Excessive Nitrates/Algae

[Goats n Monkeys]

Totally get this is a recurring topic but I've tried just about every solution and am out of options. The age-old nitrate (60-80ppm)-green algae problem has persisted for well over a year and is slowly killing off my candy corals and zoas. I have a 16-gallon Biocube and the following has done nothing to reduce it:

• weekly water changes replacing 25-35%
• weekly additions of Seachem Prime and Complete
• biweekly sand vacuuming that does manage to catch and remove brownish cloudy water every month 
• biweekly dose of Monster 460 Conditioner
• complete equipment cleaning every month 
• chamber 1 consists of carbon + Kolar Labs Metabolix Bio-Pellets in a bag
• chamber 2 (from bottom to top levels) consists of ceramic rings, Purigen bag and chaeto algae (chaeto actually died last week when I removed the separate fluorescent light above it because it seemed to also encourage additional algae growth around it. But considering I've had chaeto in there for over a year I think it's safe to say it makes little to no impact)
• dose of Blue Life Phophate Rx even though Phosphates haven't really been that high
• "renting" a sea slug, which does get rid of the algae but then starves to death immediately after leaving a rotting cadaver that will poison the tank so the trick is removing/returning him at the right time. But of course, they hide in the worst spots so the removal process involves an afternoon of complete dis and re-assembly of the entire tank. Then the algae comes back in full within a week so this option is not worth it. 

All other chems (nitrite, ammonia, ph, phosphate, alkalinity and calcium) test out a-ok, salinity ranges around 1.024-1.027 and temp is 74 (though closer to 79 during summer). I make my own water with IO Reef Crystals and, no it's not the r/o water I'm purchasing because I moved in January and the new LFS water has made no difference. 

The lighting schedule is:

• LC1 (Daylights):  11:00 am to 5pm
• LC2 (Sunrise / Sunset):  10:30 am to 6:30 pm
• LC3 (Moon Lights):  6:30 pm to 10:30 pm

Livestock = just one small clownfish and blemmy (the latter purchased to eat algae to which he does not) and I feed them thawed brine shrimp very moderately every night. My cleaners consist of a conch + various crabs and snails (astria and turbo). I've tried adding up to 7 snails and it made no difference. 

 

I've had this tank for a little over 2 years and the nitrates were at 0 for the first year. I don't recall any significant change occurring to the tank that would result in this chronic spike so I'm completely baffled. I spend well over 2 collective hours each week hand picking out algae, twisting it out from in between corals with a pipe cleaner and cussing loudly during the process. It's getting old. 
 
The only option it appears that I've yet to try is the installation of a protein skimmer but I keep hearing these things are useless. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and, if it works, I'll buy ya tons of beer next time you make it to Vegas.
 

[ReefGoat]

Disregard i see you mentioned source water sorry........however you say they've made no changes. Is that you trusting them or have you verified by testing their water? 

[Goats n Monkeys]

One final note is that many of the other corals are thriving under this condition. Here's a full shot and the mushrooms, torch, hammerhead, sps and monti seem to love it! I wouldn't mind leaving things as is but the green algae is overtaking the rock, preventing coraline algae growth and making a terrible eyesore. I can't walk by the damn thing without it triggering my OCD...

[Goats n Monkeys]

1 minute ago, ReefGoat said:

What do you use for source water? You have rodi and mix your own? Or are you buying it from a lfs

I buy the r/o from the LFS and mix my own. But I've bought from several stores (moved from CA to NV in January) and the problem was in the tank before my move. 

[ReefGoat]

Your Coraline growth is impressive. I'm digging the dark pink 

[Goats n Monkeys]

Gracias! But as you can see it's pretty green n' scummy near the lower center and left. 

[ReefGoat]

Are those ceramic rings in your back chamber hoarding a bunch of detritus. Or do you clean all your back chambers when you clean your equipment. 

[Goats n Monkeys]

1 minute ago, ReefGoat said:

Are those ceramic rings in your back chamber hoarding a bunch of detritus. Or do you clean all your back chambers when you clean your equipment. 

The rings do appear a lil gunky and I avoided rinsing them out until about 4 months ago because I thought you're not supposed to clean em. So far I've only rinsed them one other time but, yeah, I pull everything out, clean the pump and basket and then take a toothbrush to the inner chamber walls while they're empty. One thing that is SUPER gunky though (and I forgot to mention above) is the sponge wedged between the 2nd and 3rd chamber. That thing is caked with green algae and usually takes 2-3 minutes under running water until the water is clear. 

