Help! loosing the battle to diatomes and hair algae

[esmithiii]

Here is the deal:

My 180g reef has been up and running in the new house for about 16 months. I have a number of SPS that are not doing so well, a clam that is doing quite well and some softies (zooanthids and ricordea) that are doing so-so. I can't seem to figure out what is going on. Here is my system specs:

General Setup
180g all-glass reef ready
50g sump
sen pump for return
6" sand bed (southdown)
mak 4 on a closed loop w/ 2 sea swirls (one died and I am too lazy to fix it)
18g carlson surge fires every 50 sec
auto-top off done using RO/DI water
MyReef skimmer run on Mag9
kalkwasser reactor run off dosing pump (135ml/hr)
Temp controller runs heaters and fans

Lighting
(3) 400w MH bulbs on tar ballast, 2x6,500k iwasakis, 1x10,000k
(4) 96w powercompact true actinics

Inhabitants
Yellow tang
pacific blue tang
yellow wrase
6 chromis
maroon clown
mandarin goby
firefish
dottyback
Many inverts

Chemistry/Readings
Temp: 78F-81F
Salinity: 1.0255 SG
Nitrates: under 1 ppm
Alk: 3 meq/L
Ca: 475ppm (I use LaMotte's test kit, which for me is hard to read)
RO water reads 38ppm

Anyway, I am at witts end. I have done several water changes recently (50g at a time) and the problem seems to be getting worse. I feed sparingly, and I am not sure where my nutrient import is coming from. My coraline algae once covered my back wall thicky but is now dying off.

Any ideas? My thoughts are that I have a water chemistry problem, but I would like to have my water tested by a second source. Anywhere that I could send my water off to to get it tested? I also believe that I must have a severe nutrient problem somewhere, which is curious since I am not feeding that much and my RO water tests fine.

Any possibility that it is the salt I am using? I couldn't get IO locally so I went with another brand: Red Sea Salt

As you might have guessed by my lack of posting lately, I do not have nearly as much time to dedicate to my tank as before. We have three kids now, I work 65+ hours a week and church obligations keep me very busy so my water changes have dropped to one every three months. I am home sick, so I have a few minutes to post...

Thanks in advance,

Ernie

 

[Anonymous]

I didn't see anything about a refugium.

With diatoms and hair algae you simply need more plant life to starve them. You are going to have the nutrients from the bioload so you just have to get plant life you like consuming them instead or the plant life you don't like.

 

[Garry thomas]

As you have mentioned Ernie nutriants are basiaclly accumilating over time because of less time spent on your tank. No nutriants no algy etc. Pick up your husbandry and increase flow, it normally always does the trick.

 

[esmithiii]

Garry-

You in the states now, mate?

Ernie

 

[Joew]

Ernie,
Hey there, some questions for you bud.

1. Are your bulbs also 16 months old? Sounds like they may be at the useable end. That's about the life span for MH's i believe.
2. Are you using RO or RO/DI?
3. What does your sump look like?, i just recently cleaned my sump cuz it had a 1/4" layer of crud on the bottom. I have slight algae issues.
4. Does our LR have detritus build up anywhere? I was suprised at that, i had to do a rock scrub and the brown crap that came off was nasty.
5. Possibly Phosphate buildup.

Jusr figured i'd throw some stuff out, don't count to heavily on the refugium idea that beaslbob mentions. While it can help a great skimmer will beat a plant any day. Plus they have there own issues, gotta trim, have to worry about going sexual and realeasing the nutrients back into the system. If you want to try some macro algae, www.macro-algae.com is a good place to check out. Cheato is the best macro available since it won't become a nitrate bomb.

Regards,
JoeW
_________________
Mercedes Viano

 

[Anonymous]

Your Calcium appears to be a bit out of balance with your Alkalinity. You might want to consider maintaining it at a lower level. I would suggest 400 - 420ppm.

Do you use any Seachem salt or Buffer? If so you should test your Borate level just to make sure that there's enough Carbonate in the water for calcifying organisms. If there's a low Carbonate level many of your organisms (like Coraline) will have difficulty growing and the silicate based algae will out compete them for nutrients.

 

[Ben1]

Does the tank have a sandbed? Was it reused from befor you moved?

Maybe if you have one it is leaching nutrient?

 

[Anonymous]

I think Guy is right about your Alk. What is your PH? Detritus buliding up in your sandbed and few/small h2o changes can lower your Alk. and PH. Silca sand does not buffer the h2o like aragonite does. With 6" of sand you may have a die off because of low alk. and Ph. The more die off the lower these perams go. I have deep beds as well. I think they sometimes can become more acidic in the bed than the water above them. Maybe this could be the cause of the algae/cyano bacteria and poor health of the coral. I would keep up the water changes, test for PH maybe even buy a few new test kits, adjust the ALK. and see if it helps. Just some thoughts, good luck, Andy

 

[Entacmaea]

Hi there Ernie, I sympathize with the frustration on your tank. If you are running a Mag 9 on your MyReef skimmer, that means you probably have the MR-1, which is rated for 175 gallons? It might be a little undersized for your tank, especially if you have not had the time for a regular husbandry schedule (with three kids, I don't blame ya!). The other suggestions all sound feasible as well, maybe a good cleaning of the sump, bulb changes, etc. all in concert would do the trick. Hey, maybe your kids would get a kick out of helping ya! : )

Best, Peter

 

[Unarce]

The 6" DSB was what caught my attention. What I've learned about those is that DSB's are very good at processing inorganic nutrients. Resulting in an accumulation of gas bubbles which are usually assumed to be NO2 (nitrogen), which wouldn't be good. A healthy cycle would have a balance of creating nitrogen (N2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) gases, a specialty of shallow sand beds which are also efficient at processing organic nutrients.

