By Request - green tank pics - Page 3

ron101 · #1 07-17-2002, 01:32 PM

Does anyone in your house use any amounts of ammonia (or other) based cleaners in the vicinity of your tank?

I have heard of various cleaning chemicals being the cause for algae-type outbreaks.

Doug · #2 07-17-2002, 01:44 PM

Hmmmmmmmm, :eek: Thats some pic AJ. Its pretty though [img]smile.gif[/img]

I am at a loss. Never in 25 years have I seen it that bad myself. I have seen pics of fresh water tanks like that.

For sure, something is packed with and leaching nutrients into the water. If its not your make-up water, salt brand, excessive foods, overdosing of additives, or some other foreign substance getting into the water, then I would start looking at whats leaching it. That leads to the rock. Could have been loaded with phosphates when shut down from the previous owner.

Other than that, I am at a loss.

AJ_77 · #3 07-17-2002, 02:11 PM

Brad: If I take out all the rock (you can't see it ;) but there's lots) I'll be removing a large part of my biofilter capacity, will I not? Plus all the brittlestars, bugs etc would be lost, and I don't really have a place to put it all. Again, that's pretty close to tearing the tank down, and I'm worried that if I do something resembling tearing it down that I'll just carry on and finish the job. Sounds strange, but I'm a bit discouraged at this point. (Did I say a BIT??)

Christy: mmm... oysterrrrsss... Thanks for making me hungry! ;) And thanks for your very kind offer, I think we have a UV here in Calgary available from Mitch.

Ron: No harsh cleaners are allowed near the tank. Sometimes I put windex onto a cloth and do a wipe across the front. Does that count?

Doug: thanks, good thinking. At this point I might go with the refugium lighting upgrade, to try to give the upper hand back to the caulerpa. The liverock issue is a little overwhelming right now. Too much going on - had my wife in the hospital yesterday, and one of my side clients cancelled on 2 websites today. Arrrrgh!

Thanks again, everyone. I'll follow up on some of these great ideas and see if we can get on top of this. I rally do wish that the pictures came out better - the living green is amazing in its own stupid way...

:rolleyes:

Jayson · #4 07-17-2002, 02:49 PM

Troy,

The point that I was trying to make is that he has to establish if it is phyto in the first place.Take a sample down to local university if you do not a have microscope. If he establishes that it is phyto then he can look into something that will eat it. If he places a clam near the surface he will hve enough light for a lower light calm(squamosa or gold max) The gorgornians that eat phyto are from deeper waters and do not need much light to thrive. I also said in my post that he would have to make sure that all water parameters are good. when I feed my clam system the water turns about 1/4 as green and it only takes them about 4 hours to turn it back to crystal clear.

DJ88 · #5 07-17-2002, 03:36 PM

IMO putting an animal in there to eat up the green stuff isn't the way to do it. That is treating the symptoms not the cause. Until the cause is found that has introduced all the nutrients into Alans system, he will continue to have problems down the road. Whether it was due to water, rock or whatever. The nutrients are in there. Until the source is removed, 'band-aid' approaches are going to be moot.

As an aside I highly doubt a LFS will 'loan' a gorg or clam to try the theory out.

Canadian Man · #6 07-17-2002, 03:48 PM

Well Alan,
I believe the sollutuion may be to get the UV sterilizer from Mitch to borrow for a while.
Make sure you set it up proper and get the right(slow) amount of flow through the thing and see what happens.

titus · #7 07-18-2002, 04:23 AM

Hello,

1) This thread sure does grow fast.
2) The no visual change indicated by Tony doesn't mean there's no die off IMO. It looks like to me a system that has reached equilibrium. For eg, it's at a point where the green stuff die off, releases its nutrients, and the rest feeds on those nutrients and re-grows.
3) My personal take in this problem will be to do a few 100% water changes with RO/DI water, get the rocks out and basically scrub them down (afterall you said they were sitting in the garage and therefore not live rock), implement a UV filter, top off with only RO/DI water, turn off all lights, and wrap the whole tank with dark material. I'll also stop using the chemicals bought from the retail store for removing chlorine, whatever.

Titus

[ 17 July 2002, 12:26: Message edited by: Titus ]

Troy F · #8 07-17-2002, 05:00 PM

Hi Jayson, I hear what your saying but I don't agree, specifically with the gorgonian and especially with a non-photosynthetic type. There's no way that it would clean up the water considering how they capture food and when the water is restored to more exceptable "looks" the animal would then be difficult if not impossible to maintain. JMO and no offense meant.

Canadian Man · #9 07-17-2002, 05:12 PM

About the chlorine remover,
Alan, Chloride dissaptes from water very fast.
no need to use remover.
I dont use it on my FW tanks and never have.
Consider it a scam if a store in calgary sells you chlorine remover to use in our water or just lack of knowledge.

Sorry this is a little off topic but just had to throw that in.
cheers.

AJ_77 · #10 07-17-2002, 05:32 PM

I was just about to respond to Tony's most excellent post, and then POOF!, it's gone.

Well, YOU know what you wrote, so thanks. You have demonstrated an insight into my situation that is most welcome and appreciated.

I apologize to those who've offered more "radical" cures for this problem, but I will be doing what I can here. Thanks again! (Keep in mind the tank is <6 mos. old and I have limited confidence in my reef-keeping abilities. This helps in precluding any heroic measures.)

[ 17 July 2002, 13:35: Message edited by: AJ_77 ]