Came back from weekend away and water is brown!

[tstor]

Hi all,

I just got back from a weekend away and there water in my tank is green-brown. It looks like a blackwater freshwater tank. I've changed carbon and cleaned my skimmer, but does anyone have an idea of what's caused this? Fish seem ok for now, torch is unhappy but no tissue recession. Nems seen ok.

Photos don't really show the full coloration, but give some idea.

 

[JTP424]

Looks like a fairly new tank. What are your parameters and what type of clean up crew do you have?? That green algae is somewhere to start...

 

[tstor]

Looks like a fairly new tank. What are your parameters and what type of clean up crew do you have?? That green algae is somewhere to start...

Tank is 9 months old, but the rock came from another reefers established tank.
Here are the params from the test before I left:

Algae is growing everywhere, but it's been at that level for a couple months. I had other things I was working on and I only change 1 thing at a time in my reef

 

[GatorGreg]

Were any of your clocks blinking 12:00 as in maybe there was a power outage while you were away that you weren’t aware of?

 

[Tired]

Odd. Any chance anything was spilled in there?

My only thought is dying/dead algae bloom, but I don't think that would produce a tannin-like effect. Though I have to say, I'm not seeing much in those photos.
(though I do have my computer on night yellow-light mode, so I might be missing something.)

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Do a large water change, dose some phosphate if you can (since your phosphate is at minimum already and a water change would remove more of that), possibly dose a little nitrates as well (again, low number, water change), keep the carbon in, and continue watching for distress.

 

[tstor]

Were any of your clocks blinking 12:00 as in maybe there was a power outage while you were away that

Good thought, but it seems like there was no outage

 

[tstor]

So, the fresh carbon and purigen seems to have helped. Tannin like color is going away and the euphilia looks happier. Still, would like to know what caused it

 

[tstor]

Odd. Any chance anything was spilled in there?

My only thought is dying/dead algae bloom, but I don't think that would produce a tannin-like effect. Though I have to say, I'm not seeing much in those photos.
(though I do have my computer on night yellow-light mode, so I might be missing something.)

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Do a large water change, dose some phosphate if you can (since your phosphate is at minimum already and a water change would remove more of that), possibly dose a little nitrates as well (again, low number, water change), keep the carbon in, and continue watching for distress.

Good plan, it's getting late here so I'll probably do that for tonight. The phone keeps auto-correcting for the color to it's hard to get it to come through.

I started with nopox because nitrates were starting to creep up between water changes, maybe that could have had a weird effect? But my dose has only been at the starter level: 1ml into a 20gal .

 

[Tired]

How high is "up"? 5-10ppm nitrates is a good number for many tanks.

 

[tstor]

How high is "up"? 5-10ppm nitrates is a good number for many tanks.

10-15. But I also wanted to start feeding more, and using coral foods so it was partly done in preparation

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hi all,

I just got back from a weekend away and there water in my tank is green-brown. It looks like a blackwater freshwater tank. I've changed carbon and cleaned my skimmer, but does anyone have an idea of what's caused this? Fish seem ok for now, torch is unhappy but no tissue recession. Nems seen ok.

View attachment 3083184View attachment 3083185Photos don't really show the full coloration, but give some idea.

My suspicion alredy is nothing to do with parameters, but by chance, is this tank at or near a window?

 

[tstor]

No, it's around the corner from one. I've seen you ask this question a couple times, what does a window do?

 

[brandon429]

here is how to fix your tank, the impacted sand waste + the algae on the rocks + the hazy water

Algae Identification

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

www.reef2reef.com

any chemistry you're testing doesn't apply. even if you could kill off that algae, you wouldn't want to rot it in the system. we can see from your sandbed cross section the waste that fuels the algae/suspended bacteria

look at the after pics in the thread above: would your tank look great in that condition like the after pics, compared to how it looks now?

you could have your tank fixed in 24 hours, testing nothing, buying only new water for the total water change we did there.