Need help identifying algae problem

[GiannisK]

I’ve checked other posts and can’t find anything that matches completely with what I have.

For a while I had what I have now on my sanded, a reddish/orange covering that appears every day, usually going away at night. No matter how much I stir the sand, it shows up the next day. I’m guessing this is cyano or diatoms?

My phosphates later rose to very high levels, up to 0.6 or so. It seemed the sand algae mostly went away, but my rocks became covered in the algae I have now. I would say it’s green hair algae but it looks more brownish? I also thought about bryopsis because it certainly has stems and looks like a plant. But today for the first time I also see bubbles in it. It still looks like green hair algae but brownish to me.

I added phosguard which dropped my phosphates to 0.1. I think the growth of the rock algae stopped at that point, or at least slowed, but after (because of?) the drop in phosphate, the sand algae came back.

I did a round of chemiclean to try to get rid of the sand algae because it bothers me more, but it didn’t do anything, so it’s probably diatoms?

I need to check my phosphates again but they’re certainly not zero, not even close. I’m guessing around 0.2 right now. My nitrates are pretty steady at 2-10 ppm, depending on time of week.

 

[GiannisK]

Here’s a video. I know it looks kind of green but I think that’s due to the high white light I turned on to get decent footage. The sand algae really is orange/brown and the rock algae is brown/maybe slightly green.

 

[GiannisK]

update: phosphate is 0.22 (Hanna) nitrate is detectable but no more than 1 ppm (salifert). This is surprising to me. Nitrate has actually gone down (from 2 ppm) since I last tested over a week ago, while phosphate has gone from 0.11 to 0.22. Granted, I did add new corals so they may be consuming the nitrate.

What can I do to fix this imbalance? Is it true pellets raise phosphate a lot more than nitrate, while frozen mysis/brine shrimp raise nitrate more? Because I have been feeding a lot more frozen than before over the past week, yet my imbalance is as high as ever.

 

[GiannisK]

Could anyone help with identifying the algae problem / possible solutions? Thanks!

 

[Dan_P]

I’ve checked other posts and can’t find anything that matches completely with what I have.

For a while I had what I have now on my sanded, a reddish/orange covering that appears every day, usually going away at night. No matter how much I stir the sand, it shows up the next day. I’m guessing this is cyano or diatoms?

My phosphates later rose to very high levels, up to 0.6 or so. It seemed the sand algae mostly went away, but my rocks became covered in the algae I have now. I would say it’s green hair algae but it looks more brownish? I also thought about bryopsis because it certainly has stems and looks like a plant. But today for the first time I also see bubbles in it. It still looks like green hair algae but brownish to me.

I added phosguard which dropped my phosphates to 0.1. I think the growth of the rock algae stopped at that point, or at least slowed, but after (because of?) the drop in phosphate, the sand algae came back.

I did a round of chemiclean to try to get rid of the sand algae because it bothers me more, but it didn’t do anything, so it’s probably diatoms?

I need to check my phosphates again but they’re certainly not zero, not even close. I’m guessing around 0.2 right now. My nitrates are pretty steady at 2-10 ppm, depending on time of week.

Since I don’t see much wildlife in the photos, I am going to guess this a new system and because the algae growth is so extensive, that the problem started 1-2 months ago. The nuisance algae growth seems to have reached a point that looks like it is self sustaining, i.e., no tweaks to the phosphate or nitrate is are going to make a difference.

If my aquarium was in this state, I would try to remedy one problem at a time. I would something to eat the algae on the rocks. I like snails. If dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria are infesting the algae, the snails might not work so well. I would try to do something that seems silly, like keeping the algae clean so the snail eat it. The stuff in the sand is likely a cosmetic problem that can resolve itself. To keep my sanity, I’d stir or rank the sand just so it was not so darn colored.

Good luck. You can fix this but don’t expect to do it quickly.

 

[GiannisK]

Since I don’t see much wildlife in the photos, I am going to guess this a new system and because the algae growth is so extensive, that the problem started 1-2 months ago. The nuisance algae growth seems to have reached a point that looks like it is self sustaining, i.e., no tweaks to the phosphate or nitrate is are going to make a difference.

If my aquarium was in this state, I would try to remedy one problem at a time. I would something to eat the algae on the rocks. I like snails. If dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria are infesting the algae, the snails might not work so well. I would try to do something that seems silly, like keeping the algae clean so the snail eat it. The stuff in the sand is likely a cosmetic problem that can resolve itself. To keep my sanity, I’d stir or rank the sand just so it was not so darn colored.

