What else can I do?

[coolhandgoose]

So the short version of this story is that I had a bad cyano or some type of algae problem. It looked brown and snotty with bubbles. The bulbs I was using were over a year old.

So what I've done so far to try and get my tank looking top notch again is I've changed all 6 bulbs on my t5 fixture. I've added cheato. I did a round of chemiclean about 4 days ago. Took all the rocks out, rinsed them in some fresh salt water and scrubbed them. Did the 20% water change and have my skimmer running again with carbon and gfo.

I've also added some sand back into my tank since I was running it bare bottom and added a conch and another snail (like a huge nassarius snail).

Tank parameters.
Sg 1.025
Temp 79
Mag 1400
Dkh 9.0
Cal 380
Fish are a yellow tang, coral beauty and clown.

Here are some pics of the algae coming back a bit again.

Powerhead with the bubbles and brown algae.


Finger leather opening up again but has some brown algae on it.


Duncan which has been closed for about two days starting to open again. You can see a big string of the algae.

[reefwars]

what are your nitrates and phosphates at??

could be dinos , google dinoflaggelates(im the worse for spelling lol) could be what your dealing with

good luck!

[coolhandgoose]

Nitrates and phosphates are nearly 0

I really hope they aren't Dino's.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by coolhandgoose

Nitrates and phosphates are nearly 0

I really hope they aren't Dino's.

sure looks like it to me. if your phos and nitrates are near zero you shouldnt be getting that much algae.

running media??

i would start looking into dinos as crappy as it sounds

[coolhandgoose]

Could it be calothrix?

I really lack for clean up crew in my tank. I have one brittle star, about 5 Astraea snails, a conch I just added and a huge nassarius looking thing. I would count my cleaner shrimp but it seems to eat fish and coral food.

I am running gfo in a phosban reactor and just added cheato.

I'm thinking of doing another water change tomorrow and seeing how things go. Let the cheato and new lights have a chance to work.

[Proteus]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog...sons-i-learned

[coolhandgoose]

The article says that snails can die from Dino's and I've never had any snails die and I've been dealing with this for a couple months now. It's just recently that I've started to really try and fix my tank with the steps I listed above.

[daniella3d]

Dinoflagellates are kind of easy to get rid of by rising the PH. I did it and it never returned.

I used Seachem OH to rise the PH to 8.4 and keep it at that for a week. Now cyano is a pain...

Originally Posted by coolhandgoose

Nitrates and phosphates are nearly 0

I really hope they aren't Dino's.

[coolhandgoose]

My ph right now is 8.4 but lights are just about to go out. I'll check again in the morning right before lights on. I'm using a bit of an older API test kit though so not sure how accurate that is.

[coolhandgoose]

Ph this morning was roughly the same, like I said probably a crappy test kit.

Dosed another round of chemiclean this morning, gonna keep the lights off for a couple of days, might cover the tank and go the complete blackout route too. So we'll see what happens.