Weird stuff growing?

Dom i wold def have to go with most of these post were it is only 8 Gal.I would def get a new bag of sand and go to your LFS with a couple of 5 gallon buckets and get 10 gallons of RO/DI WATER or go to walmart and get the green cap gallon water the green cap is RO,UV sterilized,Carbon filtered,It is the same thing as RO water from your LFS it might be a little better.Def scrub those rocks good in your old tank water when your done scrubbing if you dont feel good about it i def would buy new rocks cause it might happen again i would def thinking about running some carbon and when doing water changes use the RO water Hope this helps and good luck...Rocky

 

I would enter that tank on a "ugliest/most algae infested tanks" contest. Then like others said scrub(possibly even nuke) the rocks replace the sand.

 

thanks so much for the replies! I just got home, so I will drain it to 50%, and scrub those rocks as suggested. I only have a clownfish in there, and it seems to be gasping for air, and that probably even more confirms the unreliability of the test strips - thanks to reefwizard. and i do not have RO, just normal tap water which I dose with some prime. is that ok? i'll repost when it looks more...uh...healthy...

 

interesting! thanks!

 

id would stop using tapwater, depending where you are there may be all sorts of really horrible stuff in there. RO water should be as important as salt in a reef tank in my opinion lol

 

Clearly what you are doing isn't working, get ro/di water and start over, you've got a nutrient swamp in there.

 

ok, so i took out everything...scrubbed the hell outta the rocks...and there's still some 'green spots' (algae) that fill in the tiny pores in the rock. I took out the sand and rinsed it out several times in new salt water...i will be getting RO water today from walmart as suggested, if the snow storm isn't too bad lol. so i'm gonna assume im cycling over from scratch...any tips on cycling over?

thanks for all the replies!!

 

Wow, looks alot better!! Good luck with starting over.

 

Folks, let's remember that one can give another person recommendations in a mean manner or one can give that same advice nicely. We at 3Reef prefer the "nice manner". thanks

 

looks like a great restart so far! As far as cycling advice, the 3reef moto is so relevant - Go Slow and Let it Grow! buy a better test kit (no strips) and monitor your parameters to know when the cycle has finished. good luck and keep us posted