I give up! LONG!

[DK]

"PH. too low? I was led to believe that the low Ph. was fine (caused by the Ca. reactor) just as long as it was not wildly swinging up and down.?"

Well, if everything is fine, then a low Ph wouldn't be critical unless you had SPS and xenia. Since you do have a problem, perhaps reducing the Co2 in the tank would be a good idea. Why would you point to your Ca reactor as a reason for heightened Co2? Perhaps I don't understand but Co2 shouldn't be getting in your tank water if the reactor output is entering before the skimmer.

I feed my fish the way you do, once a day, but I give them a lot hence the high nitrate levels. At least they are look as fat as when I see them diving!!

I keep my dKH at 14 which holds the Ph up.

Good luck.

 

[R00]

Interesting?? Thanks again, you are starting to get me thinking.

I do have sps and zenia, and about every two weeks to three weeks I have to take out huge sections of the zenia to keep it from overtaking the tank. On the other hand the sps grows slower that I think it should be growing. So are you saying low ph helps zenia or hinders it? (I think I'm missing something,the norm for me though!!)

My reactor has been set at about 1 bubble every two sec. and almost a steady flow from the output. This keeps the Ca. just at 475. I cut it back today to one bubble every ten sec. and one drop a sec. BUT I can almost guarantee that my Ca. will drop off the chart within a few days. I've had the Ca. go down before and had been away so I didn't catch it right away and the Ca. reading was way down. So we'll see. Thanks again, L.

 

[Mr.Tang]

I also had a major hair algae problem in one of my tanks until I bought some very large Mexican turbo snails. These things are like algae vacum cleaners. You can see trails carved out on the rocks where they have been. You might have other problems in the tank (in my case I believe it was feeding the fish flake food) that is causing the hair algae, but this will definitely help in the meantime

 

[R00]

All right, here's what I'm going to try.

Add a second chamber to my Ca. reactor to boost alk. and Ph. and add a controller to the Co2.

I'd like to hear any recomendations/comments etc. to this before we yet again spend more $$ to get rid of this algae prob. Thanks in advance!! L.

 

[95galReef]

I had a terrible time with hair algae for months after adding southdown to my tank. Never had it for 5 years before that and i didn't change a thing except the southdown. Are you adding something to your top off water? if not then I bet its the ro water that bringing your ph down. my ro water has a ph of 3 before I add a tiny bit of kalk.

 

[chns0289]

I had the same problem with HA. My solution was to remove all my DSB and replace it with only 2 inches of reef sand. It seemed that my dsb had trapped a lot of nutrients that must have accumulated during the cycling process. I fought HA for almost one year with various cleanup critters, water(RO/DI) changes, phosphate sponges etc, before I decided to remove the dsb. This was over two years ago - HA free at last.

 

[R00]

CHNS,

That's interesting! I originally started out with a 55 gallon reef and had just small spots of HA that critters would get rid of quickly.It had about a 2" arragonite substrate. When I built the 110 up I used southdown at about a 4-5" depth and after about 3-4 months have not been able to get rid of the HA since. I'm trying a few things for the next couple weeks but if they do not work I might just remove the DSB and go with a 1-2" sandbed.... L.