Ugly Tank Contest!

it was so bad they removed it for obscenity.

 

One of the reasons that a new tank is going up is:





Not the best pics, the algae was difficult to photograph as it is very translucent. Nothing in the clean up crew would touch the stuff.... so the 75g has come down, all rock and equipment nuked, and a 120 g is coming up in it's place...

Building a new tank is one way to solve the problem, but it does nothing for the behaviors that allowed the problem to start in the first place....hope to figure out what those were because I don't want that problem again....!!!!

 

This is our GHA picture story

Before we had a problem


The blow up!!


And hear is what it looks like right now...


Man I wish I would have put dates on these pics... the first one was in June the second one was at the end of July sometime and the third one was yesterday. The one taken yesterday it has dust on everything because we just finished changing out the cc for sand.. This should help with the GHA... enjoy!!

 

That is byropsis (in the picture mission6 quoted). Cleaners won't eat it, they might pick at it but that is about it. Magnesium overload kills it, the other way is by blocking its light and nutrient competition.

gruubsj - I don't think it was necessarily a husbandry problem, you just got some nasty pest in there. QT would have saved you that mess, but not many people QT rocks. Now that they are nuked, when you try again I don't think you will have the same problem.

That is some big hair algae. Reminds me of the eighties. You are getting it under control though. Cleaners will be more effective in that tank if you trim back the hair a bit, they don't like it as much when it is longer.

 

LOL... I know it reminded me of my dads old salt water tank when I was growing up... Oh yes, we are doing everything we can.. The blow up was before we new that it was better to trim down the stuff... We got a better skimmer as well as a phosphoban reactor.. We upped the water changes and shortend the day light.. It has helped a lot.. We are hoping to get a better clean up crew soon!! And we have gotten ride of the cc... ;D

 

We had managed 14 months before that breakout started and at 20 months...threw in the towel...(that's also when the children bought the used 120g and gave it to us)....

We did buy/trade with 3 of the LFS on a regular basis. I suspect that we'll be a bit more picky about what we bring home....

I had to constantly monitor calcium & magnesium, but nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, and phosphate had stayed at or below the lowest color change for the Seachem test kits that I used...

 

That is one thing that can be said for nuisance algae, it keeps the tank's nutrient levels down for sure. That is why using macro algae to help filtration is so effective. I bet your levels would have gone way up if all the stuff magically disappeared.

 

WOW thats some growth...their surfer girl I hope that you get a handle on it