Quote:
Originally Posted by asylumdown
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.
|
Okay? Seems like backwards thinking to me. I again will say, go after the root cause. You've said already you have an issue with debris buildup. It's very simple. Get it out. And work to keep it out. If you want to keep poo as a pet then by all means, invest in all the livestock, all the equipment and medias and chemicals, all the frustration, to properly house this pet. We have some very ingenious practices to successful house these poo pets in our system so this may in deed be your best approach if you wish to keep them. But keeping these poo pets has led you to the place you are today. So ask yourself if keeping poo is part of the practices you wish to continue to engage in.
Again, there are allot of great means to help you control nutrients within your system and I myself would encourage you to run gfo and you may in fact want to include some livestock to help you control it. But you have to remember these approaches are all a day late to the party. They do not address the root cause. Get the crap out before it even becomes an issue.