Weird stuff growing?

Hey all,

I have a biocube 8 gallon, and trying to restore, what seems to me, to be lost equilibrium. I have all my parameters within reason, zero for nitrates, nitrites, pH 8.3, calcium 400, and good hardness.

When i did my last change, i saw this weird stuff formed really quick on my rocks. Any advice?

 

Nasty!

 

Looks like hair algae. What kind of test kits do you use? Test strips? I would take out all the rocks and scrub clean them.

 

It was test strips. how would you recommend that I clean them? just a normal rinsing off the algae, or some special technique?

 

This is more of a drastic situation so you need to take drastic measures. Siphon 40-50% of the water out into a large bucket. Take out the rock affected and use a new stiff tooth brush and scrub the rock in the siphoned aquarium water. Take your time and scrub thoroughly and inspect the rock as you go. Rinse 2-3 times when you are done scrubbing by dunking real fast then wrap in newspaper and set aside. Repeat on all rock affected. Add in newly mixed salt water back into the tank and add the rock back in.

You more than likely need new lights.

 

Test strips as I thought. They are not very reliable. The fact that you have hair algae blooming in 8 gallon without detecting nitrate is highly unusual unless hair algae is using all the nitrate. Do you think your live rocks are still alive? I mean do you still have critters like small starfishs, small snails, fatherdusters, worms? If so, just scrape the algae off using bathroom brush. You can also kill your rocks (become base rocks) and restart your tank with your base rocks and a few pieces of pest-free algae-free live rocks.

 

phosphates? are you using RO/DI water?

 

Dude, that is a mess...IMO it's go time. This is what I would do.

I see some LPS skeletons in there as well as dying algae. Like UncleJed said, take out those rocks and scrub the hell out of them. You might want to ditch your sand and just start over with fresh sand and your cleaned rocks.

From the looks of it, you'll have phosphate leach out of your rocks , so run a media reactor with Seagel "carbon and phosguard in one" when you start back up.

P.S. I looked at that picture again, toss everything and start over.......

 

pretty bad, i might toss it all too. I had a gha problem in my 55, i just turned it off for 7 months lol and then started over, but my rock is great! no problems and good coraline coverage in under a month

 

thats pretty bad. you might want to pretty much start over.. fresh start and post pics!