Hello all

i have a question for anyone that may be able to offer assistance. I have a reef tank in a 48inch panoramic aquarium that has been running some three years or so. It has previously been a spectacular aquarium until a few months ago when things seem to have gone wrong. Even with my regular weekly 10 percent water change and careful feeding/maintenance i have suddenly got a real bad algae problem. Vast amounts of green hair algae (light and dark) have smothered the live rock and has been choking the corals etc. I run the tank with T5 lighting for about 9 hours per day and have 2 powerheads and two external canister filters with ehiem efimech and substrate pro as well as rowa phos. All levels are good including nitrate and phosphate, PH is 8.4 and sg is 1.022 and stable.

After carrying out a large water change and manually cleaning every rock with a toothbrush things are a lot better but i still have a red mat on the substrate of the tank that is diificult to remove as it just breaks up when touched.

The main difficulty i am now having is when i introduce any type of mushroom anenome or button polyps they never open after careful aclimitization and gradually die off. All other fish and inverts seem fine, and i have plenty of water movement in the tank. Posiotioning of the polyps etc does not seem to make any difference. My other corals are also fine one is an orange finger coral, and i also have a clove polyp colony and a star polyp cluster.

Does anyone hav any ideas as this is baffling me.

Thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read my volume of text!!

Well from what you say you certainly have a issue with Cyanobacteria

This website here has some good info on it along with ways to reduce/eliminate it.

As for the polyps not opening, I have similar issues with certain species i've tried in the past. Despite careful acclimatising some just do not survive in my tank despite parameters being spot on. Do you add any suppliments such as Iodine, Magnesium & Strontium? Also, what are your GK & KH levels?

Are you protein skimming? What kind of skimmer? Can you post all your exact parameters? Stocking? Feeding? SH

Thanks for your reply.

The page on cynobacteia was very interesting and has given me some useful info to hopefully deal with this annoying problem.

With regards the polyps not doing well, i have just started adding iodine and have been adding red sea coral trace weekly during water changes (10 percent) i do not add magnesium and strontium. Is this an important factor for the long term health of soft corals and polyps as i have always thought that a lot of these trace elemanmt are replaced with the new water from regular water changes and my existing finger coral and clove polyp seem very healthy and fully extended every day. I do not know my GH/KH levels but will check and get back to you as again i thought these were onlt relevant if keeping hard corlas. Any further comments or info are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help.

Adrian.

Hello

Thanks for your reply. I run a red sea Prism deluxe modle with Rowa phos in the media chamber 24 hours a day. my water parametrs are as follows:

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate <5 mg/l
PH 8.3
Phosphate 0
Specific gravity 1.022 (stable and checked using refractometer)
Water change is 10 % weekly using RO water

Stock list is as follows

4 x green chromis
1x algae blenny
1x Panther grouper (juvenile very small)
1x cleaner shrimp
2x super grazer snails
6x red leg hermits

Feed 1-2 times a day only as much as they eat in about 2 minutes using mostly flake and brine shrimp (live) and also frozen mysis and marine quartet approx three times weekly, all food is eaten readily andd does not seem to be any left over to pollute the system.

Hope this is enough info for you

thanks a lot

Adrian

You're probably already aware of this but i'll post it anyway for anyone else reading.......your Panther Grouper will grow to around 20" in length and requires a minimum tank size of 300 gallons so it needs to removed from your 48" aquarium as soon as possible. Groupers live for a long time but most sold in the aquarium trade die very early and very small due to being housed in small aqauriums.

I'm still not too sure what has caused the sudden increase in algae in your tank, it may possibly be 'old tank syndrome' but what is apparent from your stock list is that the cleanup crew you have is inadequate for the size of your tank which is going to impact on the effectiveness of nuisance algae removal. It is generally recommended that you have 1 cleanup crew member per gallon, you have 9 crew members in your 4 foot tank (approx. 60g?) so you really need to increase the numbers to 60+ with the addition of assorted snails and crabs. While this does not stop the source of the problem it will help deal with it, IMO it may just be that the low numbers of cleanup crew makes it appear you have a problem as the algae has finally taken a hold.
Another quick point is that a big source of fertiliser pollution in the tank comes from frozen foods, the best way to combat this is to wash the frozen foods before adding to the tank and do not add the liquid that melts from the cube. This again may go some way to helping the algae problem.

HTH

Hello and thanks for your quick response, my grouper is only in my tank as a temporary measure and will be transferred to larger a fish only tank when he gets bigger, just could not resist buying as he's a great fish. Thanks for the advice on clean up crew, i knew i didn't have enough critters but did not realise i neede that many!!! time to go shopping i think. Do you think red legs and turbo snails are most appropriate or can you suggest any other useful members to include (sea hair nudibranches have been suggested by my local retailer.)

I was also sold a product called antired to eliminate red slime algae but am a bit scepticle of such products and have not used it yet. Do you agree that this is not a good way to go and may risk the health of my fish/inverts??

Sorry for the constant questions but it is good to ask someone with more experience of this hobby (i've been keeping marines for about 3 years and still find it a huge learning curve!!!)


Thanks very much for your advice

Adrian..

Would that be a 300g tank?

Yes, I agree. Chemical methods of algae and pest control should be used only as an ABSOLOUTE last resort IMO. Good biological predators should be chosen above chemical