I'm loosing the war with GHA, help?!

[kadaytar]

1- You said %90 of your live rock is 6 months old.Considering that you bought it from LFS - it is slower but die off inside newly shipped LR may last 3 to 6 months. OK water parameters don't show that cycle is totaly over. Living organisms have organic phosphate. Sand bed and anaerobic places inside LR are good harbours for phosphates but at he end it is thrown out. Thats why it is not advised to add SPS before 6 months.

2- These are the fishes that i saw in your pictures;
4 chromis, 1 sixline wrasse, 1 damsel, 1 mandarine,1 orange shoulder tang,
1 Kole Tang-probably- , 1 ocellaris clown. Did you keep them all at the same time in a 30 gallon? Don't get me wrong i am not trying to be a tang police this is not a proper tank size for tang issue. But those guys are swimmers. Even if they are small they consume alot of oxygen , add alot of CO2 into the water, eat alot and poop alot.

3- Protein Skimmers like Deltec, ER, Schuran etc. can eliminate the particulate matter as well as organic matter.Coralife skimmers may be good for their price but they can only eliminate the organic matter. How do you get rid of the particules in the water that create nitrates and phosphates?

4- Let me bash your sand as well Your sand does not look like aragonite. It is gray and coarser than sea floor grade. I don't know what type of sand it is but some types of sand leach slicates in to water and cause excessive algae growth. Also coarser sand is a detritus trap. Thats why crashed coral is called as detritus trap.

5- Whatever i can see from the picture your rocks are piled in the centre. You have two spray bars on the sides and a Hydor coralia close to the surface. I believe you have a good water flow around the rock work and corals. How do you get rid of the crap from the rocks accumulating at the bottom. i kept a bare bottom 65 gal tank with 700 gal/hr return pump and a 2500 gal/hr closed loop pump. It was hell of a lot of flow for a 65 gal. Despite that the strong flow i had to syphon out lots of crap every week. It is hard to figure it out with a sand bed but too much crap comes out of LR, for me i is worse than fish excrete or excess food.Hobyists having BB tanks must have observed the samething. If you don't have any kind of mechanical filteration where did all that crap go?

My guess; if you kept all that fish at the same time you added too many fish in a 30 gal before the rocks fully cured and the tank matured. You tried to handle that bioload with a CL skimmer.It looks like you don't have anything to elimiate particules. If you don't have any flow pushing the detritus under the rock work and your sand is as coarse as it seems in the pictures probably all that crap was trapped by the sand. Nitrate and phosphate levels look allright but i would think about if this is because of the efficient filteration or consumption of GHA.

[michika]

Kadaytar,

None of my rock is from any LFS, I never said that...

There only used to be 3 fish in the system up until about 2 weeks ago when my 90g crashed, there are an excess of fish in the system now because I am waiting for a home for them. The algae problem was around long before the extra fish.

The three original fish, orange shoulder, kole, and sixline, were added to the tank to prepare them for my upgrade. The orange shoulder at the time was less then 0.5", same as the kole. They aren't being housed long term in the nano, it was only to get them used to the flow.

The coralife skimmer came with the system, its doing well for me now. I have been looking for an alternatie, but space is at a premium at the moment. I run filtersocks, and do 2 water changes of 5g per week.

My sand is black tidal sand by Seachem. I found research that contradicted what others have posted. I also keep my sand well turned over, I have a lipstick conch, bumblebee snails, and a few other miscelanious snails which keep the sand bed clean and turned over regularly.

My rocks are actually piled up in a maze of caves with loc-line running within the caves between for flow. There is about a 2" gap between the back wall and the rock to allow for better water movement.

I doubt the algae problem comes from the fish, while they may now contribute to it, they weren't there when it started. The rocks and all the items in the tank are fully cured. Remember everything came from my 230g or previous tanks, corals and clams included. Why would I want flow to push detritus under the rockwork? I don't want it to be built up to cause problems.