Good luck. You can fix this but don’t expect to do it quickly.

Thanks for your reply. The tank has actually been running for 6 months, just none of the fish were visible in the photo. I do have 3 astrea snails, a few nano ceriths, a couple nassarius, a nerite, and a couple trochus snails in this 20 gallon.

The problem is the stuff in the sand is just not going away. I stir the whole thing about every other day, but they stuff comes back within two days. I'm getting some more ceriths, maybe they can help clean the sand.

 

[Dan_P]

Thanks for your reply. The tank has actually been running for 6 months, just none of the fish were visible in the photo. I do have 3 astrea snails, a few nano ceriths, a couple nassarius, a nerite, and a couple trochus snails in this 20 gallon.

The problem is the stuff in the sand is just not going away. I stir the whole thing about every other day, but they stuff comes back within two days. I'm getting some more ceriths, maybe they can help clean the sand.

Some additional thoughts about focusing on reducing or getting rid of hair algae sooner than later.

Macro algae, e.g., hair algae, are a source of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and particulate organic carbon (POC), little bits of algae filaments.. They are very good at converting light into organic nutrients that feed bacteria, some nuisance algae and larger organisms. This means your hair algae are feeding your aquarium in addition to what you feed it. Your system might be overfed.

In addition to the food hair algae can generate from light, hair algae provide a refuge for all sorts of organisms, an island where food and waste collect. As the waste piles up, the island can transform to stressed and dying hair algae that shifts the island population to more cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates.

Hair algae can reduce the amount of trace elements in your system that may not be replenished by water changes or fish and coral food. This depletion may push the algae population in favor of nuisance variety that seems to be very good at finding sources of depleted nutrients and trace elements. I believe this is one reason why nuisance algae growth can be annoyingly persistent.

Good luck. Shifting an ecosystem is not easy nor the approach for doing so obvious.

 

[brandon429]

The very first job in this fix thread is a near exact match to your tank Giannis

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

Details of note: ID never matters. Action got those results

It’s not like anyone makes referrals to different cure threads based on ID. After definitive ID, not much happens using conventional methods (a thousand pages combined of work threads with high ID rates, low cure rates, are the stickies at the top of this forum)

You’d rip clean first, since that fixes your tank, and from the clean condition you’d experiment with preventatives

To stall action by attempting to ID, to leave the compounding invasions in place, to add meds, to be eutrophic for any longer than six more hours in your tank is polar opposite behavior from the results we show in that work thread.

Your last step is simply a choice; have those results above by 3pm today, or choose to be invaded longer. Since you have a nano it’s really just that simple, if this was a large tank you’d really have to struggle and try many things that couldn’t work by 3 pm today.


Fight every excuse you’re given to remain invaded


Do your prevention work from the clean condition, not the fully eutrophic condition.

The reason tank testing doesn’t factor in my threads is because that’s more hesitation using non digital test kit guessing, and, nobody reading can direct us to high cure rate work threads based on params. ID, and param testing are useless in invasion work, it’s why we only have one example so far for high cure rate invasion jobs and that’s purely an action based thread.

 

[ScottJ]

6 months is still a very young tank. Keep up good husbandry and it will sort itself out in time. Try not to use harsh chemicals, they just open the door for other bad things.

 

[GiannisK]

The very first job in this fix thread is a near exact match to your tank Giannis

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

Details of note: ID never matters. Action got those results

It’s not like anyone makes referrals to different cure threads based on ID. After definitive ID, not much happens using conventional methods (a thousand pages combined of work threads with high ID rates, low cure rates, are the stickies at the top of this forum)

You’d rip clean first, since that fixes your tank, and from the clean condition you’d experiment with preventatives

To stall action by attempting to ID, to leave the compounding invasions in place, to add meds, to be eutrophic for any longer than six more hours in your tank is polar opposite behavior from the results we show in that work thread.

Your last step is simply a choice; have those results above by 3pm today, or choose to be invaded longer. Since you have a nano it’s really just that simple, if this was a large tank you’d really have to struggle and try many things that couldn’t work by 3 pm today.


Fight every excuse you’re given to remain invaded


Do your prevention work from the clean condition, not the fully eutrophic condition.

The reason tank testing doesn’t factor in my threads is because that’s more hesitation using non digital test kit guessing, and, nobody reading can direct us to high cure rate work threads based on params. ID, and param testing are useless in invasion work, it’s why we only have one example so far for high cure rate invasion jobs and that’s purely an action based thread.

