Loosing the Algae battle

i would say yes it would, algae is one of the things that makes reef keeping oh how to say this, not as fun for sure. on your r.o unit i'm guessing you have your own unit or are you buying your water? if you are buying it stop it and buy your own unit,don't trust anybodys water, now water companys have up there doses of chemicals to insure that the water we drink don't kill us but i'm afraid the water we are drinking may be killing us anyway from the chemicals, my county water you taste chlorine almost like drinking it from the bottle, anyway once chlorine has gotten to the membrane of your r.o unit you can throw it away it's no good anymore, i run two carbon block filters before the membrane and watch them with a tds meter. and heavy protein skimming is a must in my opinion on large tanks, you say you do weekly w changes, so my guess is its your water thats causing your problems if you own your ro unit you may have to buy all new filters and membrane to insure good water, also 450 to 500 on calcium levels helps, ph 8.4 water temp 76 algae like warmer water, i hope you can get it under control

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by bwalker9801
Looks like dino's , elevated ph, reduced lighting and lots of vacuuming are how I beat them.

how did you elevate your pH? Lights have been off for 48 hours so far.. and yes I am sucking that stuff out.

i use kalkwasswer, in a gallon lizard water dripper, 2 teas of kalk per gallon slowly driped,whip it alot and start dripping,check calcium level every two gallons until 450 is reached and mantain this level this will also rise ph so keep an eye on it 8.4 is a good level kalk has a hp of 12 so you can rise it to much it your not careful if you drip at night or lights out the ph will remain stable

 

1st cyto is not effected by light - what size tank? what type of skimmer (or any at all) feeding once a week is not good IMO. How much are the water changes %.
how many fish and corals? what are your Parameters - you say all good but what are they.
do you have a sump/refugium? how deep is your sand bed? what kind of cuc population?

A year old tank does not suddenly get cyto unless something has changed

 

Those are dinos,not cyano.Elevate ph with kalk slowly to 8.4/8.6,reduce flow by turning off a powerhead or two and don't do any water changes during this time.Once you've achieved the higher ph level,siphon as much as you can and do a complete blackout for four days.Afterwords,let your tank ph return to normal and bring light schedual back up slowly.IME this was a one two punch recommended to me by a fellow 3reefer and it worked wonders,my tank made a come back like it never happened.

 

happens all the time in southeast (where most of our corals are) when they get typhoons, sometimes the rain clouds come and stays for weeks.

 

but when you do bring your lights back on line be careful not to give them to long ata time i have seen them bleach after blackouts

 

that's why on the 4th day, use actinic only, that is to acclimate them again to the photoperiod.

 

update. Slowly put lights back on but seems like its coming back.. Here are some numbers..

Ok. Finally got my stuff. IDK testing is not going so well. Seems that the lights off have helped tank looks alot better and corals are open.
KH was 9.9 (I think)
ALK - 3.53
PH 8.1
Phosphates were 0.0

Hooked up the TDS. So have a line coming out from the membrane.. That read 18.9...

Line going to the fill bucket reads 0.0.. Again not sure how accurate my testing is. having trouble with the kit..