie!

[ReefGoat]

1 minute ago, micoastreefing said:

I never knew the difference haha 😂. And it’s been so long since I had a brand new tank. Been transfers after transfer. But I just had cyano bloom and nipped it right the way with a few extra wc during the holidays. Now it’s fading away, with a little help from about a tablespoon of phosguard. 

I think I'm going to just chill out and pull my sleeves up and fight it with maintenence and water changes like you've suggested. 

[FISHnChix]

4 minutes ago, ReefGoat said:

I think I'm going to just chill out and pull my sleeves up and fight it with maintenence and water changes like you've suggested. 

Yea relax they will go away once they run their course and consume the silicates.. I wouldnt bump up w.c  just let them do their thing and suck them out weekly.  One thing is to make sure your not adding more silcates to the mix.. make sure the water your using is rodi and all that jazz ..zero tds and it will go away...

[ReefGoat]

3 minutes ago, Weikel said:

Yea relax they will go away once they run their course and consume the silicates.. I wouldnt bump up w.c  just let them do their thing and suck them out weekly.  One thing is to make sure your not adding more silcates to the mix.. make sure the water your using is rodi and all that jazz ..zero tds and it will go away...

Yeah I have Rodi, just changed the filters and di resin out too. As a matter of fact it started right after I changed out the filters and resin lol. I do need to get a tds meter though

[FISHnChix]

3 minutes ago, ReefGoat said:

Yeah I have Rodi, just changed the filters and di resin out too. As a matter of fact it started right after I changed out the filters and resin lol. I do need to get a tds meter though

Yea for sure.. depending on your tds coming in you could have to change media.. honestly you are over thinking it I am sure you ar good. Oh and make sure you runs your rodi for a good 5 Mins into the drain take a second to clear the tds

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

1 hour ago, Weikel said:

Yea for sure.. depending on your tds coming in you could have to change media.. honestly you are over thinking it I am sure you ar good. Oh and make sure you runs your rodi for a good 5 Mins into the drain take a second to clear the tds

I never thought to let my rodi run for a few🤔....that's actually a really good time.

[FISHnChix]

29 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I never thought to let my rodi run for a few🤔....that's actually a really good time.

R u messing with me?? Lol it says that in the instructions. I have put it to the test. On my unit I will get anywhere from 8 to 5 for the first couple mins after that its zero.. I dunno how big of a difference it would make but ya know it's worth purging it...

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

2 minutes ago, Weikel said:

R u messing with me?? Lol it says that in the instructions. I have put it to the test. On my unit I will get anywhere from 8 to 5 for the first couple mins after that its zero.. I dunno how big of a difference it would make but ya know it's worth purging it...

No I'm not...I let it run for say 30 sec then right in the bucket it goes. I let it run quick into my washer then right to the bucket. I never read that in any of the ro buddie directions. I also didn't read it in depth either 🤔

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

I'm gonna go try it right now. I'm curious lol.

[Tamberav]

7 hours ago, jdmcbuilt said:

14 days tops. No biggie. Less feeding around that time. My Mexican turbos never touch GHA. I have 5 golf ball sized turbos. 

Dang... I can give mine a GHA covered frag or rock and it's ate by the next day. My GHA must be tastey. 

[Tamberav]

2 hours ago, ReefGoat said:

I think I'm going to just chill out and pull my sleeves up and fight it with maintenence and water changes like you've suggested. 

That just looks like early tank annoying brown crap to me. Did you wash your sandbed when you set up the tank? That seems to help a lot.

[jdmcbuilt]

1 hour ago, Tamberav said:

Dang... I can give mine a GHA covered frag or rock and it's ate by the next day. My GHA must be tastey. 

i wishhhhhh lol those bastards... 

[ReefGoat]

8 hours ago, Tamberav said:

That just looks like early tank annoying brown crap to me. Did you wash your sandbed when you set up the tank? That seems to help a lot.

I did wash the sand before adding it. Possibly I just didn't wash it enough. Yeah you're probably right on the early tank theory. Like I said the only thing that set off the alarm bells for me was that it looked like it was starting to mat like Cyano and had that silky wave to it. 

