Dose calcium, get algae... what's up with this?

[mab]

Every time I dose Calcium (currently using B-ionic method) I get an alage bloom (unicellular) red nuisance variety. It drives me crazy. Do any of you know how to prevent the blooms. The tank is 1 year old with good params (0,0.10) ph stays around 8.1, cal around 350. phosphates are near 0, I use only RO/DI water. Salinity is at 1.023. Fish load is light, 6 fish for a 55 gal.

HELP!!!

 

[suckair]

well you are feeding the alge obviously.. but from what and how..

I would take nothing for granted and think about it for a bit.

 

[monkeyboy]

I'd remove the eheim pro and kill the UV untill you get some sort of disease that would warrant the use. The eheim is probably the source of your low nitrate level and cyano, and the UV is doing more harm than good. HTH

 

[mab]

Thanks for the suggestions monkeboy. In fact I removed the UV several weeks ago. Please explain why the Eheim be the source of cyno. The cyno only appears when dosing calcium.

 

[cvye]

Cyano definitely use calcium. I no longer know the exact relationship...it'd been written in the past that increasing your KH would fend it off, but I just read an article by (yipes!) Thiel that said it happens in high KH (low pH) situations - which I have in my current setup. I overdosed the b-ionic and have just a small skimmer on a Rubbermaid stock tank. My pH is low and my KH and calcium levels are high. Now this black slime is gaining a good foothold. It'd be nice if something ate it while I wait to reverse the parameters.

 

[Anonymous]

cvye, do you have a link?

I am going through a major cyano attack. What-do-you-know, I just started using Bionic...

Brett

 

[cvye]

cvye, do you have a link?

http://www.netpets.com/fish/reference/r ... teria.html

 

[monkeyboy]

Cyano definitely use calcium. I no longer know the exact relationship...it'd been written in the past that increasing your KH would fend it off, but I just read an article by (yipes!) Thiel that said it happens in high KH (low pH) situations - which I have in my current setup. I overdosed the b-ionic and have just a small skimmer on a Rubbermaid stock tank. My pH is low and my KH and calcium levels are high. Now this black slime is gaining a good foothold. It'd be nice if something ate it while I wait to reverse the parameters.

It is said that by keeping teh pH high (8.4 or so) for several days can crash an outbreak of cyano. I wouldn't be so quick to blame the calcium for it, although it seems to play a part in the outbreaks.

The eheim canister filter, provided it contains mechanical filtration material (if it doesn't, forget what i said about the eheim), catches all chunky organic goodies that would otherwise be processed by your sandbed, rock critters, corals, fish, etc. Instead, it gets broken down by bacteria that just release its components into the water (po4, nitrate, etc). Do a search on mechanical filtration, you won't be sorry.

 

[mab]

Hey Cuye, great article, I'll start looking at lighting spectrum more closely as a main source of the cyno, also my dKH may be a tad high (11) However, this still does not explain the DIRECT correlation of Calcium supplementation and cyno (red slime) production. Has anybody experienced this?

Thanks again for the great help.