If you mean that kinda bubbly brown slime that grows on rock, glass and stuff. Yeah ive pretty much rid my tanks of it. I did lots of sand bed cleaning, and filter cleaning, and dosing vodka, and dosing vinegar/kalk water and lots of GFO. seems to have helped. but it takes a little time. like months. depends how dirty your sand is.
i have plenum sand beds in most tanks of the 2 mm gravel size. so cleaning helps remove trapped organics. and the vodka and vinegar grow the bacteria to denitrate and de phosphate. and i cleaned the protein skimmers. they were all crusted up inside with sponges and tube worms and stuff. that improved their performance.
Sure it is oxygen? It could also be Nitrogen gas released from denitrification or just air trapped in algae or other unsightlys.
Regardless of exactly what the bubble is I believe you have more than one… thing in the image. The tall stick like algae or whatever isn’t dinoflagellets. Whatever it is may exist because a mass of dinoflagellets created an ideal environment for it to grow or may be signs that there isn’t just one issue in the tank.
Do you keep a water change log? What is your pH like night and day? How steady is your alk? How often do you empty your Urchin skimmer cup? How quickly are the macros growing in the fuge.
I believe you said in the past you didn’t yet have a digital pH probe. If you are convinced it is dinoflagellets(one treatment of which is to adjust your pH) or if you have rulled out any other potential issues with your aquarium,(taken many steps to reduce nutrients for extended periods of time and maintained proper Ca and Alk) then it is time to take a look at pH with a meter.
Seeing that this isn’t a sudden issue, but an on going mystery I would highly suggest reading up on it a bit more. “Algae A Problem Solver Guide†goes into detail not only on algae, but diatoms, cyano, dinoflagellets and many other things. Well worth reading cover to cover.
Do you keep a water change log? 20 gallons every saturday.
What is your pH like night and day? without a digital meter one cant be too sure but every time I test with fluid tests its always 8.2 night or day.
How steady is your alk? very steady 9 DKH
How often do you empty your Urchin skimmer cup? once every day or 2
How quickly are the macros growing in the fuge. slowly
The PH method is one that I am looking at trying but I need an accurate meter and to read more on adjusting it precisely to 8.4 (I’d rather not go over that really)
I have a used one for sale in the market place. Might actually have a spare pH probe to sell as well.(think I accidently ordered one too many, waiting for the UPS truck to show up)
Another thing to consider is checking to see if any phosphates are in the water column. If you can measure any phosphates at all with all the other things you are doing then there is probably too much food being added and there may be one way to help solve is significantly.
If there isn’t much growing on top of your macro algae and the lighting and flow around your macros is ideal then it may be bio-limited as far as to how quickly it can grow. While iron is in very low concentrations in the ocean and in our salt it is one of the things needed for macro algaes to grow. It is very unlikely that phosphates or nitrates are the bio-limiting factors for the algae even if you were keeping your tank in pristine health and hardly feeding at all. As always do you reading and understand what you are getting into, but a little iron supplementation might not hurt things.
You may also decide to find a balanced Ca, and Alk slightly more elevated, at least while trying the high pH procedure for reducing your unsightly problems. Still highly recommend you pick up that book to get a little more background before diving into too much, but at the same time it would be a good idea to reach a higher pH then you are at and to monitor pH more frequently.
Hope your able to turn things around. Good luck, Tim
Well I’m not really a fan of reducing photoperiod with all my SPS so I plan to raise the PH to at least 8.4 do some water changes and be patient, coupled with blowing it off the rocks with a turkey baster daily to keep it in the water column for the water changes.
Also I am going to use over kill phosphate remover for a while.
Keep the tank highly oxygenated. One thing you could do is to make sure your heaters are working and put a fan blowing constantly across the top to increase gas exchange. This will also increase the evap rate as well, so watch your top off. This might be counterproductive when trying to raise the pH if there is a lot of CO2 in the apartment, so keep ventilate the room as much as you can. Open up the doors and get some fans going.