[ReefGoat]

Time for an update I suppose. Since the last algae update there have been some developments. I launched a full scale investigation into this algae lol. First thing I did was purchase a microscope. After two 1.5 hour sessions and samples from everywhere in the tank and sump. I could only find ONE single microscopic life form that looked even remotely close to the dino's I've seen in slide pictures on the Web. So I started checking things off the list. My snails aren't dying and they're clearly eating the stuff.  It doesn't change lights on or lights off. Besides the damage the snails do to it. But if I clean it and leave lights off it doesn't get worse and the snails catch up. So I did some deep thought into what has changed. The only thing is my RODI. I looked at the dates and this started literally two days after I changed the filters I did a water change and filled ATO the day I changed the filters as well. Then on top of that I've been filling ATO twice a week. 

[ReefGoat]

So I looked into the characteristics of the different algae. This stuff blows off the rocks effortlessly into a dust but it also has bubbles and drives PH up during the day. Everything is pointing to a horrible outbreak of diatom and I think my source water is the culprit. Because I looked through azdesertrats RODI maintenence threads and I did it all wrong. I probably shit my membrane all up then for almost a month fill my ATO and did water changes with a shot RODI system. So I've ordered a new membrane and filters again and once that's all clean I should be back to a sparkling tank in no time and get on with this maturing process so I can buy some damn sticks!

[ReefGoat]

The tank makes 4 months this week! Sadly I'm suffering from an algae hangover and nothing much has been added to the tank at all. In fact NOTHING has been added to the tank at all. My stocking list is still exactly the same as it was at the start of month three. The algae ended up getting worse from the time of the last picture and the mental breakdown I had earlier in the journal. Lets just say it's been a LONG ride since right before Christmas. I know a month isn't that long, but to see my beloved reef descend into a cesspool of algae was very frustrating. I was basically taking algae samples every night and monitoring under the microscope. I know for a fact I saw Diatoms at around 200x I'm still not 100% sure on the other algae ID because there were about 3-5 nights straight when I was almost positive I was witnessing Dinoflagellates at 120x magnification. But they didn't look like any of the regular breeds of dino but they were mobile, so I still wasn't sure.  Good news is that it's almost entirely gone and the rock is a nice grey color instead of bone white or algae brown and looks to be moving on to the next stage of maturation. I'm pretty excited to say the least. Here's what I ended up doing to fight the "unidentified scourge". 

Week 1

-Immediately stopped water changes

-Started using Distilled Water to fill my ATO container because I found that my RODI membrane was likely shot (still need to order the replacement parts for my RODI unit)

-Stopped skimming 

-Adjusted my MAG level to 1450-1500

-Added CUC

-Stopped dosing MB7

-Realized I wasn't rinsing and straining my frozen cubes corrected habit

Week 2

-All of the above plus started slowly bringing my nutrients back up with Seachem Flourish because Nitrate and Phosphate had both went undetectable

-Started stirring sand bed and scrubbing rocks in tank with tooth brush every two days changing floss 2 hours after each cleaning

-Reduced lighting period to 5 hours blue lights only

-Started running carbon just passively instead of 247

Week 3

-All of the above 

-Bumped feeding to 1/2 cube per day (rinsed)

Week 4 (This past week) The algae stopped spreading but wouldn't start dying back hit my wits end

-All of the above 

-Hail mary and started dosing 3% Hydrogen Peroxide at 1ml per 10 gallons once a day 2 hours after lights off for this entire week (do this at your own risk I was at my wits end)

 

So today (start of WEEK 5 of battle) I wake up and check on the tank like my usual ritual and the CUC has almost entirely knocked out what was left and when I got home yesterday the sand bed was white even after the lighting period and still was this morning. I'm no longer seeing a huge PH spike during the day (photo period) and corals even look better! I'm still a little nervous to do a water change. But tonight I'm going to check all my levels because throughout this I've always tested on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I could possibly resume water changes at the start of February. Just haven't decided how big or small they will be. My final conclusion was that it's quite possible that I had a horrible diatom outbreak from the RODI blunder and at that same time I had the beginnings of a DINO outbreak from stripping my tank of nutrients with that beast of a skimmer, stingy feedings and militant water change schedule. Is it possible that the Dino never got bad because the Diatom was competing with it? I'm not sure if that's even a thing? Maybe I just got lucky...........But the good news is that it appears that I have it beat *fingers crossed*. I really won't know until I have a regular photo period again I suppose. I will update with a FTS tonight. I really want to start stocking this thing with coral but I think i'm going to hold off because of the cold snap all over the nation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[thecoralbeauty]

