Can't stand this newbie issues

[mike31154]

Tap water is an unkown until you do some research & find out what's in it. Will definitely affect the operation of your system long term. Very few of us are fortunate to have pure enough tap water or tap water with all the 'right' ingredients to successfully run a tank for the long haul. The folks around Greater Vancouver have tap water TDS of less than 20, my source in Vernon is 210+. Good place to start is with a water quality report from your local utility.

http://www.devon.ca/Government/Depar...erUtility.aspx

I used treated tap water for just over a year & things did ok, but never looked that great & always a struggle with outbreaks of various undesireable stuff. Some of it we deal with regardless when starting a new tank (part of cycling the system), but I've been using RODI water now for years & things have never looked better. Lights can also affect what type of algae takes hold. The blue spectrum will suppress most types of green algae.

[Proteus]

I used Devon's tap water with no issues.
I suggested upgrading skimmer and new bulbs.
And j. I'll test your water for you tonight to see if there's a diff between readings.

The tank only has 4 fish in it but lacks a cuc. Also suggested a refugium to grow out Macro

Tank was also started using prodibio startup

[Emeraude1484]

If you've used tap water and succeeded congrats!

I did it when I was a newbie in a 10 and a 20 gal, both were disasters until I was told to switch to RODI. I couldn't afford a system but started buying Culligan and things went uphill IMMEDIATELY.

As for the algea... You seem to have green cyano and bubble algea. Lights out works pretty well for cyano but it seems to be more of a bandaid IMO and comes back fairly qick without finding the reason behind the growth. I have been told to use chemiclean which is apparently fantastic.
For the bubble... I LOATHE the stuff. I had an outbreak and followed the advice "don't break them the spores will spread buy emerald crabs" which is sound advice but when it comes to the point that it covers EVERY inch of the rock, overflow and starting to grow on the sps... grrrrrrr... I gave up and scrapped everything I could reach and did a water change at the same time. The 4 emerald crabs could keep up with it afterwards but I still scrape at it during water changes.

[Seriak]

Get a cheap TDS meter and verify the TDS of your tap water. Then go from there. Water changes will make things worse if you have high TDS in the tap water. After that, look at lights, sunlight, feeding, number of livestock, etc.