Algae on Sand Bed and GHA HELP

[aquamann]

So tank has been up and running over a little over a year. During that year I've battled dinos twice (both being LCA dinos) by dosing phosphate and spongExcel daily and was successful. Well I recently upgraded to new lights as the par on the old light was really weak. (zoa's were stretching a lot even though they were in direct light). The new lights I got are Gen5 XR30 Blue running AB+ at 25% light intensity, All channels at 100%. Pretty sure the new lights caused hair algae to bloom so I scaped and made the mistake of not sucking up the hair algae. Now I have chunks of hair algae growing on the sand and phosphate's are detectable, only cause I'm dosing phosphate. My question is the brown dust on the sand is that dinos or diatoms? Phospahtes are between 0.03-0.08. I've read that hair algae takes in nutrients very quickly so I'm lost on how to remove hair algae without bottoming out phosphates. CUC plenty, as I have emerald crabs, hermits, nassarius snail, sand sifting starfish, tiger conch, fox face, sailfin and bristle tooth tang, and algae blenny. Any advice would be appreciated.


Parameters:
Phosphate 0.03-0.08
Nitrate 10-20

 

[brandon429]

look at your sandbed cross section, that's eutrophication. if it was being turned over those black spots of rotting waste wouldn't be in there

if your tank is large you're in for a very long haul because it'll be too big to manually clean. if that's a nano, you're in luck, here's six tanks like yours...worse in fact, fixed in one day via correct rip cleaning:

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

*your prior dinos battles I'm assuming didn't involve rip cleaning, so those masses were killed and sunk into the bed feeding this new invasion. a rip clean is what gets you off that rotating wheel of invasions. your lighting is nearly certainly too bright/too long for this tank as one of the primary things you can change (lower the levels of white spectrum and overall power) after the tank is finally cleaned. manual cleaning is best. it's a primary reason that above will be the only example posted here of actually fixed tanks vs fixes in progress, hoping to come one day.

 

[aquamann]

look at your sandbed cross section, that's eutrophication. if it was being turned over those black spots of rotting waste wouldn't be in there

if your tank is large you're in for a very long haul because it'll be too big to manually clean. if that's a nano, you're in luck, here's six tanks like yours...worse in fact, fixed in one day via correct rip cleaning:

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

*your prior dinos battles I'm assuming didn't involve rip cleaning, so those masses were killed and sunk into the bed feeding this new invasion. a rip clean is what gets you off that rotating wheel of invasions. your lighting is nearly certainly too bright/too long for this tank as one of the primary things you can change (lower the levels of white spectrum and overall power) after the tank is finally cleaned. manual cleaning is best. it's a primary reason that above will be the only example posted here of actually fixed tanks vs fixes in progress, hoping to come one day.

Interesting I'll read more into rip cleaning and may give it a try. I believed I messed up when getting rid of the hair algae. As I just scraped it off the back wall and a bunch fell onto the sand and I guess never got picked up. So I have GHA growing on the sand and I'm assuming some are underneath the sand rotting as well.

 

[aquamann]

look at your sandbed cross section, that's eutrophication. if it was being turned over those black spots of rotting waste wouldn't be in there

if your tank is large you're in for a very long haul because it'll be too big to manually clean. if that's a nano, you're in luck, here's six tanks like yours...worse in fact, fixed in one day via correct rip cleaning:

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

*your prior dinos battles I'm assuming didn't involve rip cleaning, so those masses were killed and sunk into the bed feeding this new invasion. a rip clean is what gets you off that rotating wheel of invasions. your lighting is nearly certainly too bright/too long for this tank as one of the primary things you can change (lower the levels of white spectrum and overall power) after the tank is finally cleaned. manual cleaning is best. it's a primary reason that above will be the only example posted here of actually fixed tanks vs fixes in progress, hoping to come one day.

As far as RIP cleaning the sand. Does that harm the beneficial bacteria in the sand and if so do you have to worry about any ammonia spikes due to the lose of beneficial bacteria?

 

[brandon429]

no

be sure and read the thread, it shows tremendous detail/we don't test for ammonia nor use bottle bac because done correctly as shown, your cycle isn't harmed. here's 60 more pages of the exact same procedure, make sure you study the jobs before beginning. you have to take apart the tank just as we show to do it safely. we don't remove sand with the tank full for example, it's surgical takedown and reassembly for your reef's benefit. they last longer when manually cleaned.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

the reason for that post is to show how the job works across tanks in pattern

all those hundreds of tanks are the same rip clean steps from that first thread; we're just doing them for different reasons. some want to swap sand. some are moving tanks to new homes, some are upgrading, some are battling invasions, and none of the takedown+ disassembly steps are different all those jobs in both threads are the exact same sequence. seems harsh I know but look at the outcomes...no ammonia testing for nine years straight, no crashes, only happy reefers.

 

[Outlaw Corals]

Algae scrubber !!!