Looking for some input/help; my tank is suffering a big GHA & Cyano issue

[iceman86]

Is on your rocks or just the sandbed?

[Slyguy00]

If it were me, I would just do a blackout and be done with it. If i recall you have been dealing with this for awhile now. Black it out for 3 days and your problem will be solved. Iv had incredible success with this. Good luck on the algae

[Aquattro]

I'd do some real water changes as well. Currently I'm doing 50% every 10 days and that's working well, nutrients getting lower all the time.

[reefwars]

Yeah water changes in small amounts are a poor way to remove ongoing nutrients , the little you removed is back before the next change.

[Masonjames]

What's your debris removal like? If the funk ain't getting out then something is going to be more then happy to make use of it.
A heavy cuc count can trick a person into thinking they are doing good keeping things cleaned up and pruned, but if the junk they process isn't in turn being processed/removed, then they just create a nice little nutrient cycle for you. There great at what they do but only if we are following behind them ensuring what they process gets processed. If there just free to leave there nicely formed pellets of nutrients on the sand, in the rocks, any nook and cranny then they are working far more against you then for you. And at 2 year mark it sounds as though you may have been starting to stockpile nutrients, and now stocks are full and it's giving back.

I wouldn't even bother checking tank po4 levels for now. Just keep checking the output from your gfo and change when you see the output level rise. Gha is hard to battle with gfo alone. It can get access to available nutrients pretty quickly. The gfo picks up any that slipped past not the other way around. So staying ontop of manual removal is important. A blackout could work. Never tried but read lots of success stories. Do you have any macro? A simple ats could be employed for time being to give the gha a place to grow of you choosing and in addition allowing simpler removal. Non the less, if the exports are not on par with the inputs then it's a continual wall your up against. Re examining your debris removal methods and practices would be my first coarse of action. A cube of frozen is adding allot of additional nutrients you don't need right now. Cut it back to half, and maybe every other day?

[jason604]

im also battling pretty bad GHA. Gfo not rly helping all that much for me but i did notice them growing much slower when i manually remove them. About the 3 days blackout is it just turning off all the tank lights or do i have to cover my tank to make it totally dark?

[Slyguy00]

100% darkness. I covered my display and my sump for 3 days. Worked like a charm.

[jason604]

Will sps lose color? A majority of my sps lost color because I moved my lights about 4 inches higher for almost a week.

[Ryanerickson]

I had a algae outbreak at the beginning of summer gha and others all at once it took about 1.5 kg of rowa and a 3 day black out. Jason 3-4 weeks of rowa will not get rid of it I actually found it got a bit worse at first. I have been changing out 300grams plus every 2 weeks of rowa. Finally 3 months later it's 98% gone.

[iceman86]

Originally Posted by jason604

Will sps lose color? A majority of my sps lost color because I moved my lights about 4 inches higher for almost a week.

Yes some might fade or even brown a bit but it will come back pretty quick.

When I transferred tanks I ran into some problems and had my corals (90%sps) in the holding bin without light for 7 days. Nothing died but some faded, after a few weeks it all came back to where it was.