Gha is on top!!!

Note sure if anyone has seen me post in the last year about my gha problem, but i've tried everything that i can think of my lfs's, had alot of suggestions from this forum and also others. well it's not getting better. Quick recap, I had a ro unit givin to me about 15 months ago I replaced the filters and not the membrane as it was 50 bucks i just didn't want to spend at the moment. bad mistake. after 3 months i noticed gha popping up. turn to this site as i have for other issue. are you using ro/di answer was yes, how old are your lights? answer was under 6 months. what are your parameters? answer within range. Are you running carbon? answer Yes. Are you running some sort of phosphate remover? Answer Yes. found out tho when i put a tds meter on my ro it was 120ish coming out of the membrane and my well water was 60ish so the membrane was making my well water worse. 3 months prob went by untill we narrowed this down the gha got worse. I bought a new membrane/filters new lights both vho's and MH's. I have a megaflow 4 sump if i were to do it over would do a custom 55g or 75g sump. seems to me alot of things in the hobby are better off diy. The large section of the sump I turned into a fug but never really took off well as it just grew gha and reslime on the macro algae. I've always kept my cuc up. with about 50-60+ hermits diff mix blue leg ,red leg, electric blue and orange, scarlet and sallylight foots. Snails are also a mix, normal turbos, mexican turbos, Astrea and some cerith's. I do 2 30g water changes a week, just so i can suck a good bit of the gha out. Most of the cuc won't tought it b/c it's long than 1/2in more like 1-2.5in. after a water change it removed all the long stuff just leave the .5-.75 stuff that is really int he rocks. I've scrubbed the rock about 1/3 at a time. I thought a temp flux or ph drop was causing a issue. So i bought the AquaController Apex System with the temp and ph controller. temp is def more stable. ph is ok low at night is 8.1... and high is during day is 8.3-4.... The Gha is starting to grow on my glass where my coralline algae is and starving the light away cause it to chip off. So yeah real quick recap. I will test my water tonight and post up my results. I think my next step will be to setup a dedicated and larger fug that will maybe starve the gha. Any thought again would be very helpful as i'm at the breaking point of starting over.

 

OK i must admit i've not read this properly bar a quick skim. I cant see anything about your nitrates and phosphates? These are really important factors here.
Do you have a phosphate reactor? If not invest in one, best way to get your phosphates down to 0.

IME aswell, to help you get the edge over the algae, turn your lights off and cover your tank up for literally a week. Dont worry about the corals, they should survive albeit a bit sickly.

Thats my advice anyway.

 

phoenix - thanks for your reply, phosphates are at 0 after i've installed a phosban reactor which i change media every month and have had for say 5-6months running along with carbon. nitrates are 0 and always read that due to the gha feeds on nitrates. that one big issue with gha is it throws off the nitrate test from what i read others can jump in and verify this??

 

I would try some mangroves in your fuge. I know it isn't an immediate remedy, but what is in this hobby.

 

get a sea hare he will motor through your gha like nobodys buisness i had a bloom in my 55 big patches like 1/2" long in places and a 1 inch sea hare cleared my whole tank in a week !

plus they are super cool lookin and fun to pet
downside is you'll probably have to return him after your tanks clean so he doesnt starve

 

WUWU - I did get a sea hare from toofishy.com i was down that way a few week ago. I saw him for a week really didn't do much he was 2.5in to 3in. the last time i saw him he was up against the front glass halfway in the sand and half out. this was around 8pm one day and then haven't seen him since.

 

I'm down with the flu, i wanted to get to the frag swap that is a few miles from toofishy.com and on my way back stop and pick another up.

 

Thanks for the input keep it coming.

 

the one i got buried itself for a day or 2 before turning itself to the algea mayby your guys just lazy , i suggest taking him out and pouring salt on him once a day untill he does what you tell him ! you could also try burning him with cigarette butts i hear that gets results >,<

 

WUWU how large if your seahare as i've heard the smaller the better as they get lazy when they are large. can anyone confirm this??