It's just one thing after another eh? :( At what point do you decide to just do a total take down, cook the rocks and start over?

hey michika,

when i used to get alot of cyano issues i would just dose carbon sources ( sugar, vinegar, vodka ) they all work after a day or two i usually see the cyano at close to none. and if continued to dose after that the GHA would start to turn white but that takes more time than the GHA, before taking the tank down i would give this a try maybe it'll be worth a shot

Thanks everyone for the comments.

I'm starting to wonder if what I have is not GHA, and not bryopsis. I've tried my best to ID it via algaebase.org, but now I'm questioning my earlier ID.

At least I have some more options now! I've read a bit on vodka dosing, but not enough to feel comfortable doing it myself. I keep hearing dosing instructions along the lines of one for the tank, and two for me :D. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good thread on carbon dosing?

I have two hang ups on dosing products right now, and I'm finding it hard to get over them. 1) Dosing daily, its a bit of a pain, and 2) the monthly cost. Snappy said that he was looking at automating his dosing (I think), has anyone else done this? Anyone want to PM me or tell me what their approximate monthly cost is for using the polyp lab products?

We are experiencing rotating power/heat/phone outages today, I hear a substation in Douglasdale went down this morning. I'm trying to keep my tank temp up with heat packs in ziplock bags, and keeping the flow going with a power supply.

Its on the horizon....as in I'm starting my old cube back up in a week or so to try for a 28g tear down and rebuild if I don't have any success at the end of the month or early March. That is assuming I don't go a dosing route.

Catherine I really think its in your rocks some must hav cause it to swing thewrong way, and ended up creating a bloom. why not take the rocks out and cook them or see if you can trade the rocks with a LFS , may be that will work. i fell realy bad for the way that your tank is going thur.. then have the corals in a tub with a light, run a basic system and cook the rocks

Would you suggest exchanging all the rocks, or just the ones that have the GHA on them? There are really only 3 rocks that grow the GHA. The others don't get any growth.

Originally I wanted to take the dud rocks and put them into a dark sump, but now I'm mostly decided on cooking them in my storage closet for a couple of months.

well take them out and have a tub connected to the sump and leave the rocks in total darkness.. that is a great idea. may be its your lights causign a bloom. what are you running for lights? Were the lights the same ones from the other tank? did this happen from the swap?

Going with Polyplaps is likely not going to have a profound effect on your tank. It is primarily a nitrate reducer. Since your tank is at 1ppm we pretty much can rule out nitrate as a cause of trouble here.

I don't think we can rule out PO4 though. I'm not sure what to think of the 0.04 reading. I get this kind of reading too on my tanks but the lack of a reference solution gives me this whole "how can I verify this number is correct" thing going on. I've been on the fence about ordering a Merck/D-D test kit but as time goes on and my PO4 numbers all over the map, I'm starting to think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and just order it.

It might not be the PO4 though either. Well, in so much that it's not the PO4 in the water column. There may be PO4 trapped in the rocks though and it's slowly leeching out, fueling the GHA.

The lack of coraline on the one rock to the front left there is something that catches my notice everytime I see a photo of your tank. I realize it has some, but ... I dunno, the rock looks white to me. When I set up my 20g back in December, I pulled rock out of my rubbermaid curing tub. It's been sitting there for months and was devoid of any coraline, was more or less pure white. I did get some minor hair algae growth after a few weeks but after about a month it was mostly pinks and purples due to coraline coverage, and where the coraline takes hold, the GHA doesn't. So it's odd to me that this one rock isn't more covered in reds and pinks and so on.

I think, were this my tank, I'd be looking at swapping out most, if not all of the rock. The existing rock should be thrown into a bucket for cooking (just let it sit in some SW with a heater and change out 100% of the water from time to time). And new rock put into the tank. Maybe not all at once though.

Any idea how many lbs of rock are in there now? You might want to consider upping the amount that's in there too while you're at it (couldn't hurt - except for maybe the cost of course!)

Hard to say if those Ca/Alk #'s tell us the reason for slow growth. They are both lower than what you might want to shoot for, but not hugely so. :neutral: Try upping the Ca to around 390-400 and the Alk to around 7-8 dKH and see if you notice a difference.

you could always take out the few bad rocks and let them dry out and die, clean em off and re-seed them later?

is that a possibility anyone? or a stupid idea? lol

Thanks Tony!

I'm thinking mostly of doing zeo/polyp labs as a last resort before complete tear down. As well my problems aside I've seen some really nice sps systems using these products, and it does add to the draw.

I'm measuring PO4 with a Hanna Phosmeter, but I agree with you about verifying everything. Its nice to have the meter, but its frustrating not to know if what you're getting for a result is correct.

The tank has what I estimate to be 60 to 65lbs, with 25lbs being in the sump. Thinking back this tank has never produced any coraline algae. That rock that you are referring to is new to the tank from December.

As for the Ca & dkH, I didn't see any better growth (in the sps and coraline) then I was getting measurements of 500ppm and 10dKH. I think I need a more happy medium like what I was getting two weeks ago. The dKH is up to 6 (cusp of 7) now that I topped off for the day. I'm looking at changing how I top off, and how my Ca reactor is working within the system.

I guess my next steps are to get out some of the "bad" rocks and replace them with newer ones. I am also going to tweak my reactors, I think I've turned them down too much trying to fix the 500/10 problem. Does that sound right to you?