What else can I do?

[Borderjumper]

I feel your pain.. im dealing with the crap too in my RSM. Mine is my own fault tho. Ive been using a phosphate binder with awesome results in my big tank by doing a couple of drops daily directly into my filter socks. Well since i had a LITTLE patch of the brown bubbly in the Red Sea Max I decide to dose the RSM too.. so some drops directly into the tank for a couple of days then whoa! Now i have brown bubbly, green and red algea everywhere.. the sand bed is growing brown clumps!! I totally spaced that i have a POS skimmer, no sump and no filter socks to remove the phosphate binder. I think i have very successfully bound all my phosphate to my rock and sand

Ive done waterchanges 3 weeks in a row of 60%, blasted and basted rock, suctioned the sand and it isnt doing anything. Im on day 2 of a 3 day complete blackout. Im feeling pretty guilty of my fishes tho, so i think i will unwrap the tank tonight and feed the fish with just the available room light. Tomorrow the plan is to blast the tank and stir up as much crap as i can, do a 60% water change, set up my UV and run the diatom filter for a couple of days..If this doesnt help on to plan C.. which i dont have yet!

[coolhandgoose]

Do you have a pic so we can compare algaes? Good luck with the system.

My corals are definitely doing better right now with the recent changes. I have zoas that have been closed for 2 months opening for the first time.

I'm gonna do a phosphate check with my Hanna and test the tank water and the output from the reactor.

[coolhandgoose]

Phosphate test:
Tank water is .02
Water from reactor is .00

[Enigma]

Originally Posted by coolhandgoose

Phosphate test:
Tank water is .02
Water from reactor is .00

Are your lights out?

I was measuring 0.03 for phosphates when the lights were on. When I tested after my lights had been off for a couple of hours my phosphate was 0.26.

I'm assuming that as the cyano receded at night that it released the phosphates back into the water column.

I very conservatively dosed some Phosbuster Pro and changed my ROWAphos, and now the tank is measuring 0 at night (except for the 48 hours when I had my fluid reactors shut off for Chemiclean).

If it is cyano, you may need to treat the tank again. Did any of this stuff die when you used it? Did you turn your lights out?

When you did your 48 hour water change did you siphon all of the gunk out? I siphoned everything out with airline hose, and while it took forever, I got an amazing amount of garbage out of the tank with very good control. There was a lot more crap in my tank's sandbed than I realized.

I'm not sure if dinos are gram negative or not, so I don't know if Chemiclean would work on it.

Edit: according to this article, the bacteria in dinos may be gram negative: http://www.sb-roscoff.fr/Phyto/Repri...JPhycol_02.pdf

If that's the case, I would expect to have seen some negative reaction to the Chemiclean from it.

[coolhandgoose]

Originally Posted by Enigma

Are your lights out?

I was measuring 0.03 for phosphates when the lights were on. When I tested after my lights had been off for a couple of hours my phosphate was 0.26.

I'm assuming that as the cyano receded at night that it released the phosphates back into the water column.

I very conservatively dosed some Phosbuster Pro and changed my ROWAphos, and now the tank is measuring 0 at night (except for the 48 hours when I had my fluid reactors shut off for Chemiclean).

If it is cyano, you may need to treat the tank again. Did any of this stuff die when you used it? Did you turn your lights out?

When you did your 48 hour water change did you siphon all of the gunk out? I siphoned everything out with airline hose, and while it took forever, I got an amazing amount of garbage out of the tank with very good control. There was a lot more crap in my tank's sandbed than I realized.

I'm not sure if dinos are gram negative or not, so I don't know if Chemiclean would work on it.

Hmmm interesting....

I will check the phosphates first thing in the morning, I do notice it gets worse as the day goes on.
I siphoned out a lot of the gunk for sure. Also I had no sand bed in the tank when I did it.
I did not have the lights off for the treatment.

Thanks for all the responses. I really appreciate it. I'm really working hard to get my tank tip top this month.

[Enigma]

What kind of bulbs do you have?

In my digging, I discovered that Cree cool white LEDs cover the spectrum that cyano thrives in. I had my cano problem mostly under control, and then I switched out my t5s (2-Blue+, 1-Coral+, and 1-Purple+) for LEDs (Sol Blues). The cyano exploded over the course of a few hours, and I can only assume it was the spectrum provided by the cool white LEDs that did it.

[coolhandgoose]

I have t5s
2x ati 12000k
2x ati 20000k
1x ati 420 actinic
1x kZ Fiji purple

I just put them in 4 days ago in an attempt to get rid of the algae problem. The previous bulbs were over a year old.