Am I going through the "ugly" phase or am I doing something wrong?

[legomaniac]

So I have had my tank set up for 7 months now, but for the past 4-5 weeks I have had an outbreak of hair algae all over my rocks.  Its nowhere else, just the rocks.  I have tried to manually remove it, toothbrush it and I even peroxide dosed it and it just keeps on growing.

 

Since I started with all dry rock (very cheap dry rock) and the algae is only growing on the rock, would this just be part of the rocks life cycle?  Or am I just doing a poor job with this tank?

 

My nitrate and phosphate are undetectable, but I assume that it is because of the hair algae using it all up.  The tank is an IM nuvo 16 with a cobalt 1200 pump on 2 spinstreams for circulation. About 3/4" of sand and 17lbs of dry rock.  2 clowns, 2 pom pom crabs, 1 porcelain crab. Misc blue legs, ceriths, nassarius and nerite snails.  Tons of pineapple sponges.  I do 3 gallon water changes every week using distilled water.

 

Zoas are thriving and growing but my duncan has closed up and died and my acan is shrinking away.

 

I'm really not sure what to do right now so any help would be appreciated.

[vegasgundog]

Parameters and lighting? 

[legomaniac]

Parameters:

Temp 78

Ammonia 0

Nitrite 0

Nitrate 0

Phosphate 0

Alk 11

Calcium 320

Salinity 1.025

 

My lighting is a custom LED cluster that I put in the original IM skky light housings.  I have 3 lighting circuits that are set on timers.  When all lights are on this is what I have.

10 - 1w 445 royal blue

2 - 1w 14000k white

8 - 1/2w 456 blue

10 - 1/4 w 470 blue

4 - 1/4w green

4 - 1/4w red

 

 

[Clown79]

Can you tell us a bit of your maintenance process and filtration set up.

 

Nitrate and phos results will be inaccurate due to the algae using up the nutrients

[legomaniac]

I do a 3 gallon water change every Saturday and clean out the back chambers and pumps about once a month. For filtration I made my own baskets with floss on top, carbon and purigen. 

[Clown79]

2 minutes ago, legomaniac said:

I do a 3 gallon water change every Saturday and clean out the back chambers and pumps about once a month. For filtration I made my own baskets with floss on top, carbon and purigen. 

Do you vacuum sand, Turkey baste rocks with every waterchange?

 

How often is carbon changed?

How often floss changed?

 

What do you feed and how often/ much?

[legomaniac]

Yes sorry.  I turkey baste every day.  I vacuum the sand with the water change.  Floss is changed weekly with the water change.  Carbon and Purigen is changed monthly when I clean the back chambers.

 

I feed the clowns every other day with pellets or frozen.

 

I did a lot of research on here when I started the tank and I thought I had a good maintenance process and feeding schedule.  This hair algae popped up suddenly and grew rapidly.  Up until about 5 weeks ago the tank looked really nice.

[Cmharper50]

The phosphate might be low, I think it supposed to be at like 0.03ppm. And can you provide pictures?

[ezreefer73]

I just went thru this on my new 20 long reef. I used dry lock to start. Did you clean the dry rock originally? I rinsed mine thoroughly with tap water from the hose. For me it happened right after my cycle ended. It was the phosphates leaching from the rocks probably from the tap water. To combat it I did weakly 25% water changes, cut my lighting schedule back, ran my refugium light longer, added gfo in my aquaclear filter and set my skimmer to skim more wet. It took about 6 or 7 weeks, but I beat it. It will turn brown or gray as it dies off. I also added a few more hermit crabs and 3 mexican turbo snails to eradicate the remaining. It is a battle but it can be won with patience and diligence.

[Tamberav]

I've gotten a few bad GHA outbreaks after various inbalances but I do a bit of manual removal and added a Mexican turbo which eats it like crazy but I have to glue everything down as he is a bulldozer of frags. Hermit's eat it well for me too but they cam being their own set of annoyances.

[FLARGUE]

I corrected my outbreak by using phosguard to reduce phosphates. They often can't be detected through testing. I'm almost positive it was my rocks leaching.

I also dropped the water level and spot treated with peroxide. Got a big ol mexican turbo snail. Also fighting conch, but he does better with other types of algae.

[Clown79]

When I had gha start, I did spot treatments safely, added small amount of phosguard.

 

It works as long as the cause is corrected.

 

Your routine sounds good. Distilled is good, bioload is good.

 

Are you dosing anything? 

Over feeding corals or fish?

 

The Duncan and acan may be acting up for another reason unless algae is growing on them.

 

Alk and ca are not balanced. Ca is low. Alk at 11,  ca should be around 430.

Have you tested magnesium? If its low it can cause the imbalance.

That may be the issue with the corals

[MrObscura]

One thing I can tell you is... I'd be careful with 0 no3/po4. 

[Dantrasy]

What’s the total water volume?

 

[legomaniac]

It's a 16 gallon tank, with the rock and sand the total water volume is around 13 gallons.  I don't dose anything and I don't think I'm over feeding the fish, only every other day and only very little.  I don't have a test for mag so I don't know that number.  I'm not trying for 0 no3/po4 but that's just what it is since the gha outbreak.

 

I really think the problem is just the junk dry rock that I used.  I didnt know well enough to clean/cycle the rock before using it.  I just bought it off the shelf, took it home and put it in the tank, added sand and water and thought i was ready to go.  I have never had algae problems anywhere else in the tank.  Not the glass, sand or plumbing/pumps.  Everything stays pretty clean except the rocks.  After my cycle I had cyano all over the rocks but nowhere else.  My cuc munch away the cyano, then the gha sprouted a little, then just exploded all over the rocks.  The rest of the tank is clean.

 

I think I might just chuck all the rock and replace it with some good quality live rock and start over.  I have a brand new fusion 20 sitting in the box anyway, so I think I'll just drain this one and put the fusion in its place with new rock and transfer my fish and coral into the new tank.

[Tamberav]

Just make sure you don't get a mini cycle with the new rock. 

 

Dry can definitely have it's own challenges. I find GHA has a harder time growing in heavily encrusted coralline rock. But live sometimes brings in bubble algae and bryopsis. At some point I think everyone has to deal with pest algae.

 

An upgrade sounds fun 🙂

[Clown79]

6 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Just make sure you don't get a mini cycle with the new rock. 

 

Dry can definitely have it's own challenges. I find GHA has a harder time growing in heavily encrusted coralline rock. But live sometimes brings in bubble algae and bryopsis. At some point I think everyone has to deal with pest algae.

 

An upgrade sounds fun 🙂

Yuppers. We all have gone through it.