Save my tank!

[reefwars]

Also check for aefw if you haven't yet may not be root cause but one of many

[jason604]

My phosphate an nitrate always shows 0 but I'm pretty sure it's there ur to all my long hair algae and tons of Ditris I hVe on my rocks n bottom of sump. Phosphate I use salifert and nitrate is seachem. My sea hair I got last week back split and died today. I had a fish die last week I'm not sure it if was natural cause or not cuz all my other fishes r rly healthy. My shrimps n crabs ate the dead fish n by the time I notice there was only the head spine and tail fin left. I'm goin to do another 40g water change tomorrow.

[jason604]

Originally Posted by reefwars

Also check for aefw if you haven't yet may not be root cause but one of many

What do they look like

[Slyguy00]

very very hard to see. tiny little flat worms on your acros. I think that is unlikely though.

[Skim]

Coral was colourful and started to turn brown, most of the time it mean's Phosphate and build up of Organics.

This is what I would do. Pull any GFO and GAC and go get some Seachem Purigen and couple of the Seachem " The Bag " put it your sump or better would be Canister or a AquaClear Hang on. This stuff removes Organics quickly and you should see things get better and your Phosphates should drop also.
The other thing is make sure your skimmer is working at 100% clean the neck and make sure there is no blockage of the Air supply.
Do not dose or add any 2 part solution if that's what you use for now as it also adds Trace Elements that could feed the Algae.
Good Luck!

Mike

[gregzz4]

What have you done/changed over the last 2 or 3 months ?

I know with my tank I've run into problems that caused some hair algae.
From there, my corals started to suffer as I didn't address my higher-than-normal PO4 and I not only got some browning corals, but I also ended up with a fully blown out GHA issue. It was everywhere and out of control

I lost a couple SPS during the battle. Some due to GHA, and some due to my over-zealous hydrogen peroxide dosing ... my whole tank went into shock after I decided to kill every last living spot of GHA I could see.
It worked for a couple weeks, and my corals are coming back, but I'd not do it again so aggressively

I ended up doing a lot of small carbon changes to try to remove whatever happened to my tank as I still have no idea what happened.
Near as I can tell I killed a bunch of bacteria ..
Regardless, if your corals are upset, carbon is your friend

My softies survived all this just fine, as they will mostly do

Hi PO4 can upset SPS, and so can fluctuations in salinity and Alk

As Brad stated, your Ca is a bit low, and IMHO your Alk could be a tad higher.
I like to try my best to hit 7-8 Alk, 410-420 Ca and 1350 Mag

Keeping your Alk just a tad higher (7.5) gives you the wiggle room if your corals start to use more. Keeping it @ 7 is OK, but if they use more than normal, it can dip too low before you know it

The best thing you can do is keep it stable for now and, as I'm doing, ride it out and see if things turn around

Good luck dude

[jason604]

So here's what changed. About 2-3 months ago my tank was beautiful no algae in sight and my sps were super vibrant n just pops. Till one day I saw some hair algae n just left it alone. Next thing u no it my tank was had a full blown long hair algae outbreak. It began to smother zoas n sps etc but the colours were still vibrant none he less. I bought more larger sps and had no room to place it so I have to put it at the end of my tank but I'm only running 1 16" led fixture on a 4' tank so I decided to raise my lights about 5-6" higher to make sure my new colonies had light shine on them. The very next day most of my sps all browned out right away due to the shock of light I'm sure. I lowered it a few days later back to the original height but my vibrant sps colours didn't rly come back and I was stuck with an ugly brown tank filled with long hair algae. So after seeking for advice here I tried getting a reactor n filled it with about 2" of rowaphos. Then few weeks later is when I had my semi tank sps crash. I'm thinking there's something in my rocks. I did purchase a bunch of base rock and bleach/ muriatic acid bath and put my tank water in it so it will cycle faster. I'm planning to swap all the rocks in my tank with my new rocks when it's done cycling. I'm not sure if using my old tank water is a good idea to cycle the new rocks or not but so far I only did it once and didn't change the water yet. I'm planning to drain the water and fill it with my tank water again tomorrow when I change the water or should I just make new clean saltwater for my new rocks?