[ReefGoat]

2 minutes ago, Goats n Monkeys said:

The rings do appear a lil gunky and I avoided rinsing them out until about 4 months ago because I thought you're not supposed to clean em. So far I've only rinsed them one other time but, yeah, I pull everything out, clean the pump and basket and then take a toothbrush to the inner chamber walls while they're empty. One thing that is SUPER gunky though (and I forgot to mention above) is the sponge wedged between the 2nd and 3rd chamber. That thing is caked with green algae and usually takes 2-3 minutes under running water until the water is clear. 

I have heard that the sponges and bio balls that come with the bio cubes are notorious for turning into nitrate machines. But this is pure hearsay. So take it with a grain of salt. Something to look in too I suppose. Good luck! For what its worth. I like your tank. Good job 

[Goats n Monkeys]

Just now, ReefGoat said:

I have heard that the sponges and bio balls that come with the bio cubes are notorious for turning into nitrate machines. But this is pure hearsay. So take it with a grain of salt. 

Hmmmm interesting. Yeah the bio balls are definitely 👎 and I gave them the ol' "right there Fred" after a couple weeks. You think the sponge may be an issue though? It's been in there all along (even when the nitrates were low) and I always figured it was doin a good job by catchin all that algae...

[ReefGoat]

I'm pretty sure most of the people on here use filter floss in place of sponges. Maybe one of the users of a similar aio will chime in. 

[banasophia]

Your tank is gorgeous! I have a Biocube 16 as well and run the coralife Biocube skimmer in mine, and use filter floss, chemipure elite, purigen, matrix media, dose nopox daily, have tons of snails Including a crew from Reef cleaners and some additional bumble bees Mexican turbos and spiny stars, and I do weekly 4 gallon water changes. I feed really heavily due to having a lot of nonphotosynthetic corals and a mandarin, so I have to take measures to control my nitrate and phosphate levels. I also occasionally use phosphate RX and also occasionally “rent” a sea hare from my LFS, especially to eat the algae that grows on my GSP on my back wall. 

[Clown79]

Sponges usually cause issues with nutrient levels. Was my issue with my first tank. Problem solved with ditching the sponge and going filter floss.

 

What exactly are your nitrate and phos levels.

[Goats n Monkeys]

13 hours ago, ReefGoat said:

I'm pretty sure most of the people on here use filter floss in place of sponges. Maybe one of the users of a similar aio will chime in. 

Swedish! Yeah, I'm definitely gonna toss the sponge and replace w/ filter floss. Makes sense too because it's gunking up so bad that I bet it's causing flow issues and preventing the other supplements from doing their job. 

[Goats n Monkeys]

8 hours ago, banasophia said:

Your tank is gorgeous! I have a Biocube 16 as well and run the coralife Biocube skimmer in mine, and use filter floss, chemipure elite, purigen, matrix media, dose nopox daily, have tons of snails Including a crew from Reef cleaners and some additional bumble bees Mexican turbos and spiny stars, and I do weekly 4 gallon water changes. I feed really heavily due to having a lot of nonphotosynthetic corals and a mandarin, so I have to take measures to control my nitrate and phosphate levels. I also occasionally use phosphate RX and also occasionally “rent” a sea hare from my LFS, especially to eat the algae that grows on my GSP on my back wall. 

Thank you! Yeah I may up the water changes to 4 gallons for the next month. I used to actually feed my candy corals the brine shrimp from a turkey baster until they started really taking off. Might need to get back to that. 

[Goats n Monkeys]

7 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Sponges usually cause issues with nutrient levels. Was my issue with my first tank. Problem solved with ditching the sponge and going filter floss.

 

What exactly are your nitrate and phos levels.

Yup, definitely gonna replace the sponge w/ FF. I would have never thought to do that cause, like I said, I was under the assumption it was doing a good job by trapping all that algae! Tests from a few weeks ago came back at 65 ppm for nitrates and 0.25 for phosphates. 

[Clown79]

26 minutes ago, Goats n Monkeys said:

Yup, definitely gonna replace the sponge w/ FF. I would have never thought to do that cause, like I said, I was under the assumption it was doing a good job by trapping all that algae! Tests from a few weeks ago came back at 65 ppm for nitrates and 0.25 for phosphates. 

