I'm loosing the war with GHA, help?!

[kadaytar]

1- You said %90 of your live rock is 6 months old.Considering that you bought it from LFS - it is slower but die off inside newly shipped LR may last 3 to 6 months. OK water parameters don't show that cycle is totaly over. Living organisms have organic phosphate. Sand bed and anaerobic places inside LR are good harbours for phosphates but at he end it is thrown out. Thats why it is not advised to add SPS before 6 months.

2- These are the fishes that i saw in your pictures;
4 chromis, 1 sixline wrasse, 1 damsel, 1 mandarine,1 orange shoulder tang,
1 Kole Tang-probably- , 1 ocellaris clown. Did you keep them all at the same time in a 30 gallon? Don't get me wrong i am not trying to be a tang police this is not a proper tank size for tang issue. But those guys are swimmers. Even if they are small they consume alot of oxygen , add alot of CO2 into the water, eat alot and poop alot.

3- Protein Skimmers like Deltec, ER, Schuran etc. can eliminate the particulate matter as well as organic matter.Coralife skimmers may be good for their price but they can only eliminate the organic matter. How do you get rid of the particules in the water that create nitrates and phosphates?

4- Let me bash your sand as well Your sand does not look like aragonite. It is gray and coarser than sea floor grade. I don't know what type of sand it is but some types of sand leach slicates in to water and cause excessive algae growth. Also coarser sand is a detritus trap. Thats why crashed coral is called as detritus trap.

5- Whatever i can see from the picture your rocks are piled in the centre. You have two spray bars on the sides and a Hydor coralia close to the surface. I believe you have a good water flow around the rock work and corals. How do you get rid of the crap from the rocks accumulating at the bottom. i kept a bare bottom 65 gal tank with 700 gal/hr return pump and a 2500 gal/hr closed loop pump. It was hell of a lot of flow for a 65 gal. Despite that the strong flow i had to syphon out lots of crap every week. It is hard to figure it out with a sand bed but too much crap comes out of LR, for me i is worse than fish excrete or excess food.Hobyists having BB tanks must have observed the samething. If you don't have any kind of mechanical filteration where did all that crap go?

My guess; if you kept all that fish at the same time you added too many fish in a 30 gal before the rocks fully cured and the tank matured. You tried to handle that bioload with a CL skimmer.It looks like you don't have anything to elimiate particules. If you don't have any flow pushing the detritus under the rock work and your sand is as coarse as it seems in the pictures probably all that crap was trapped by the sand. Nitrate and phosphate levels look allright but i would think about if this is because of the efficient filteration or consumption of GHA.

[michika]

Kadaytar,

None of my rock is from any LFS, I never said that...

There only used to be 3 fish in the system up until about 2 weeks ago when my 90g crashed, there are an excess of fish in the system now because I am waiting for a home for them. The algae problem was around long before the extra fish.

The three original fish, orange shoulder, kole, and sixline, were added to the tank to prepare them for my upgrade. The orange shoulder at the time was less then 0.5", same as the kole. They aren't being housed long term in the nano, it was only to get them used to the flow.

The coralife skimmer came with the system, its doing well for me now. I have been looking for an alternatie, but space is at a premium at the moment. I run filtersocks, and do 2 water changes of 5g per week.

My sand is black tidal sand by Seachem. I found research that contradicted what others have posted. I also keep my sand well turned over, I have a lipstick conch, bumblebee snails, and a few other miscelanious snails which keep the sand bed clean and turned over regularly.

My rocks are actually piled up in a maze of caves with loc-line running within the caves between for flow. There is about a 2" gap between the back wall and the rock to allow for better water movement.

I doubt the algae problem comes from the fish, while they may now contribute to it, they weren't there when it started. The rocks and all the items in the tank are fully cured. Remember everything came from my 230g or previous tanks, corals and clams included. Why would I want flow to push detritus under the rockwork? I don't want it to be built up to cause problems.

[michika]

andrewsk,

I've looked at both WWM, and read what Anthony Calfo wrote before. They are just two opinions. I've read both descenting, and confirming opinions. I said I will consider the sandbed as a possible source, but I'm not yet prepared to remove it without first understanding why I should.

As to answer the natural light question. For the last month there has been 0 natural light getting to the tank. I now keep my blinds closed all day, every day.


Marie,

Thank you for the photos!

