Overgroth of alge

get something to remove nitrates and phosphates and a cleaner crew

 

sounds like this maybe just a cycle of algae how long have you had this prob. your teats mybe showing 0 for you phosphates and nitrates because the algae is eating them up. try the water change and manually removing as much algae as you can. you may want to try a phosphate sponge. and if you are any good a d-i-y try making a coil denitrater. another issue maybe how often you feed your fish as alot of commercial foods are loded with phosphates and nitrates. I only feed my fish every 3-4 days and i turn off all my pumps this way i can see if the are eating all the food or if i need to remove what they dont eat . goodluck.

 

I have turbo snails in there I think I need to get more, but I had added 40 soon after the tank cycled. I have been batteling alge for a couple months. I do think for a while Not that I was over feeding but that the food was getting pushed into the filter from circulation. I did put phosphate sponges into the filter right befor the pump. I have seen that by not having my pumps on and watching that all the food is eaten I do see a difference. as for the kh think I tried testing it three different times with the same results each time now my lfs tells me they are low som im going to go meet him today and taking my kits and comparing the results with my tests with his and seeing if there is something wrong here.

 

Hello, well I read through all 3 pages and will tell you this; more clean up is o.k. but "reeflover" hit the nail on the head (as they say). If you have hair algae you have phosphates and possibly nitrates. The best investment I made (coaxed by a LFS friend) was to buy a phosphate reactor. They are all good, I got the Poly reactor, multi media. I had a terrible hair problem (a lot worse than what you are showing) and within 2 weeks of running the reactor the hair was gone and hasn't come back. If you decide to get one you must use media with ferric hydroxide. I use Pura Phoslock. If you use flake food (notorius for phosphate) stop for now all together. Cheer up! It will get better! I promise.

 

hey i also have had a friend with the same issue.. since its such a big tank you need to make sure you have enough water flow and not have any dead spots what so ever and do water changes and add a gazillion snails too..

 

Guys thank you for all this help! I Went to the lfs today like I mentioned earier and the nitrates are at .10 And the phosphates are barely reading on the test kit that he ahs my kits were not as sensitive and read 0?????? So I presume that I would love to hear what kits are better the api and red sea. the one thing we found and I actually mad three trips there today to figure this out. We found that my hydrometer (the floating kind) was off not by a little but by a mile my salinity was through the roof and it read 1.021 and it was well over 1.032 we concluded that we are supprised my fish were not dying and that is possibly the explination on why the tank chemically is acting up. long story short I did a 45 galloin wc and added in some fresh water as well (all Ro water) I mixed the salt 2 days ago and the fresh water was from po today so I hope this might help straighten it out. Now I brought the hydrometer to the lps and ve verified how off it was and tested 3 of them and founf 2 were the same and mine was way off. So I bought a new one and am back on the road to my other issue. I also bought a phosphate sponge and now im intrested in this phosphate reactor. Is tehre one that you would recomend? I have so much invested into this And dont mind I just want to get this straight. Thaks guys and girls for the support and helping with this....

 

Hi, after my second hydrometer mishap (same as you only .030 sg) I broke down and spent $40.00 on a refractometer. One of the best investments I have made. My trusted LFS friend put it this way; "you spend $40, $50 or more on fish or Coral and they can die". I got it.

 

Now I have it back around normal but I am assuming that the salinity was what was making it tough to balance my parameters?

 

what is your phosphate like? Using RO doesn't guarantee no phosphate. Their is phosphae in the food you feed your fish, and likely some in the rocks you put in.

 

the problem with turbos is they can only clean the big areas. Nuisance algae grows from the stuff accumulating in the nooks and crannies in your rock. Got to clean those out to destroy its food.

On another note, if your readings are like that - they are that low after the algae has used them to grow.