If you want to bounce any ideas off of someone make a post and I’ll try to chime in. My hours are odd right now and I have a lot of work, but I always check in on my DRC crew.
Good luck with it. Take photos as you go, so you can record your success to share with others.
I’ve been way too busy to take care of the issue at the moment, Its hard to find the motivation to work on the tank after doing 11 driveways a day. Its pristine in the winter and neglected in the summer >:::
Anyhow the issue I have in starting the procedures is getting a PH monitor (not really an issue more than not wanting to spend the money on it) and second is finding an accurate and reliable way to maintain 8.4-8.5 ph each day. The kalkwasser method has to be done several times a day and I’m just not at home that much.
Its not catastrophic for now just unsightly so I’ll get on it when I can. Untill then I just keep blowing off the rocks and clean the glass to look nice.
always look at the good side to everything… I have fresh oxygen in the house more than a plant would produce!
Right where you are Tim, cept i picked up a monitor from Jon, and its working great. realized that ph i thought was at 8.3 or close was really at 7.9ish. i’m also looking for the best/ easiest way to maintain that 8.4 -8.5 ph…is kalkwass it, or is there another option? i’m using reef buffer right now and got it to 8.3 easily yesterday, but today back at 8.1 today. Just did a 28g w/c and gravel cleaning… its growing back two hours later…ughhhhhhhhhh, i also added another powerhead today… we’ll see…
btw… the glass gets covered within hours after a magneting usually, but none has grown on there since raising the ph yesterday. i hope its a clue, and not coincidence. I also picked up a reactor, carbon, and phosgaurd, but haven’t hooked it up yet…hope someone can put a finger on it soon… if not we’ll just have to vodka dose ourselves til our vision is too blurry to notice it!
Your GFO reactorshould help you make progress. the problem with cyano is when you scrape it off the glass, the cells just float around and land somewhere else. keeps growing. ive done micron filtering to get it out of the water when stirred up. pain in the butte. have to keep cleaning the floss every half hour. but that at least removes cyano which has eaten the nitrates and phosphates.
if you want to do kalwasser, my current recipe is for a 6 gallon IO bucket full. I pour in 2 1/4 cups vinegar and then add 4 tablespoons of lime(kalk) and mix to disolve, and then add 6 gallons of RO water, mix and cover and let settle for an hour. Pretty much all the lime should have disolved. a little will be on the bottom.
to dose the tank i drip about a quart of the clear lime water per 100 gallons. the amount you need will depend on your own tank needs. try a pint at night, and test the next morning. and increase the dose as needed. it seems to keep my ph about 8.2 . a few times a week i add addition buffer and calcium chloride for a boost as needed. and the vinegar in the lime water feeds the bacteria. the slime is all but gone now.
Tim! PH PH PH PH PH !!! theres a lot more, but i’ve got it under control i think!! did a bunch of stuff but i think getting the ph up was the biggest… test kit said 8.3…accurate meter says 7.9…and the article you linked…did you do the aeration test yet? i was shocked the dif that outside air has on the ph of tank water as oppose to inside air… i have a small house, not much bigger then an apt. sized living room where the tank is.
anyway
mine aerated in the house for 1 hour had a rise of only about .05
‘’ ‘’ ‘’ outside the house the ph raised to 8.36 from 8.00 in twenty minutes!
i’m gonna run my skimmer air inlet to outside air, just have to drill a hole in the house.
It isn’t something I have ever seen being sold by any of our sponsors and is a fairly new product.(Don’t believe any of the big companies are making them yet)
My bulbs are bout 5-6 months old, standard aquaticlife array (6 actinic…6 10k) and everything is clean, shield gets slid out and wiped off once a month, and it usually doesnt have much salt on it.
Just making sure. After our talk today at the shop and your posts it seems like you have most things covered. So many different little things to keep track of didn’t want there to be one thing you were missing.