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?

Its a possible idea, however I have no where to let them dryout without stinking up my place. Unless you have a super non-stinky way of drying them out!

boil em up in some water, that would kill everything lol

..or just put in freshwater, then scrub everything off? then just let em dry.

or maybe i'm way out to lunch

Those are some good ideas, maybe I go the freshwater route. Just a thought, but what would happen to the suspected phosphate in the rocks. Would it not just come out at a later time when the rocks are back in a system, or would it leech out of the rocks in the freshwater?

Yeah, I have this whole idea that it's offensive to buy the Merck/D-D test kit (it's not cheap) after spending the big money on the meter to begin with, but the lack of consistency in my results is something that really troubles/puzzles me. Have you tried taking 3 tests in a row with yours? When I do this I get three different numbers. I've finally figured out that at least one of my cuvets is suspect - if I zero out the meter, then immediately take a reading - I get an "underrange" error. (Consistently.. I tried it about 20 times.) I would expect it to be zero, or at the very least, "not always" underrange. With the other cuvet I can zero it, and get a zero reading. I wonder if the sensor or the LED emitter might have dust on it too but it would be impossible to clean those I think so I kind of hope that's not the case.

Yikes, 500ppm seems for sure too high, I would have backed off the reactors as well! Might need to be upped just ever-so-slightly now just to find the happy medium..

Wow, 65lbs of rock, that's a lot more than I thought there was in there. :neutral:

Speaking of boiling water, have you tried the boiling water trick of GHA removal? I did this in a few spots in my cube tank and it worked like a charm. If only I could do that next to my clams since the clams are now the biggest areas of GHA (their shells). But yeah, hoo yeah, did the boiling water work great in the spots where I did dare to try it :)

honestly I have no idea, maybe keep in freshwater and test for phosphates? or use a phosphate filter? or go the drastic route and boil the rock, that should get anything out, maybe?

it won't be live rock anymore after these treatments.

maybe take out the suspect rock, and see if tank improves, or do tests to see if phosphates go down/?

if you put out some money for even another 50lbs of rock, and/or get a bigger system for more dilution, I bet it would have a major impact

I added another 100lbs of rock to my system about 7 months ago, and i've done about 3-4 water changes since then, and I've never seen any algae

After we had a conversation last time about the meters I did go home and did 3 tests in a row with each culvet. I've gotten consistent results every time. Did you want me to bring my meter to your place and you can see if its the meters?

When I set everything back up I dialed in everything like I still had a stocked tank. It wasn't until January when I realized my error and I was slowly backing it down. I guess I backed it down too quick, or just a bit to far. Maybe by next week it will be back where it should be. When I got 500 the first time, I tested it a second time with another test kit, and at one point I had 580ppm.

I'm just waiting on some water right now, but tonight I'm going to take out a rock, maybe two and start the cooking process. I'm also going to change the aquascape, I need change to keep me thinking that the tank will pull through.

Any thoughts on my lack of coraline growth, both on that rock in the front left of the tank and on the glass?

I'm not sure where I would put more rock, but its definitely something to consider. Where did you add the 100lbs, your display or elsewhere? In your system, how much rock do you have?

If you had some time at some point I would like to take you up on that offer :)

Not sure about the coraline. Maybe it's just being outcompeted? :neutral:

in my display, lol I have i would say about 250lbs total, but I have a 150g system

you could add rock to a sump/refugium.

You have PM about the meter.

I'll go with the rock method for now, see what happens, and I guess go from there. Photos tonight of the before/after.

As for adding more rock to my sump, its too full already. I'm going to see if I can't rearrange it to fit some more in.

ya if you have room it wouldn't hurt to add more biological filtration.

The deed is done!
Negative things;
- lights went out before I could do the water change
- lights out before I could clean the debris from the bottom

Positive things:
- I changed the overflow from two strainers to a strainer and an emergency overflow, I would say it cut the water noise by about 75%
- New aquascape
- more rock in the sump
- cleaned out more dead skeletons
- hand picked off the GHA
- confirmed that there is truly no more cyano! Hurray
- I changed the position of most everything in the tank, clams etc to hopefully fit better with my lighting set up.
- There are photos, although they are for tomorrow, when the water change is done.
- I removed one large rock plus the ugly rock from the left side.
- I added more rock to the sump/refugium, its now so full it looks painful
- I also have more extra ugly dry rock to add to the system in the future

So far I think the change is a success visually, and I hope that helps with everything else.

cath pm me a picture im curious, i thought about something... do you clean your filter socks and if so what are you cleaning them with

Okay some photos;

FTS of after the reconstruction.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...DSC_0050-2.jpg

First zoas to open
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/DSC_0051.jpg

Longest surviving non-fish thing I have.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/DSC_0052.jpg

New crocea clam from a couple of weeks ago.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/DSC_0058.jpg

Everything is a bit blue, I swapped out my MH bulb a couple of weeks ago.

just a thought about the GHA, how old are all your bulbs?

Bulbs are between two and three weeks old.

I clean my filter socks every second day and I do it with hot water and a double rinse in the washer. Sometimes I have to wash them twice.

ok good :)

maybe something leeches outta the washer?

hey sorry for the late reply on the carbon dosing, as a rule of thumb.. i dose 0.5mls for a 10g but i started low and slowly moved up. i also made sure that i dose multiple types of carbon sources so i do not get a mono bacteria culture. i dose this every other day instead of every day like most people that use vodka and im having some what of a success with GHA. a good thing about dosing so little is i have yet to get cloudy water, nor the white film that develop on the rocks and etc..

if your still considering dosing carbon to a certain point ive sent u a PM with my MSN contact, if you use that just add me

I don't know, I've had the GHA longer then the filter socks, but its something to consider. I do rinse the washer before putting the socks in. Any other ideas on washing them? I've tried it by hand, but they don't come as clean.

was thinking about it causing sps to die...

Good point. Would you think just hand washing, even though it doesn't get them as clean, is a better choice, or are you thinking stopping using filter socks all together.

Lets assume for a second that something got onto the filter socks and into the tank killing the SPS. Any thoughts on where else I would see an impact?

Catherine I put mine in the dish washer and with out soap, wells great...

not really sure, just looking at all possible ways a pollutant could have got in the system. maybe detergent containing phosphates was used in the washer, but u had the GHA b4 the socks so i dont know.

I also noticed that the frags which RTNed were all from the same source.

maybe a bad source?
anything improving? more pics? :)

Another RTN, from a different source, a m. digitata. I've had this one quite some time and it was just coloring up quite nicely.

I will try for some photos tomorrow, its pay day, and thus shopping day. I'm going to hunt around for some new rock. Any particular photo requests?