Help Needed with GHA...yet another victim

Magnesium levels?

8 is good coming out of the membrane. Should be 0 out of the DI.

 

Just a thought but have you considered a Tang? Tangs tend to be GHA destroyers. The only issue I occasionly run into in my 125 dt is red cyno on the sand bed. It shows up every so often for no apparent reason. As far as cleaning your sand bed....I clean mine every couple months. My sandbed is only 1 inch deep and is mostly for aesthetic reasons. I simply lightly syphon the top layer to turn the sand over and pull out any left over garbage. Has worked well for me.

 

A few day black out shouldn't affect your corals.

Have you tested for copper of this was a used tank? Seems weird that only the snails die, but corals are living so I doubt copper

Did you remove the snails that died?

What and how much are you feeding?

As a last ditch effort last year I used marine algae fix and it did work wonders, I'm not big on chemicals but it was either that or the tank was getting shut down

This was after multiple black outs, I had 3 large tangs, a fox face and an enormous cuc. And the gha ran rampant

Your tank is large enough for a tang, that would probably help the problem but not really solve it.

 

I always try to remove dead snails so as not to add to the problem. I only feed about 5-6 flakes per day and skip one day a week. I am worried about adding any more fish until I figure out the source of my problems

 

I will buy a magnesium test but should'nt my calcium test tell me about my magnesium levels?

So If I get 8-15 out of the DI, will that cause outbreaks of GHA??

 

8 is higher than I'd like to see coming out of my rodi. Trouble is that you don't know what that 8 consists of.. Try running it into an empty bucket for a while and then test it in a solo plastic cup..

 

I haven't heard you talk about water changes....

 

Right now I am doing 20% water changes weekly. I am starting to read up on cooking the live rock. I have cleaned all equipent, vacuumed the sand every time I do a water change, daily checks on protein skimmer, dose reef complete and reef carbonate every other day (alternating), constantly check parameters. There seems to be a very strong source of nutrients since the GHA grows at alarming rates so I starting to think (and read) that it might be in the LR.

Does anyone think that cooking the rocks could solve this problem?

 

So last night I tested phosphates from the mixed instant ocean salt and RO/DI and it read 0ppm. I tested the TDS in a solo cup and it read 13. Tested it again in a bucket and it read the same.

If the phosphates are 0 in my RO/DI should I be concerned with TDS being at 13?

 

I had the same problem a while back the fist thing I did is add a second DI chamber to my ro unit. It brought my tds down to 0 from 3. I then purchased a rubbermaid can for my di water. I then purchased 20 turbo snails from that fish place. That really knocked it do quite a bit. But wasn't good enough for me. I added a biopellet reactor to the mix and changed my GFO weakly till it was completely gone. The biopellet reactors take about a month to colonize. A good read is Steve Writes carbon dosing thread. It helped me a TON on my decisions. Also what is your photo period? I cut it down for a while and saw no affect on the corals. My cheto died off completely now because of the lack of nutrients.