Never give up!

About a year ago my 100 gal tank was over ran by green hair algae. I tried everything with no results. I felt I had no options but to quit. I rid my system of what little livestock was left and placed my 110 pounds of live rock in a smaller 55 gallon tank in hopes of selling it one day. I literally did almost nothing at this point but refill water when the pump was humming. The tank looked disgusting for months with green hair algae all over the place. But then, probably from lack of light, the algae was beginning to diminish! Not only that, but when I took a closer look, there was still a ton of life- from Copepods to various worms, snails, starfish, and fan worms. I decided to set up my sump again, with an algae scrubber, and began to see further progress. I kept light to a minimum for months and invested in a nice canister filter to further filtration from the sump. I now have a beautiful tank with absolutely no hair algae! Even bubble algae that was present on some of the rock detached and I was able to net it out. I introduced some fish about a week ago and they seem to be doing beautifully! It feels amazing to be be fully engulfed in the hobby again... And to think- I almost gave up!

 

Congrats! It's great to hear that everything worked out for you! I know how it feels. My tank was covered in GHA and everything else imaginable. Moved my livestock to buckets and emptied my whole tank. I filled it back up last week and it looks so much better now

Let's see some pics! ;D

 

Just consider it a looong cycle!

 

Glad your still in the game

 

Thank you all! Great to be back! Now I almost wonder if my tank is to clean? Is there anyway to measure if a tank is "too clean"? I know we can measure if parameters are bad....but what about too good? I have a UV sterilizer hosed from my return pump that leads up to the display tank. I will post a picture later today.

 

What do you mean by "too clean"?

 

Glad you're still at it!
Be careful, you mentioned a cannister filter.
You could end up with a nitrate factory and start having Algae, Cyano, etc. all over again.

Too clean as in no suspended, micro nutrients for your coral? maybe

 

Here are a few quick cell phone pics... sorry not the best quality.





Like I said... I thought I was done with the hobby. I just had the rock in this tank in hopes of selling it one day. As a result, but easily fixable-

the back of the tank has not been blacked out and it is currently in front of a window which I definitely do not want. Luckily the weather is cooler now in Las Vegas and my windows are double paned which signifigantly reduces temperature fluctuations.

As far as the canister filter, I must admit- I think it may have been the largest factor in the success of the algae being removed. There was slow die off of algae with just the UV sterilizer, homemade algae scrubber, and sump. But the rapid and final die off came about a month after the addition of the canister filter. I am soon going to add a 10gal fuge that will gravity feed into the sump as I am no longer seeing copepods. That is why I ask if the tank is now too clean. My pods went from what seemed a massive population to very few. However, I do see many snails at night and tons of fan worms all day!

The green stuff you do so on the rock is Halameda- not a single peice of hair or bubble algae seems to be present anymore.