Algae Outbreak

[Troselaw]

Hi I’m really struggling with an algae outbreak in my tank. I’ve been doing frequent water changes as well as trying to remove it manually but nothing has worked. I’ve barely fed anything in the last week. Not sure what to do, any suggestions?
Salinity: 1.025
PH: 8.3
Alkalinity: 8.2
Phosphates: 0.1

 

[coralfishreef]

Clean up crew, refugium, long tweezers for daily manual removal, check your RODI.

 

[serwobow]

I think you should actively remove nutrients. That usually works for reducing algae growth. I dont know what you have in place right now, but vinegar dosing has always worked for me to steadily remove nutrients. I dont think that drastically reducing feeding is reliable, since it can also make everything unhealthy, and eventually lead to other unwanted algae growth. A combination of removing nutrients and regular algae removal during water changes will eventually work (usually). Also, get a bunch of astrea snails to help.

 

[coralfishreef]

The algae has bubbles?

 

[Troselaw]

The algae has bubbles?

Some does and is hair algae.

 

[coralfishreef]

Snails should eat hair algae. Fairly positive my decorator urchin eats all types of algae even if it’s main diet is coralline algae. Maybe add more snails? How many snails are in your 180?

 

[Slombardi]

If you get your nutrients under control I have had great luck with a sea hare. Even if your phosphates are reading .1, you might have a lot higher but its just being consumed by the algae.

 

[PSU4ME]

Looks like snot dinos to me which is likely why your water changes are not working.

 

[afboundguy]

Looks like snot dinos to me which is likely why your water changes are not working.

My first thoughts were dinos as well from the pictures...

 

[Mixed Reefer]

What is your nitrate and phosphate results? You say you reduced your feedings, this could result in your algae outbreak due to low nutrients. If it’s dinos water changes are helping fuel them. Stop changing water vacuum dinos up, change socks frequently, scrape glass and turkey baste rocks to get it out of system. These are daily maintenance tasks that will help to remove it quicker. Once all the silicates are used up it will die off. But on the other hand you should really test nitrates and phosphate so we can see if you have too low nutrients in your aquarium. Also how old is your aquarium?

 

[PSU4ME]

It also looks like they are concentrated on 1-2 rocks...... could this be dead rock you added? If so, that’s likely your fuel source. Any pics of the full tank?

 

[Troselaw]

What is your nitrate and phosphate results? You say you reduced your feedings, this could result in your algae outbreak due to low nutrients. If it’s dinos water changes are helping fuel them. Stop changing water vacuum dinos up, change socks frequently, scrape glass and turkey baste rocks to get it out of system. These are daily maintenance tasks that will help to remove it quicker. Once all the silicates are used up it will die off. But on the other hand you should really test nitrates and phosphate so we can see if you have too low nutrients in your aquarium. Also how old is your aquarium?

It also looks like they are concentrated on 1-2 rocks...... could this be dead rock you added? If so, that’s likely your fuel source. Any pics of the full tank?

I think it is dinos.... tank is about 6 months old but the two rocks which it is concentrated on have only been in the tank for a month or two.

 

[afboundguy]

If it is dinos you could try microbubbling at night to combat them...

 

[nickeg79]

If it’s Dinos just get some dinox or activated carbon and once you’ve dosed a couple days do a water change. After you do that do a 2 day blackout and then mess up your lighting cycle by alternating days on and off for the lights like on a day then off two and then on two off 1.basically you want to mess with the algea/dinos growth cycle until you get your nutrients under control or balanced correctly. Then get some bacterial additives i used primeand dose new bacteria. I beat dinos this way pretty easily. Because I had low nutrients I turned my skimmer off for a week. Once algea started growing on my glass I turned it back on. My only issue now is bubble algae that exploded but I have 5 emerald crabs and I hope they start to get rid of it.