Algae is eating me alive.

[endlessrealm]

To keep it short. My tank is 6 months old. Its the marine x60.2 i rushed, and i got bunch of corals after the cycle, hammers, frogspawn, zoas, candy cane, mushroom, and duncan. Now after 2 months of the tank running. My nutrients bottomed out. Both 0, Nitrate + phosphate.

So i started dosing neophos & neonitro. But unfortunately i didnt do it at the time

So i got the toxic dinos, and cyano, red + slimey green. And i have GHA everywhere. And its getting worse to a level where i want to quit the hobby or sell my tank, and start fresh.

I noticed its a trend everytime dinos vanish for a while, my zoas and corals are the happiest. But when it comes back on the sand. My zoas close up all of them, + my corals gets super ticked off. Im guessing because the dinos are in the water column.

I didnt try any chemicals yet, my friend said keep dosing neophos to get my phosphate to 0.1 i dont know what that does.

Mag:1315
Calcium:415
Salinity:1.026
ALK:8.1
Temp: 77F
Nitrate:6.8-7 (hanna checker)
Phosphate as of this morning 0.04

 

[Jekyl]

Ahhh the benefits of dry rock. Manual removal, reducing white light, keeping parameters from bottoming and ensuring proper CuC are all great methods. An algae turf scrubber will help. Live phyto was also great at reducing algae.

 

[Eienna]

Got a couple playlists for you to check out that I just looked up for someone else.
Be aware that almost everyone goes through a phase like this, so hang in there!!
Your nutrients are in a reasonably good place right now. Just don't bottom them out again. You can start by removing as much of the pest organisms as possible manually. After that, a dark period for the dinos and slime, but I don't recall exactly how long. My next post will have the links, one sec.

 

[Eienna]

Start here for a quick explanation.
This playlist is next for more in-depth stuff on each pest.
is a more nerdy playlist featuring experiments in an attempt to understand the ugly phase and how to avoid it in the first place.

 

[Eienna]

Even longtime professionals go through this stage.

 

[ReeferMonkey]

Hey keep the sunlight off the tank! buy a lot of copepods

 

[Eienna]

Hey keep the sunlight off the tank! buy a lot of copepods

A short period of sunlight can actually be healthy for corals if the tank doesn't overheat, but good catch, a newer tank might not handle that. Red slime is at least partially photosynthetic.

 

[LPS Bum]

To keep it short. My tank is 6 months old. Its the marine x60.2 i rushed, and i got bunch of corals after the cycle, hammers, frogspawn, zoas, candy cane, mushroom, and duncan. Now after 2 months of the tank running. My nutrients bottomed out. Both 0, Nitrate + phosphate.

So i started dosing neophos & neonitro. But unfortunately i didnt do it at the time

So i got the toxic dinos, and cyano, red + slimey green. And i have GHA everywhere. And its getting worse to a level where i want to quit the hobby or sell my tank, and start fresh.

I noticed its a trend everytime dinos vanish for a while, my zoas and corals are the happiest. But when it comes back on the sand. My zoas close up all of them, + my corals gets super ticked off. Im guessing because the dinos are in the water column.

I didnt try any chemicals yet, my friend said keep dosing neophos to get my phosphate to 0.1 i dont know what that does.

Mag:1315
Calcium:415
Salinity:1.026
ALK:8.1
Temp: 77F
Nitrate:6.8-7 (hanna checker)
Phosphate as of this morning 0.04

View attachment 2999749 View attachment 2999750 View attachment 2999752 View attachment 2999753

Your numbers look pretty solid. Every new system goes through the ugly phase to some degree.

Best thing you can do is to keep perspective and stay patient. Frequent water changes with RODI and a good quality salt mix. Don’t overfeed. Manual removal of algae, Cyano, and dinos every week. UVs aren’t necessary but they really do help with the ugly phase.

Keep the faith and this too shall pass. You’ll become a better and wiser Reefer for having gone through it.

 

[wculver]

To keep it short. My tank is 6 months old. Its the marine x60.2 i rushed, and i got bunch of corals after the cycle, hammers, frogspawn, zoas, candy cane, mushroom, and duncan. Now after 2 months of the tank running. My nutrients bottomed out. Both 0, Nitrate + phosphate.

So i started dosing neophos & neonitro. But unfortunately i didnt do it at the time

So i got the toxic dinos, and cyano, red + slimey green. And i have GHA everywhere. And its getting worse to a level where i want to quit the hobby or sell my tank, and start fresh.

I noticed its a trend everytime dinos vanish for a while, my zoas and corals are the happiest. But when it comes back on the sand. My zoas close up all of them, + my corals gets super ticked off. Im guessing because the dinos are in the water column.

I didnt try any chemicals yet, my friend said keep dosing neophos to get my phosphate to 0.1 i dont know what that does.

Mag:1315
Calcium:415
Salinity:1.026
ALK:8.1
Temp: 77F
Nitrate:6.8-7 (hanna checker)
Phosphate as of this morning 0.04

View attachment 2999749 View attachment 2999750 View attachment 2999752 View attachment 2999753

Bottoming out the tank more or less started over the cycle. With ultra low nutrients everything dies off and you go back through the cycle again. If you can keep your numbers in alignment in theory this would get better on its own. I had a hard time when I did this myself at one time. To recover I ended up treating with chemi clean.

 

[Eienna]

Bottoming out the tank more or less started over the cycle. With ultra low nutrients everything dies off and you go back through the cycle again. If you can keep your numbers in alignment in theory this would get better on its own. I had a hard time when I did this myself at one time. To recover I ended up treating with chemi clean.

Which is definitely something the OP could do, after sucking the majority out.

 

[Eienna]

 

[Eric R.]

I'll add to the video playlist:

I find all of the MACNA videos to be very educational, so I suggest searching for them. They have years worth of videos posted. Also very inspirational.

3-5 day blackouts are good to deal with cyano.

If you're looking for a wider variety of educational sources, I'd check out Reef Beef podcast. Rich, the guy in the video above, is one of the two co-hosts, along with Ben Johnson, who owns and runs a professional maintenance company maintaining tanks for millionaires. They've also both worked at public aquariums. Lots of good knowledge on there for new and experienced reef hobbyists alike.

 

[Daenion]

Following is what worked for me but your mileage will vary since you are missing some of the garbage I had and have some stuff I didn’t.

If you can remove rock I would start wjtb that and brush off whatever you can in a bucket rinse with rodi and put them back in. Clean all the surfaces you can within the aquarium. Do an at least 20% or preferably 30% water change. Dose 1ml of peroxide per 10 gallons. If your corals are healthy enough I would do 3 day full blackout with dr tim refresh-waste away regime. If they are not do 15% blues blackout. I would do two big water changes on days 4 and 8. Following lists how the dr tim refresh-wasteaway is done.

DrTim's Aquatics Recipes for Success: Getting Rid of Cyanobacteria and Algae (Using Re-Fresh and Waste-Away)

The solution to cyanobacteria and algae is adding competing bacteria back into your tank to consume nutrients and then removing those organisms. Here's how!

www.bulkreefsupply.com

4th day waterchange is good because after 3 day blackout and refresh you will have a lot of dead algae and it will spike your nitrates and phosphates. Waste away should release even more and 8th day big water change should help with that.

I also blew off whatever was on the rocks every night and dosed 1ml of peroxide per 10 gallons for 8 nights.

This will do almost a soft reset. If corals are in bad shape you might lose some since it is not a very friendly approach with blackout and spikes in nutrients. However, please keep in mind this won’t fix the core issue.