[marie]

Catherine, don't give up the battle as I said earlier it takes a lot of patience and perseverance. i still insist once it takes hold it needs very little in the way of nutrients to survive.
When I had the hair algae and it was really bad, you couldn't tell that I had any rocks they were so covered. (For some reason my camera always goes missing when my tank looks really bad ) I finally fought the battle over the long term by letting the algae grow really long (it is easier to manually remove when its long) siphon it all out and then place all the crabs, snails and urchins directly onto the short stubs that is left.

It took a long time for me but eventually I won... only to be taken over by dictyota but thats another story

[michika]

Originally Posted by marie

Catherine, don't give up the battle as I said earlier it takes a lot of patience and perseverance. i still insist once it takes hold it needs very little in the way of nutrients to survive.
When I had the hair algae and it was really bad, you couldn't tell that I had any rocks they were so covered. (For some reason my camera always goes missing when my tank looks really bad ) I finally fought the battle over the long term by letting the algae grow really long (it is easier to manually remove when its long) siphon it all out and then place all the crabs, snails and urchins directly onto the short stubs that is left.

It took a long time for me but eventually I won... only to be taken over by dictyota but thats another story

I think I've come to exactly that point. I've eliminted all of the sources that I think triggered the outbreak, old MH bulb, tap water, and possibly too much natural light. While I'm still considering all the other suggestions, the rock, the sand, etc. I kind of just want to leave it and see what happens. Mostly because I now if it becomes a constant drain on me, then I won't want to work with it. This is definitely one of those cases where less is more. Less work, means the more patience I have for the hobby.

I'll give it until September/October, see what happens, and then maybe revisit the idea of removing the sandbed, and swapping out rocks. I'll try the magnesium method, see how that treats me, then just kind of sit back and wait.

I really enjoyed the 10-15 minutes per week of maintence I used to enjoy.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Best of luck, Catherine! I hope it disappears for ya

[Chin_Lee]

Catharine i read this awhile ago from several reefers and I never tried it until last month and I can confirm that this undisputedly worked for me.
I had 5 patches of GHA that would not go away. My rabbitfish stopped eating it as soon as it learned that nori tasted much better. So I finally tried this method which is applying hot boiling water directly onto the GHA. Initiallly I tried doing it with a turkey baster several times before and didn't work well because the hot gases in the baster pushed out the hot water as soon as i sucked it up and lifted it out of the hot water container.
I finally got one of the flexible rubbermaid containers that looks like this:


I removed the white straw tab on the cap and you will see a hole on the cap that lets the liquid out into the white straw tab. This hole will fit a 1/4" flexible hose very snugly. Insert a hose that is long enough to manuever under and around rocks.
Turn off all tank water circulation devices.
Pour hot boiling scalding hot water into the bottle, cap it up,
Turn the bottle upside down into your tank, and squirt the hot water all over a good sized patch of GHA.
Squirt slowly so the hot water "lingers" on the GHA.

Depending on your tank size, I would consider target one rock at a time. Continue doing this until you've targeted all your rocks and then start again from the beginning. You will start seeting GHA shedding off the next day so make sure you clean the powerhead intakes or overflow intakes.
Keep your skimmer skimming WET! this will ensure the dying GHA doesn't fuel more nutrients into your tank.
If you have corals nearby, move them before doing this if you are concerned. My acros didn't seem to care or mind when I did it when them nearby.
Some people will argue that this will kill your liverock's bacteria. I will argue that it will kill your GHA and some bacteria on the surface under the GHA but your liverock's inside bacteria will be fine.
Similarly, this product could work too but harder to apply under rocks without the hose attachment.

Seriously, try this method first. If you are apprehensive, do it to one or two rocks first. My GHA patches disappeared after a week and I am currently GHA free.

[andresont]

As i am too, a happy BB tank owner i second Kadaytar's comments re:sand, skimmer and flow.

I would get rid of the CrapTrap i.e. sand for sure. even though you do have sand sifters, detritus is still there and lots of it. It will not go away unless syphoned out.
I was not in favor of BB tank myself before, but OMG how much crap is trapped in that sand ! I only have 1 tiny Tang, one clown and few tiny gobyes in my 60gal, but still a LOT of detritus needs to be syphoned every week. And that is with enormous ammount of flow and decent skimmer.

JM2CW

[bv_reefer]

-that hot water in water bottle technique sounds reasonable and i would try it but the patches of algae are 2'' above my condy anemone, so i'm a little apprehensive @ the moment-

[fishface]

i second the boiling water as well. i got rid of a bryopsis problem with that method.