Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug
As many have said, thats all that worked for me. Good ole toothbrush and water changes.
If I fed my fish every third day, they would stage a revolt
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OMG if I fed my fish every third day they'd all have bite marks on each other. That won't be happening. I can turn a blind eye enough to the HA to have happy fish. Who needs pretty corals anyways.
Hmm, what to cover in this.
Filter sock, check. I've been using them for about 5 years now, mostly to keep the microbubbles from returning to the tank but also to be clearing the water (for whatever little bit that does, its still a snowglobe in the tank sometimes).
GFO, yeah I know most of the nutrients are tied up in the algae and manual removal is best but ya know, we're always looking for that silver bullet that will make things easier. Changing out GFO more often might help, currently I'm only changing it every 4 weeks or so because I have to use so much for my tank (I still think the BRS directions are effed up but whatever) and I go through it like crazy it seems.
The pH meter only crapped out about 2 months ago. I haven't bought anything new for the tank in well over 6 months and haven't changed anything in my routine for the most part. But as everyone knows in this hobby, that often has nothing to do with it.
Nutrients I suspect came from "overdosing" or at least carelessly dosing Foz Down. I'm sure its a great product and it was working really well for me to reduce phosphate but at some point the phosphates were holding steady and I broke my routine of measure PO4 first, then add product. I added product for about 3 days before I realized my skimmer wasn't functioning properly to export the Foz Down in whatever form it takes when it binds the phosphate. It was then that I started seeing problems. I lost a few corals and didn't get on waterchanges quick enough. About 2 weeks after that I saw my first tuft of hair algae and large cyano patches (I've had small bits of cyano for far too long). Yarded it out and got on the waterchanges. I did about 160 gallons over 4 days or so and life got busy (and I was getting depressed over losing some of my oldest and most prized corals). By the time I looked at the tank again it was green fields everywhere and rampant STN. I've been handpicking a lot of the HA lately, I think I'm getting a handle on it but there are a lot of patches in the back forty that I just can't reach and taking rocks out is absolutely out of the question. I just don't have the time to be painstakingly scrubbing rocks with a toothbrush not to mention the re-aquascaping nightmare with corals all over the rocks (and just aquascaping in general, which can make itself a 6 hour process with Murphy working his magic).
Anyways, thanks for all the ideas and information! You guys are awesome