[Slyguy00]

Sounds like you have several issues. First you need more light if you want sps. Secondly your phosphates were high you added rowa and pulled it out to fast and that is very hard on sps. And as far as algae goes I would think it was due to your high phosphates. If you wonna fix your algae problem there's only one effective way to do that. And that would be black out your tank. It amazes. Me people still go to all these great lengths to get rid of it when all you have to do is give your Tank 3 or 4 days of complete darkness. After that I bet money 95% of your algae is gone. I would also remove some rowa out of your reactor. That's just my opinion but that's what I would do. Not sure how much flow you have in your tank but increasing that would also prevent algae and detrius. Good luck

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by jason604

So here's what changed. About 2-3 months ago my tank was beautiful no algae in sight and my sps were super vibrant n just pops. Till one day I saw some hair algae n just left it alone. Next thing u no it my tank was had a full blown long hair algae outbreak. It began to smother zoas n sps etc but the colours were still vibrant none he less. I bought more larger sps and had no room to place it so I have to put it at the end of my tank but I'm only running 1 16" led fixture on a 4' tank so I decided to raise my lights about 5-6" higher to make sure my new colonies had light shine on them. The very next day most of my sps all browned out right away due to the shock of light I'm sure. I lowered it a few days later back to the original height but my vibrant sps colours didn't rly come back and I was stuck with an ugly brown tank filled with long hair algae. So after seeking for advice here I tried getting a reactor n filled it with about 2" of rowaphos. Then few weeks later is when I had my semi tank sps crash. I'm thinking there's something in my rocks. I did purchase a bunch of base rock and bleach/ muriatic acid bath and put my tank water in it so it will cycle faster. I'm planning to swap all the rocks in my tank with my new rocks when it's done cycling. I'm not sure if using my old tank water is a good idea to cycle the new rocks or not but so far I only did it once and didn't change the water yet. I'm planning to drain the water and fill it with my tank water again tomorrow when I change the water or should I just make new clean saltwater for my new rocks?

I don't think there's anything in your rocks. Nutrients have to be incredibly low to inhibit the growth of some kinds of "hair" algae, much lower than most people can or want to run their tanks at. It's why it's an invasive species in large parts of the world to which it has been introduced by humans.

In nature, it's not low nutrients that keep it in check (thought that can help), but a massive cohort of herbivores that suppress it enough to favour stony corals.

Hair algae, like most things in the ocean that need to compete for limited substrate, wage chemical war on their competition. They emit all sorts of nasty alellopathic chemicals that range from halting the growth of corals, to outright killing them.

If I were a betting man, I'd say you introduced spores of a particularly nasty kind of hair algae on a coral or frag, conditions were favourable for it, you don't have anything that eats it, and now it's killing your coral. Yes, you should keep nutrients within the range of the reef you're trying to keep - something that is hard to measure with rampant growth of a problem algae as it will mask your inputs while being a better competitor for nutrients than your gfo reactor - but you also need to kill that algae.

When weeds start growing in your garden, it doesn't necessarily mean there is something wrong with your soil. It means weed seeds have made it in to the garden. You wouldn't try to leach the soil of all nitrogen and phosphorous to get them out - you'd weed it.

My suggestion is to find some AlgaefixMarine, and nuke the heck out of that algae. Nutrients aside, I bet your surviving corals will see near instant improvement once the majority of that algae is dead. Even if you do have a nutrient 'problem', you're never going to be able to properly diagnose it, or put in a system that's better at competing for them with a lush growth of hair algae in the tank. It's always the tanks with the worst algae problems that measure '0' nitrate and phosphate, which, for the record means there's not a whole of anything for GFO to suck out of the water column.

[spit.fire]

can you post a fts of your tank in its current state?