Save my tank!

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Masonjames

They do not address the root cause. Get the crap out before it even becomes an issue.

Agreed. I had hair algae from detritus, and fueled by nutrients in the new rock. I corrected flow, turkey basted the crap out of the rock and changed lots of water as required. Today I have no algae in my tank, and I didn't use any magic bullet to get there. Get the crap out of the water, algae will have nothing to use as food.

[jason604]

Where ca n I can this algae fix marine and can it be used with rowaphos same time? During yesterday's large water change I was able to get mybe 60-70% of my debris out in my display and sump. Took me about 5 hrs!!!! Some of my more damaged sps didn't look so good after most likely to that they were above the water for a extended time. I did splash water on them every so often during the clean. If I want to add another led fixture should I wait and let my sps heal first or just do it since some of my sps at the end of my tank is slowly dying due to lack of light. And when I want to change out all my live rocks do I have to do it really slowly 10lbs or so at a time so it won't shock and crash my tank further or is there a better way? Experts share your knowledge =)

[asylumdown]

I'm not sure who sells it locally. I haven't used it a couple of years, I think I bought mine off eBay when I had trouble finding it in Canada.

I had a plague of hair algae in my tank that was probably a normal part of it's first year of life, but I was also running heaps of GFO, biopellets, and was feeding very little in a tank with a massive amount of flow. All my sps were pale, looked like crap, not growing, and anywhere the hair algae encroached on their bases, tissue receded.

The algae fix marine took out all the hair algae in about 2 weeks. Corals that had been in suspended animation for months started plating out and growing like mad, and everything changed colour in a drastic way. At no point did I ever measure detectable levels of N or P.

About a year later it started growing in my overflows again, but I have a doliatus rabbit in the display now so I think any that grows in there gets immediately eaten.

[Reefer Rob]

You can order Algaefix from Amazon.ca

Some algae is so toxic nothing can eat it, and it can out survive your corals at the nutrient game. If you havn't dealt with a real nasty strain of hair algae you might think it's easy to get rid of. Some pests are a real PITA!

[Reefer Rob]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I'd agree with this, but not because I think the detritus itself is causing nutrient issues. If the detritus is building up, it means the export systems aren't working very well and that there's dead spots. By the time you see it as 'detritus', it's pretty much inert refractory organic matter, most of which is produced as a byproduct bacterial metabolism and is as decomposed as it's ever going to get. Vacuuming up the detritus is like vacuuming up a pot plat that's been knocked over on to your carpet - the dirt's already spilled, so to speak.

The stuff you should care about, uneaten food and fish poo, gets scavenged and eaten by critters and bacteria very quickly. Yes, detritus is the eventual end result, but if you've got detritus accumulating it means you probably don't have enough flow in enough places to get the stuff you should care about to your skimmer/filter socks before it breaks down. Vacuuming up the mess is pointless. preventing the mess from accumulating in the first place is important. Perhaps we're arguing the same point.

However, I still stand by the premise that the "root cause" of many problem algaes is no more complicated than the presence of that algae in the first place. Just like the root cause of dandelions in my back yard is the dandelions growing in the alley behind it. A great many (most?) of the corals we keep come from waters with enough nutrients in them to support verdant growth of macro and micro algae. Reefs dying under a choking chemical assault from lush fields of simple 'hair' type algae is a well known consequence of humans fishing out all the herbivores on a reef.

The OP has already stated that his PO4 readings are undetectable, because the algae is sucking it up as fast as it's produced. GFO is great at lowering PO4 when it's present in detectable quantities, that's been shown in test after test. But he doesn't have any PO4 in his water to lower. The algae already sucked it all up. And what's a better competitor for new P as it's added: A bed of algae in the same box where all the P is added, with an absorbable surface area probably measured in square kms, receiving 100% of the flow of the system across it every few minutes, or a teeny tiny reactor in the sump that gets the equivalent of 100% of the tank's water through it every few hours? On top of that the algae is producing a slew of tannins and noxious chemicals designed over hundreds of millions of years specifically to kill the competition.

Step one should be removing the algae. Step two should be adding flow and rearranging the rocks. Step three, once the algae is dead and gone, should be diagnosing whether a nutrient problem actually exists or not. If the OP removes all the algae and phosphate and nitrate levels climb to unacceptable levels, then there's things that can be done. But they might not, and anything you do to try and control nutrients while the algae is in there is going to be like trying to roll a boulder uphill.

There is a simple, safe, and effective treatment for almost all kinds of hair algae. Thousands of people (including myself) have used it, and other than a few anecdotal cases of some shrimp or some coral reacting negatively, most people (including myself) see an immediate improvement in the vigour and colour of their corals once the hair algae starts to die.

BTW +1 to this! Having dealt with "toxic hair algae" in a bare bottom tank, with lots of flow and no detritus build up, and nutrients always undetectable, this is the approach I'd recommend as well.

[jason604]

Originally Posted by Reefer Rob

You can order Algaefix from Amazon.ca

Some algae is so toxic nothing can eat it, and it can out survive your corals at the nutrient game. If you havn't dealt with a real nasty strain of hair algae you might think it's easy to get rid of. Some pests are a real PITA!

Thx I'll check it out. My yellow tang does munch out every so often at it if it is short like half inch. But most are 2-4 inches. The best is for sure the sea hare but first one I got that instantly went for the 4" algae patch n cleaned it up instantly as it went in my tank died horrible by my brain coral that night. He was being devoured alive. My second sea hare last a week but I never saw him eat the green hair but instead went for the film algae which I think is useless. He went to half his size and back split open and stiffen n died. Don't y he died but I did see my shrimps pick at him all the time. I have 4 aggressive shrimps so I'm not sure if I should go buy another sea hare.

Is this the one u guys used with success? http://www.amazon.ca/API-Fishcare-Al...gae+fix+marine

[Reefer Rob]

That's the one. The bottle will say Algaefix (freshwater) but it's the same stuff.

[Reefer Rob]

Another BTW:

Be careful! If you have algae as toxic as the strain I had, the dying algae will will nuke your tank. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. 2 weeks before I used the Algaefix I scrubbed off all the algae with a tooth brush, and caught it in a filter sock, it was everywhere anyhow. The next morning almost all my corals were bleached, and some had almost completely RTNed.

[jason604]

Originally Posted by Reefer Rob

Another BTW:

Be careful! If you have algae as toxic as the strain I had, the dying algae will will nuke your tank. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. 2 weeks before I used the Algaefix I scrubbed off all the algae with a tooth brush, and caught it in a filter sock, it was everywhere anyhow. The next morning almost all my corals were bleached, and some had almost completely RTNed.

How I avoid that

[Reefer Rob]

Originally Posted by jason604

How I avoid that

Remove as much algae as you can by plucking with your fingers or hemostats, dipping them in a fresh water container after each pluck. If you scrub, only do a small section as a test first. Algae as toxic as the strain I had would seem to be very rare.