3 hours ago, ReefGoat said:

The tank makes 4 months this week! Sadly I'm suffering from an algae hangover and nothing much has been added to the tank at all. In fact NOTHING has been added to the tank at all. My stocking list is still exactly the same as it was at the start of month three. The algae ended up getting worse from the time of the last picture and the mental breakdown I had earlier in the journal. Lets just say it's been a LONG ride since right before Christmas. I know a month isn't that long, but to see my beloved reef descend into a cesspool of algae was very frustrating. I was basically taking algae samples every night and monitoring under the microscope. I know for a fact I saw Diatoms at around 200x I'm still not 100% sure on the other algae ID because there were about 3-5 nights straight when I was almost positive I was witnessing Dinoflagellates at 120x magnification. But they didn't look like any of the regular breeds of dino but they were mobile, so I still wasn't sure.  Good news is that it's almost entirely gone and the rock is a nice grey color instead of bone white or algae brown and looks to be moving on to the next stage of maturation. I'm pretty excited to say the least. Here's what I ended up doing to fight the "unidentified scourge". 

Week 1

-Immediately stopped water changes

-Started using Distilled Water to fill my ATO container because I found that my RODI membrane was likely shot (still need to order the replacement parts for my RODI unit)

-Stopped skimming 

-Adjusted my MAG level to 1450-1500

-Added CUC

-Stopped dosing MB7

-Realized I wasn't rinsing and straining my frozen cubes corrected habit

Week 2

-All of the above plus started slowly bringing my nutrients back up with Seachem Flourish because Nitrate and Phosphate had both went undetectable

-Started stirring sand bed and scrubbing rocks in tank with tooth brush every two days changing floss 2 hours after each cleaning

-Reduced lighting period to 5 hours blue lights only

-Started running carbon just passively instead of 247

Week 3

-All of the above 

-Bumped feeding to 1/2 cube per day (rinsed)

Week 4 (This past week) The algae stopped spreading but wouldn't start dying back hit my wits end

-All of the above 

-Hail mary and started dosing 3% Hydrogen Peroxide at 1ml per 10 gallons once a day 2 hours after lights off for this entire week (do this at your own risk I was at my wits end)

 

So today (start of WEEK 5 of battle) I wake up and check on the tank like my usual ritual and the CUC has almost entirely knocked out what was left and when I got home yesterday the sand bed was white even after the lighting period and still was this morning. I'm no longer seeing a huge PH spike during the day (photo period) and corals even look better! I'm still a little nervous to do a water change. But tonight I'm going to check all my levels because throughout this I've always tested on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I could possibly resume water changes at the start of February. Just haven't decided how big or small they will be. My final conclusion was that it's quite possible that I had a horrible diatom outbreak from the RODI blunder and at that same time I had the beginnings of a DINO outbreak from stripping my tank of nutrients with that beast of a skimmer, stingy feedings and militant water change schedule. Is it possible that the Dino never got bad because the Diatom was competing with it? I'm not sure if that's even a thing? Maybe I just got lucky...........But the good news is that it appears that I have it beat *fingers crossed*. I really won't know until I have a regular photo period again I suppose. I will update with a FTS tonight. I really want to start stocking this thing with coral but I think i'm going to hold off because of the cold snap all over the nation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going through a similar thing- diatoms, diatoms everywhere....

 

It sounds like you got things back on track!! 🙂 I'm struggling with self-control and patience dealing with my issues. I just want to tinker with things until they are fixed, and in reality, waiting it out while making small adjustments- just like you did- is the way to go.