When the nitrogen levels rise, algae problems can occur. Just another possibility.

Good luck!

 

[Fastmarc]

I too think you should work to get your cal/alk back into balance. As stated before, your calcium it should be about 420.
In my opinion, I do not think you DSB is the problem.

reefnutz:
Not try to hi-jack this thread, but give me your experienced opinion on this article by Eric Borneman.
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/e ... /index.htm

 

[Fatal Morgana]

hi jack alert!

>>.. Not try to hi-jack this thread....

>...there are some struggling aquarists, and there are a slew of people who probably should never have bought the tank in the first place. ...

>...The sample size for the experimental procedure was one (n=1), consisting of a single person's personal home aquarium. ...

>...Additional support for the "experiment" was collected by casual replication in completely different trials in even less controlled conditions; that is, other aquarists began adding vodka and claimed similar "results."

Eric is a funny fellow

 

[Unarce]

reefnutz:
Not try to hi-jack this thread, but give me your experienced opinion on this article by Eric Borneman.
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/e ... /index.htm

Sure, Fastmarc. Sorry for hi-jacking the thread, esmithiii.

That is a nice article. When was that written?

Very similar arguments to why I normally recommend shallow sand beds except for necessary purposes like lagoonal themed systems or jawfish for example. Here's my sand bed template which I've utilized for the past 9 months and always post whenever I see a sand bed thread:

If you were to set up a reef tank with high current, than there would be a lot of bare areas if you had a SB less than an inch high. 2-3 inches is the absolute best way to go. It would be incorrect to claim that a sand bed provides 'more capacity to nitrify and denitrify' simply because it's deeper.

"As much as 70 to 90 percent of the overall denitrification was located in the uppermost centimeter. The remainder was found at 1-3 cm depth"

-T.K. Anderson 1984 "Diurnal Variations of Nitrogen Cycling in Coastal, Marine Sediments."

"anaerobic habitat can be as small as 1mm, that aerobic and anaerobic bacteria essentially coexist, and that as little as 0.08mm distance is sufficient for nitrification and denitrification to take place simultaneously."

-Ecology and Evolution in Anoxic Worlds. Oxford University Press, Fenchel, T. and B.J. Finlay. 1995.

The misunderstanding is that areas with low levels of oxygen are a must for denitrification. Since we now know that aerobic and anaerobic bacteria exist together in the upper portion of the SB, than the heavy oxygen levels of our tanks would not be a factor. It's unlikely that denitrification will occur in the deep areas of a DSB, especially if nitrates never reach it in the first place.

I'd also like to point out that a deeper sand bed doesn't necesarily equate to more biodiversity of life. A shallow sand bed of numerous grain-size will create a number of different environments housing more life than a DSB.

I hope it doesn't seem like I'm condemning DSB's. They're countless systems that are successful with either a shallow sand bed, DSB, or BB. From what I've seen and read, those that have successfully maintained DSB's for years, have some maintenance procedure (i.e. hand-stirring, hurricane treatment, etc.). Even replacing portions of the DSB with new sand on an annual or bi-annual basis. I feel the idea that a DSB is self-sustaining is a mistake, and should not be considered the set-it-and-forget-it part of your system.

As for the comments of grain size, I also have a template that continues from my grain-size comments in the first template. I've been sharing this for several weeks as well:

Another misconception is that the smaller the grain-size, the more surface area there is for bacteria. This would certainly hold true if we assumed that every grain was a perfectly round sphere. But, take into account the rough edges, crevices, and porosity of larger grains, then it becomes quite comparable.

Like many, I like the pleasing aesthetics of fine sand (which makes up most of my shallow sand bed). But, having multi-grains with the larger pieces turning into miniature live rock themselves has certainly added to the sand bed's functionality as well as its appearance.

I understand the vodka approach, but I can't try it since all my systems have a shallow sand bed. Like Borneman mentions toward the end, over the years, I've either utilized clams, xenia, tunicates, and macro for nitrate reduction.

Thanks for sharing the article! :wink:

 

[Fastmarc]

Hmm...
I'm not sure exactly when it was written, but it is in the latest Reefkeeping magazine, so I suspect it is recent.

 

[esmithiii]

OK, I will try to answer some of the Q's:

-My sand bed was recycled from before, and although I washed it thoroughly, there is a possibility that it is partially the culprit.

-My lights have been replaced once in the last 16 months, probably about 4-6 mo ago.

-Correction on the skimmer (it is 3 years old): it is the MR-2 on a MAG18 - I am considering upgrading two 2 beckets and using a spare MAG36 that I have. Good idea or bad?

As for Eric, I lost all respect for him as a professional when he blasted me on the pufferpinch thread a year or so ago. (If you want a good laugh, try here: http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=35064)