Algae Maddness in a nano

tbmoore · Post by **tbmoore** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 3:44 pm

When correcting water problems such as red or hair algae water changes should be at least 50%. This article on red slime algae will help to explain the math as to why this has to be done .... if not you will not ever catch up.....regular water changes should be 10% or 15% this is when everything looks ok...

Red Slime algae is really bacteria (cyanobacteria). This is not caused by phosphates. The natural way of ridding the tank of this is to first skim off as much as you can. Then do a 50% water change. Several smaller water changes will not work. You will never get the bacteria down low enough to catch up.. I expect the tank is less that a yr old and I has not matured all the way yet.. After the water change cut lights back to 4hrs a day for 4-5days then start bringing the lights up 1hr a day till back to normal. Also cut back on feeding some. Another suggestion is make sure you have a deep sand bed of at least 3-4in. This will let enough good bacteria grow to help prevent this problem..If you just cannot wait You can use a product called chemi-clean by boyd enterproses, inc... you can do a search on the internet for thier phone # or where to purchase. After using wait 2days then do the water change...Their are no short cuts...good luck...

If your tank has 100gal and 50ppm nitrates, a 10gal water change has the following affect:

50-5=45ppm
45-4.5=40.5ppm
40.5-4.1=35.9ppm
35.9-3.9=32ppm
32-3.2=27.9ppm
27.9-2.8=25.1ppm

This example shows that nitrates are continously it would take over a week to reduce the concentration of pollution in your tank 50% with such small water changes.

This doen't take into account that nitrates are countinuously added to the tank via waste coversion.

You need to do a 50gal. water change to be effective and add a DSB to prevent further nitrate buildup naturally.
The question is why did you get it in the first place..Is the clean up crew large enough? Is there enough current flow in the tank? Have there been overfeeding? It is real hard for red slime to grow with heavy water current. Move heads around to get rid of dead areas.

danielmiller82 · Post by **danielmiller82** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 3:58 pm

tbmoore wrote:Lets stop and regroup here.....what is causing the algae to start with....If this is fixed the algae will go away. It is feeding on something...take away the food and it dies...

While cleaning I found 3 big dead snails...eww they STUNK!!!!!

tbmoore wrote:....if the problem is not fixed then it will return even if you put clean rock in the tank....I would stop all food....pull out as much as you can.....use a tooth brush where you can...

So take a toothbrush on the stuff that will easily come off?

tbmoore wrote:Cut back on your lights to 4hrs a day.....

Right now I dropped down from the 36watt 10,000k/actinic powercompact to a basic flourescent hood from my FW setup it is only on when I am messing with it

tbmoore wrote:Do a 50% water change....

would 100% be better?

tbmoore wrote:run some phos sponge and carbon and change out every other day for a wk....

Stick them in a bag the powerfilter?

tbmoore wrote:Use an old freshwater box filter if you have to....

Using one already, the skilter I got with his setup started to leak after I had cleaned it so I stuck on the one from my FW setup wit ha new filter. I may go and purchase another cheap one..do one carbon and the other phos sponge

tbmoore wrote:clean your glass also....

did that last night with a razor blade and sponge scrubber pad.

tbmoore wrote:Make sure your makeup water is good water....

I will test that tonight and in a couple of days after the water change Im gunna do tomorrow night.

Thanks for the advice...it makes the most sense out of all the advise I have been given so far...now I hope that it actually works...This rock is COVERED with coralline under the hair algae and I wanna save as much of it as possible.

Snakeman · Post by **Snakeman** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:23 pm

I wouldn't do a 100% water change, I would think that would shock your tank and live stock. I would do 50% water change every week.

danielmiller82 · Post by **danielmiller82** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:35 pm

I dont wanna loose anything I have in there now...although the only livestock are a few corals and a couple feather dusters. One snail is known to be alive.. he is not very healthy(or smart)... he will move an inch or so and fall over. I pulled a bumble bee snail out cleaned off the algae on his shell and stuck him in my 18g he immediately dug down into the sand under a rock..not to be seen after that. I saw some red worms crawling around. I have a HUGE piece of red macro algae...not sure what kind it is though.

KrazyPlace · Post by **KrazyPlace** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:51 pm

Why bother for any of this? Just go buy the 75g now and set it up. You know you'll be dong it later anyhow. Go have fun, stop worrying and set it up!

danielmiller82 · Post by **danielmiller82** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:38 am

if you can show me where I can get a 75g for cheap...

For $40 I got:
about $300-500 worth of Kent Chemicals alone
•10g tank with glass cover
•stand
•a chiller(heatsink type)
•2 powerheads
•Skilter 250
•36w PC 10,000k/actinic
•extra 5g Eclipse bowfront for sick fish
•1 1/2" live sandbed
•~30lbs LR(although covered with hair algae) w/ zoos galore, feather dusters, Bumblebee snails, mushrooms, some other coral i havent ID'ed yet, Big frag with Red macro algae, all kinds of cool worms
•Percula Clown
•Cleaner Wrasse
•Gold Watchman Goby
and about every other extra you can think of.

I spent about 2 hours tonight scrubbing off the long hair algae. The rocks still have quite a bit of green on them but I think if I play my cards right, I will be able to get the coralline to take back over(which I found out once covered MOST if the rock)Im getting some crabs and snails tomorrow to clean up all of the junk that I cant get. I think this project is turning out to be really fun! I am all 0's on my ammonia and nitrite. My nitrates are at 15-20 right now and my phosphates are at 0.1. In cleaning up the tank I found 3 rotting snails!!! EWWWW they reak!!!! I removed them and tomorrow I am doing a 50% water change. I will keep you guys posted on anything new that comes up.

tbmoore · Post by **tbmoore** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 6:10 am

I did forget one thing...ck your bulbs ... if your lights are not correct or old bulbs this will also cause an outbreak...

danielmiller82 · Post by **danielmiller82** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:24 pm

Well here it is...the cleaned out 10g nano!!!

Amyjoe · Post by **Amyjoe** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 4:40 am

Wow that is a difference.

KrazyPlace · Post by **KrazyPlace** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 5:07 am

Want to clean my tank?

tbmoore · Post by **tbmoore** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 6:43 am

Big change.....Keep us posted....looks like you are headed in the right direction...

andy4499 · Post by **andy4499** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 12:41 pm

That is awesome, when I need to clean my tank I will give you a call.

danielmiller82 · Post by **danielmiller82** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 6:51 pm

since i got 20 crabs in it now...and a snail from my 18...its getting really clean now!

danielmiller82 · Post by **danielmiller82** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 2:50 pm

nano update...
I found a tube of acrylic paint that was a pretty blue...so I decided to paint the back..It sure brightened things up a bit

Post by **snoopdog** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 4:43 pm

Night and day difference there.