Help please algae issues

Coralgurl · #1 02-18-2013, 12:03 AM

I know its been covered many times so if someone could point me to some good reading material on phosphates and nitrates and how to deal with it.

I've been doing water changes to reduce both, added a skimmer to help remove nutients, manually removing hair algae and reduced feedings. I've lost a number of corals like a frogspawn, octospawn, mushrooms have bleached and a brain coral has tissue receding. I only have api tests for phosphates and nitrates, tested both and they are high (not home at the moment and can post later).

Fish are fine(I have 2 clowns, 2 chromis, flameback angel and flame hawfish), think all my snails are dead as I haven't really seen them. And my awesome nem is not extending its tentacles like it did a few weeks ago.

Tank is running with a canister filter that is cleaned thoroughly every 2 weeks, I've recently switched to enheim bio media, and have carbon and gfo in it.

Any suggestions on how to turn this around?

Myka · #2 02-18-2013, 02:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coralgurl

I know its been covered many times so if someone could point me to some good reading material on phosphates and nitrates and how to deal with it.

Check the links in my signature. Particularly The Detritus Wars and Get Rid of Hair Algae...

Skimmerking · #3 02-18-2013, 02:46 AM

Well if you look at this if you have a tank that is 50PPM of Nitrates and your tank is 100 gal and u do a 5 % water change you are not even doing any damage on the nitrates. u would have to at least do 40-60 gal in that next water change. this would bring the nitrates down to about 10 PPM.

the PO4 Phosban or PO4x4 will take it out but if you are not monitoring the type of food you are putting in the tank IE frozen or the RO unit isn't taking out the Phosphates then you are not doing anything either.
so you see this is the best methods too to taking out the Nitrates and PO4

but remember that using to much Phosban will drop your ALk fast

Vertex Pellets will drop the Nitrates to and so does dosing vodka...

hope this helps

kien · #4 02-18-2013, 02:48 AM

You have GFO in your canister filter? Interesting, I've never heard of anyone doing that before. GFO generally works more efficiently when it tumbles at an appropriate rate in a fluidized reactor. I'm not familiar with your canister filter but are you able to see your gfo tumble? How often do you replace your gfo? Ommy experience, if you are using GFO and are still reading high phosphates, that is an indication to me that you are not replacing it soon enough. GFO IS VERY efficient at removing phosphates but depending I'm how much media you have vs your phosphate levels, the media can exhaust very quickly. For example, you may find you need to replace it weekly to get your phosphates down.

As for nitrates, there are quite a few options and you kinda have to pick one method that you feel suites you and your lifestyle. All of the various methods will work if employed correctly. ZeoVit, vodka/vinager/sugar dosing, prodibio, bioPellets. Pick your poison :-)

Myka · #5 02-18-2013, 01:28 PM

GFO should not tumble. At most, the very top layer should just barely very gently boil. Tumbling causes friction between the granules which will produce GFO dust that will go into your tank. For the same reason, you don't want carbon to tumble either.

Skimmer King makes a good point about waterchanges not being very effective in lowering the amount of nutrients in the water column although he has interesting math.

Also, the rock and substrate will leech more nutrients any time the water column has less nutrients than them.

Waterchanges are important though as you should be manually removing as much algae as possible during waterchanges as well as siphoning/vacuuming out as much detritus as possible. Algae holds nutrients within itself so manual removal of the algae not only removes the unsightly algae it also removes those nutrients bound up in the algae. If you simply kill the algae when the algae dies those nutrients go back into the water column where they can feed new algae. Detritus is solid nutrients which can't dissolve into the water column if it is siphoned out soon enough. Powerheads should be placed to help prevent detritus from settling.