Could LR have caused this?

Hello all, I have a quick question for you. I recently added roughly 100 pounds of LR to my 180. A friend of mine was breaking down his tank and moving so I took advantage and bought all of his LR. Anyhow, on to the question...
Since adding this LR I've had an explosion of green algea on the glass. I've never had algea issues with my tanks in the past. I didn't cycle this LR becasue it came from an established system but my question is could the LR have caused this? I don't have a phosphate test but I use only RO water.

This algea has gotten so bad I can clean the glass and within a few hours it's hard to see through the glass again. My skimmer is skimming out of control and to make things worse my 18 inch green brittle start go caught in the return pump yesterday. (the return pump won) I'm sure this won't help the algea issue.

Sorry to ramble but I'm still in a daze from the holidays...

 

It's possible there was still die off on the live rock caused your nitrites/nitrates to spike up causing the algae bloom. Sometimes it doesn't take much for the tide to turn in a tank. I would turn off the lights and keep skimming and doing water changes until it stabilizes again -- just my 2 cents.

 

Most certainly. Phosphates naturally adsorb to CaCO3 (LR, coral skeletons, aragonite sand) etc. If you friend had a high-nutrient tank, the rock might be loaded with phosphates which bacteria are now liberating from the rock.

Additionally, depending on how quickly you got the rock from his house to your tank, you might have had a large bacterial dieoff.

 

If your friend had high nitrates and phosphates I believe the rock would absorb it therefore causing nitrate and phosphates in your water column, therefore causing lots of algae. Have you tested your phosphates and nitrates to see where they are at? Also if your friend never blew off his/her rocks then there could be alot of detritus in the LR therefore some dieoff...leading to the same results.

 

That Kalkwasser did it...

Hi,
I read on a couple different forum that many people use kalwasser to maintain CA, and thats good but that calcium carbonate may trap phos on the rocks., this'nt a problem unless your KH drops and PH then the calcium carbonate may start to dissolve releasing phos the algae grows using up the phos your test look great and you still have a bloom you kill the algae you release the phos, are you seeing a pattern.
Many times when you decide to secure a system you may unplug filters, power heads and skimmers to save a buck that live rock becomes dead rock very quickly without all that water movement, aerobic bugs die anerobic bug die and your tank becomes a soup of waste.
Doug

 

Doug,

There's no need for pH levels to drop for adsorbed phosphates to become bio-available. Additionally, there's no need to use Kalkwasser for phosphates to adsorb to CaCO3, create Calcium-phosphate, Magnesium-phosphate, etc. Rather than having me re-invent the wheel, read this article on page 4. http://www.seasl.org/wave/Vol 1 Num 12 Final.pdf

 

Well gang it seems my rigorous glass cleaning matched with even more rigorous skimmer and filter pad cleaning is starting to pay off. The glass didn't look as bad last night as it has the past few days. I haven't fed the tank in a few days trying to get the clean up crew to do their job. This also is seeming to help.

I'll keep you all updated on the outcome...

Thanks for the input!