 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

3 hours ago, ReefGoat said:

The tank makes 4 months this week! Sadly I'm suffering from an algae hangover and nothing much has been added to the tank at all. In fact NOTHING has been added to the tank at all. My stocking list is still exactly the same as it was at the start of month three. The algae ended up getting worse from the time of the last picture and the mental breakdown I had earlier in the journal. Lets just say it's been a LONG ride since right before Christmas. I know a month isn't that long, but to see my beloved reef descend into a cesspool of algae was very frustrating. I was basically taking algae samples every night and monitoring under the microscope. I know for a fact I saw Diatoms at around 200x I'm still not 100% sure on the other algae ID because there were about 3-5 nights straight when I was almost positive I was witnessing Dinoflagellates at 120x magnification. But they didn't look like any of the regular breeds of dino but they were mobile, so I still wasn't sure.  Good news is that it's almost entirely gone and the rock is a nice grey color instead of bone white or algae brown and looks to be moving on to the next stage of maturation. I'm pretty excited to say the least. Here's what I ended up doing to fight the "unidentified scourge". 

Week 1

-Immediately stopped water changes

-Started using Distilled Water to fill my ATO container because I found that my RODI membrane was likely shot (still need to order the replacement parts for my RODI unit)

-Stopped skimming 

-Adjusted my MAG level to 1450-1500

-Added CUC

-Stopped dosing MB7

-Realized I wasn't rinsing and straining my frozen cubes corrected habit

Week 2

-All of the above plus started slowly bringing my nutrients back up with Seachem Flourish because Nitrate and Phosphate had both went undetectable

-Started stirring sand bed and scrubbing rocks in tank with tooth brush every two days changing floss 2 hours after each cleaning

-Reduced lighting period to 5 hours blue lights only

-Started running carbon just passively instead of 247

Week 3

-All of the above 

-Bumped feeding to 1/2 cube per day (rinsed)

Week 4 (This past week) The algae stopped spreading but wouldn't start dying back hit my wits end

-All of the above 

-Hail mary and started dosing 3% Hydrogen Peroxide at 1ml per 10 gallons once a day 2 hours after lights off for this entire week (do this at your own risk I was at my wits end)

 

So today (start of WEEK 5 of battle) I wake up and check on the tank like my usual ritual and the CUC has almost entirely knocked out what was left and when I got home yesterday the sand bed was white even after the lighting period and still was this morning. I'm no longer seeing a huge PH spike during the day (photo period) and corals even look better! I'm still a little nervous to do a water change. But tonight I'm going to check all my levels because throughout this I've always tested on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I could possibly resume water changes at the start of February. Just haven't decided how big or small they will be. My final conclusion was that it's quite possible that I had a horrible diatom outbreak from the RODI blunder and at that same time I had the beginnings of a DINO outbreak from stripping my tank of nutrients with that beast of a skimmer, stingy feedings and militant water change schedule. Is it possible that the Dino never got bad because the Diatom was competing with it? I'm not sure if that's even a thing? Maybe I just got lucky...........But the good news is that it appears that I have it beat *fingers crossed*. I really won't know until I have a regular photo period again I suppose. I will update with a FTS tonight. I really want to start stocking this thing with coral but I think i'm going to hold off because of the cold snap all over the nation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've been dealing with gha for a few months now and finally dosed reef flux. Just did it on sunday so I'm curious to see if I can get rid of the algae. Good to know you're on the right track now.

[ReefGoat]

1 hour ago, mwhitelock said:

Going through a similar thing- diatoms, diatoms everywhere....

 

It sounds like you got things back on track!! 🙂 I'm struggling with self-control and patience dealing with my issues. I just want to tinker with things until they are fixed, and in reality, waiting it out while making small adjustments- just like you did- is the way to go.

 

Yeah, I tried to wait it out. What caused me to act on it like I did was the microscope ID. I for sure saw the diatoms, they are unmistakable in shape and non mobile from what i've read. But it was when I saw the circular shaped things moving around is when I became concerned. 

[ReefGoat]

Post algae battle picture

[thecoralbeauty]

its so clean!!

[ReefGoat]

Coral color did suffer quite a bit during last month. I have a plan for adding some diversity, pods, etc. and just more overall life to the tank as soon as humanly possibly. I'm rearing and ready to add another fish, a battle box and some diversity. It's just this cold weather............I don't want to take any chances. When I got that Jedi Mind Trick in early December I was shocked at how cold the water was even with a heating pad in it.