I’ve gone through the thread, looks quite promising. How can I do this when my rocks are covered in corals, however?

 

[brandon429]

All the following jobs had corals on the rocks. See Gator’s example

You just set the rocks on the counter and use a knife and work around them, the opening paragraph describes it in detail. Some air time won’t hurt any corals.

Read all the jobs it’s only seven pages, knowing that trick can save your nano reef quickly.

It’s no small job, consider all the preps needed to hold your animals while the rinse is under way

And the sand, the most important part, look how detailed each rinse job was, nobody had a cloudy tank because they verified the rinse so well before re assembling the tank

 

[GiannisK]

All the following jobs had corals on the rocks. See Gator’s example

You just set the rocks on the counter and use a knife and work around them, the opening paragraph describes it in detail. Some air time won’t hurt any corals.

Read all the jobs it’s only seven pages, knowing that trick can save your nano reef quickly.

It’s no small job, consider all the preps needed to hold your animals while the rinse is under way

And the sand, the most important part, look how detailed each rinse job was, nobody had a cloudy tank because they verified the rinse so well before re assembling the tank

Quick question while I’m reading: I aerate pretty much my whole sandbed about every other day, I’ve always done that - do you think that’s a bad idea? I thought I would prevent toxic buildup of bacteria by never allowing it to take place. But you’re saying it could be feeding algae?

 

[brandon429]

We rinse the sand in every case because leaving in the clouding can’t help anything

The reason the outcomes are so shocking compared to the before pics is the total tank treatment with the sand rinse being the most important part, then the rock detailing outside the tank

only takedown rinsing truly removes the cloud

It’s certainly something that takes study and prep to not rush it but be thorough. You’ll need all new water made up and heated matching temp and salinity at the ready, some holding totes with lids for fish, some totes to hold cleaned rocks, a place to rinse sand in tap water for hours, verify the sand rinse quality in the glass test before reassembling but your tank will shine afterwards

Then we reduce your light levels, a major cause here, and work from the clean condition for the prevention

Remember that rip cleaning is ironic in that the harder you clean the safer the outcome is for the system

If you rinse the sand lightly out of fear of bacteria loss, and leave some clouding in place or if the rocks aren’t cleaned fully and correctly and they bring clouding back into the new setup, that can kill your fish. Totally clean and verified is safe, hesitant cleaning that leaves clouding can kill, there’s no middle ground


Even the glass tank is taken down and cleaned and dried back to brand new status that way there’s not even glass hazing as a cloud in the final picture.

 

[brandon429]

You could easily just do one test rock by lifting out, rasping with peroxide spot work at the end, and setting back a perfectly cleaned reef tooth. You wouldn’t have to disassemble the tank for that easy practice run on one rock. Heck you could do all the rocks individually over the next couple days, then at the end rip clean the whole system so that rock detailing won’t take up the whole day. Sand rinsing will take up the whole day

my modus operandi in reefing is to sell rip cleans in different ways using different thread titles but it’s all the same thing over and over

and from that collection, patterns in outcome emerge

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

Here above are two hundred more exact jobs like the first link, we just titled it ‘sand rinsing’ in that case.

They fully committed to the rinse. They pre tested sand samples in glass tests to ensure cloudless preps, we logged the jobs there above.

Rip cleaning is the single most impactful lifespan habit I’ve ever seen in reefing. It aligns all reefs into a fresh start, then we change the reefing habits that brought us to the rip clean and that fixes the tank.

Rip cleaning has no downside other than the work involved that undoes the clogging

What we remove is reef poison, that’s why all the before pics are drab and negative and the after pics are bright and positive with corals extending so far it looks like they’re floating in air-the tanks are that clean such that it looks like they’re empty when full.


We begin prevention work from the clean condition, in every single case and that’s only two work threads, there’s ten more still available. Thousands of rinses on file. If you fully study and commit, that reef tank will shine.


Simply do not allow the invasion, physically boot camp your reef tank until it humbly complies. The reason few know this trick has to do with the way stickies are chosen and handled on the board. The action with the most fixes on file can’t be a sticky, we had to actually earn our pages with results

(a friendly poke to mods who lightly censor best practices by elevating weaker practices as permanent-stickies for six years while never giving actual results-based threads the same focus, for even a quarter of the time)

 

[GiannisK]

Thanks for the advice!

I was moreso asking about once the system is set up, so after the rip clean - is it bad to aerate my sandbed every day/every other day?