Please help with this algae

Can someone tell me what this algae is? Sorry about the pics, I don't have a real camera, just a cell phone. It's been around for about 2 years just sitting there on my rocks. The green stuff looks fuzzy, there is some translucent algae and some brown algae all mixed in. I run phosban, ro/di and feed once a day, sometimes once every other. It just won't dissapear.

 

It looks like a combination of hair algae and some bubble algae i think I see. You should talk to John at reefcleaners.org. He will set you up with a good CUC and have that algae taken care of in no time. I just ordered my second order from him. It will seem like a lot he recommends but trust his advice!

 

I would get some cuc but i'm too nervous. I was battling an outbreak of the poisonous kind of dinoflagellates which completely killed off every snail I had and any snail that I put in after that. Luckily, most of the snails died where I could pick them out of my tank but i'm still afraid that if I put 10 new snails in and within a few weeks i'll just have a bunch of decaying snails in there that I won't be so lucky to pick out. But I might have to try with at least 2 and see how long they last because there is no ridding this algae any other way I think.

 

The other way to get rid of it is to get your phosphates to 0, thats what feeding it.

 

Believe me I am trying. I started running my phosban again maybe 2 months ago, do you know about how long it might be for the algae to go away? Sometimes I think I'm seeing a decline in the algae but I'm not to sure because theres quite a bit of it and algae seems to continue to grow although much much slower since getting the phosban running.

Sent from my VM670

 

hi Roblox

can you give us a complete list of inhabitants please?

there are a couple of things you can try that may help with these issues

1) lights out - a complete darkening of the tank, combined with an old blanket or cloth over it to completely prevent any natural light entering the tank
4 or 5 days of this should see a lot of this algae dying off
run plently of carbon during the lights out period, and then perform a 25% water change once you remove the covering and re introduce lights
the water change needs to be done at a slow place, and the idea is to get as much decaying algae from the rockwork as possible
also run the GFO and change it more frequently as it will exhaust far sooner due to the resulting released phosphates from the decaying algae

2) manual removal of rocks that you can remove without damaging livestock
these can then be cleaned outside of the DT in a bucket, using tweezers, new toothbrush etc to remove as much algae as possible, before returning cleaner rock to tank ( do not do to many rocks at any one time in order not to mess to much with your biological filter ) this should also be combined with use of carbon and GFO which again probably will require changing on a weekly or bi weekly basis for the same reasons as above method (released PO4 due to dying algae)

good luck with the battle
Steve

 

+1 with Steve. I was going to recommend lights out as well along with covering the tank for a few days. Of course Steve gave a lot more detail then I would've lol.

 

Thanks for the help Steve. I did try the blackout method some time ago for around 3 days but I was too nervous to go 5 days. So if you think 5 day's will do it I will definitely try that again. My inhabitants are a blue tang, clownfish, pink spotted goby, bangai cardinal, and 2 serpent starfish.

I also did take some of the rocks without any coral out of the tank and cleaned them from algae but the algae soon came back. Although that was before I started to run the phosban.

I'm due for another water change today, do you think I should forgo this waterchange and just black out the tank or should I go ahead and change the water first? I will also change out the gfo and add a bunch of carbon.

 

Have you thought about increasing the frequency of water changes and do about 10% at a time. This should help reduce the nutrients that the nucciance algae is feeding on? Just a thought though.

 

I have started to do 10% water changes every two weeks as of two months ago. Back then I did about 20% every month. Since then I have also upgraded from my deteriorating halide bulbs to leds.

Since doing all this I have seen a huge improvement in the reduction of algae. My whole back wall used to be covered in it and now there is much less. It's just that most of it has been hanging out on the rocks and it seems like it's not going away quick enough. Maybe ill add some carbon and wait another to weeks to see any results?

Sent from my VM670