Algae outbreak

How many of you have had a bad algae outbreak (like brown or red algae).. 1 being no outbreak at all and 4 being a very bad outbreak. Use your own judgement on what you consider to be bad or very bad. Only answer if your aquarium is over a year old.

 

yes, i kept getting moderate outbreaks before i learnt about phosphates and old houses. now i use phosphate sponge and prepare the water for top up a little longer then i used too
( 24hrs now 48hrs)

 

My old 90 was overrun with bryopsis that came in on live rock. The algae, along with the anthellia and anemone majano, caused me to break that tank down. It was bad.

 

I had some problems with cyano but the worst was hair algae... I still have 1 or 2 very small spots that no one will eat??? But as soon as summer is comming back i know its going to start to grow again. It does that every sumer...

Marc.

 

I remember the red slime algae attack when my tank was about 4 months old. That almost had me beaten down. I would scrub the rocks every other day and then blast everything with power heads. Then I had an outbreak of green hair algae, it wasn't too bad and finally went away. Now I have this short tufty red stuff which has slowly been growing until I had it on about 30 percent of my rocks. Damn, enough is enough. I rearranged my tank last weekend and did some scrubbing and fresh water dips. The other rocks I turned upside down. We'll see how this works ;D
I am going to try and make this a SPS tank and nutrient poor.
I guess time will tell, So what I am really trying to say is don't give up yet.

Jim

 

I haven't had algae problems with the exception of my first tank. Quite often when setting up a new tank, I nuke any LR I buy. Yeah, I know I'm evil but all I care about is living space for bacteria. Featherdusters, vermetid snails, chitons and the like are cool but not at the expense of algae issues.

Then I'll seed all of that brand new LR with a couple of pieces of LR from an existing tank. You would be surprised at how long an algal spore can remain dormant just waiting for the right conditions to grow. That's why I'm so extreme.

Dead Live Rock is not the same as Base Rock. Most Base Rock is quite heavy and not porous at all. A lot of it was mined from land quarries where a reef stood millions of years ago and then chunked into the ocean for a year or two to obtain all of the "life". On the other hand, Dead Live Rock has great shapes and is quite porous. It usually has less in the way of adsorbed phosphates as well.

 

Good point on porous rocks.

On algae, my last outbreak was with valonia.

That is seriously weird stuff!

 

Almost everyone has or will have this pesky stuff at some time or another!

 

After like 6 months of work I got the tank to look this good. It looked worst that tank was a 4

Here it is was right before I took it down
IMG_0047.jpg - Image - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

 

or how about this