Ya, sponges trap a lot of crap in it and no matter how well they are washed, there is still detritus left in them.

 

Floss is great because it traps particles but with changing it twice a week, it never becomes an issue

[Goats n Monkeys]

That's good to know! Makes perfect sense too as to why everything was testing fine for the first 8 months. Guess it needed time for detritus to build up.  

[mcarroll]

Hm....I'd still clean out those bio rings...in fact I'd remove them.  But neither that nor the nutrient levels are causing your algae problem.

 

That's long, mature hair algae.  It's apparent you have no CUC that can eat it.  Snails can only eat fresh, tiny new growth, and there are no parrotfish or tangs (etc) that'll get it.  So you have be the CUC for your tank right now!   There's a good chance that you also have to upgrade your CUC.

 

Do it this way:

 

(But don't worry about his po4 issue and the treatment he mentions....different problem.  You're interested how he clears hair algae from his tank and how he upgrades his cleanup crew!!)

[Goats n Monkeys]

Unfortunately, this nor any of the other suggestions have worked. I'm here 1 year and 1 day later and the algae/nitrates are worse than ever. I now remove fistfuls of algae out every other day, which says a lot considering it's only 16-gallons.

In addition to the solutions I've tried at the beginning of this thread, here are the new tricks I've implemented in the past year:

• Replacing filter floss as suggested during every water change
• Just like the video in the last post states, my algae is very strong-rooted, but unlike his suggestion, Phosphate Rx has done nothing to loosen it up nor reduce the phosphate levels one bit and I've dosed well over 10 separate times.
• Added PhosGuard from Seachem to my filter media.
• Added Metabolix Bio-Pellets from Kolar Labs.
• Dosed with Blue Vet Rx Fish Flux about 10 separate times. This would occasionally break up the algae but it would come back a day or two later.
• Traded about an hour of my daytime lights for nighttime lights as I heard that the blue lights are healthier.
• Switched the fish diet from frozen krill to New Life Spectrum Naturox as I was told this contributes less nitrate buildup. 
• Punched out the bottom portion of filter chamber #1. Since it's completely encased, there's no way to clean this area out and improve the water flow. Cleaned it out and the water flow is better.
• Started testing for magnesium but the levels are fine.
• Purchase about 5 new cleaner crabs a month. They die though and I've yet to see a single one eating algae.
• Switched up my water changing schedule from replacing 30% of it weekly to 15% bi-weekly.
• Last month I pulled every rock and coral out for a 5-hour deep cleaning sesh. Scrubbed every rock down and hand picked algae off corals like those environmentalists cleaning seagulls and sea otters after a corporate-sponsored oil spill. The waste water was very dirty and the tank looked great the next day. Everything came back a few days later.  

Not one single item above has made an iota of difference. Nothing. Many of the newly implemented suggestions above were given to me by a mobile reef doctor I had come by my house as a last resort. Now he is out of ideas.  

[pal]

Dang this has to be frustrating, I used to run an oxydator and think it helped with my algae problems, as well as making my water crystal clear. others don’t agree . Anyways might be worth a try and they are not that expensive. Sochting's Oxydator

[banasophia]

Bummer it has been such a struggle. I’d love to see pics. If it was me, I would switch from those media rings to matrix media in a media bag instead, because I had those rings in a tank in the past and didn’t think they were as effective… and I would get rid of that little black sponge if you haven’t already. 
 

If taking out the rings and putting in the new matrix media I would add a small bottle of BioSpira to seed it quickly so you don’t get an ammonia spike and you build up your biofilter. 
 

I would also do 4 gallon weekly water changes, consider adding a skimmer and dosing nopox (you have to have a skimmer if you’re dosing nopox), and adding more snails. Remember nopox has to be added daily.

[A.m.P]

Almost looks and sounds like some kind of odd wiry turf algae (which will frequently not care about dissolved N03/P04 and can trap detritus to turn itself into a N03 factory).
The nitrates are really strange to have as a persistent issue, did you buy your rock from another reefer, and how much frozen did you previously feed?

Counter-intuitive, last-resort suggestion; frag your corals, get rid of your rocks, get rid of your sand. Start fresh feeding 5-10 1mm pellets, per 3" fish, every other day (feed slowly and make sure they eat every piece, double up the weekends for a treat).
 

It really seems as if something is saturated in your system, sand or rock, might be best to start over (keep your corals). Maybe get some cycled rock from a local store or reefer.