I thought I figured it out, guess not. HELP!!

I agree that GAC is not primarily used to reduce nitrates & phosphates. GAC will aid in water clarity, odor, and removing toxins.

 

sorry for the late responds. quick update, after i removed the pellets, i had a major brown algae outbreak. my rocks, powerheads, overflow, walls everywhere is covered with this brown algae. its not diatoms. its not cyano. im not sure of its dino's. but these do not have bubbles in them. just looks like fuzzy snot. everywhere.

 

so now im putting the pellets back. im at a lost here. if i cut down my lights/black out, will my dosing schedule be affected with alk/ca ?

 

Is it Chrysophytes? Please see link below for image.

Bacterial and Algae Hitch Hikers

Typically a reduction in lighting does not help in the treatment of Chrysophytes if that is what it is.

 

A picture may help. Is the STN still occurring?

 

Can I suggest slowing down? If you keep reacting quickly, things are just going to careen from one crisis to the next until it all goes bad.

How long between the time you took the pellets out and the algae? Something isn't right if it happened in the time frame I think it happened in, but you may be able to correct me.

For what its worth, the pellets are unlikely to come back online for a few weeks anyway, so rather than try to return to them, try a different sollution.

I suggest getting some GFO in a reactor going and possibly some purigen or carbon. These will help with algae.

If I had to guess, I think you have a combination of problems. How much do you feed your corals? Do you run any filter media, socks, etc.? Have you been getting less PE over time? Do you dose any bacteria?

I think whats going on here is a combination of low nutrients, insufficient feedings, and hard to stabalise alkalinity. These are made worse by the pellets. This is just a hypothesis. I'm not saying pellets are bad, I'm saying getting a system stable when using them can be tricky. I think, once you get there, they're a great product.

 

Thats exactly what it looks like. As I said before I do not feed corals only fish. I am running chemisphere and carbon. As well as wet skimming .

 

update, i just got myself a bubble magus 3.5 hopefully will do better then the sc-65. or i will use both.

if i loose all my corals. i will do softy's and some sps. I've about just had it with all sps!