Extremely fast algae growth in glass…for no reason?

[Viking_Reefing]

Hi there! I’m actually kind of stumped when it comes to this situation and it’s something I’ve never dealt with in over two decades of reefing. Since transferring over to this system (almost two years ago) I’ve, for the most part, been dealing with very fast algae growth on the glass. Now, it’s not a major issue as it’s easily solved by scraping the glass but it’s not exactly fun maintenance. This is what the glass looks after about two days:

Now, you’re probably thinking that this guy just needs to get his nutrients in check but believe me, I’ve tried that. I generally run my systems at about No3: 5-10 and Po4: 0.04 - 0.07. I’ve also tried driving the nutrients down to zero (both on accident and by purpose) to the point where corals have started showing severe stress without it making any difference. I’ve also tried running my levels higher if, for some strange reason, HIGHER nutrients would help. Nothing.

My ICP tests generally come back without nothing major out of whack, perhaps some low traces from time to time and one time bromine was fairly high which I chalk up to a testing error. No high silicates or anything like that.

Other information is that I run both a 110w UV and a 200mg/h ozone unit (controlled by my profilux) that draws in to my bubble king supermarin 250. These factors should also help to reduce film algae growth as when it’s scraped off and goes in to the water column it should be nuked by the UV/ozone. I’ve also tried turning both off to see if I might be keeping the water a bit TO clean and that had a negative effect for some reason…still nope!

Next up was lighting but since I run two different tank on the same system with vastly different lighting setups and spectrums but that ain’t it.
Oh and I’m not feeding any live phyto or anything like that.

Under similar conditions in the past I'm used to maybe scraping the glass once a week just because…but could probably have stretched it to two.

So…I don’t get it is there something obvious I’m to stupid to see?

 

[ReeferTang44]

Sorry this isn't your answer but I love you videos your tank is amazing!
What are your phosphates and nitrates? I'm assuming they're OK.

 

[John Bolden]

I have the same issue no matter how many times I scrape the glass by the next day its back.

 

[Miami Reef]

I think this is normal. 2-3 days is about the time when algae grows back.

How long is your photoperiod? Is there sunlight hitting the glass while the lights are off, which extends the photoperiod beyond the artificial lighting?

 

[Reef Stallion]

1. General recommendation is to flood the tank with pods. They will work on the glass at night.
2. UV lights kill parasites at low flow rates. In order to reduce algae blooms, the flow rate needs to be turned up high. How high depends on the UV light and so I cannot give specific recommendations, only general.

 

[randomfishdude]

I have no clue but I will say I deal with this in my bedroom tank.
I just figured it was normal.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Sorry this isn't your answer but I love you videos your tank is amazing!
What are your phosphates and nitrates? I'm assuming they're OK.

Thanks bud, glad to hear it
Yeah, they stay somewhere in the neighborhood of No3: 5-10 and Po4: 0.04 - 0.07 but I’ve pushed them down to zero with no effect.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I have no clue but I will say I deal with this in my bedroom tank.
I just figured it was normal.

Can’t speak for anyone else but it’s a lot different o what I’m used to haha

 

[randomfishdude]

Can’t speak for anyone else but it’s a lot different o what I’m used to haha

One of my tanks has it one dosnt.
It does appear to come and go.
I don't think it's lighting related I have relatively low light in mine.

 

[StatelineReefer]

Any natural sunlight in the room? Iron supplementation or new source of iron?

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Any natural sunlight in the room? Iron supplementation or new source of iron?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. There’s generally some natural light making it’s way in to the tank (not that I’ve ever noticed that being an issue in other tanks) but I’ve also done experiments with closing the blinds and no change.

I’ve dosed iron in the past and noticed no change when I started/stopped. My iron is always undetectable on ICP test…which doesn’t really say much as they suck at registering iron hehe

 

[Devan Patel]

I

Hi there! I’m actually kind of stumped when it comes to this situation and it’s something I’ve never dealt with in over two decades of reefing. Since transferring over to this system (almost two years ago) I’ve, for the most part, been dealing with very fast algae growth on the glass. Now, it’s not a major issue as it’s easily solved by scraping the glass but it’s not exactly fun maintenance. This is what the glass looks after about two days:

Now, you’re probably thinking that this guy just needs to get his nutrients in check but believe me, I’ve tried that. I generally run my systems at about No3: 5-10 and Po4: 0.04 - 0.07. I’ve also tried driving the nutrients down to zero (both on accident and by purpose) to the point where corals have started showing severe stress without it making any difference. I’ve also tried running my levels higher if, for some strange reason, HIGHER nutrients would help. Nothing.

My ICP tests generally come back without nothing major out of whack, perhaps some low traces from time to time and one time bromine was fairly high which I chalk up to a testing error. No high silicates or anything like that.

Other information is that I run both a 110w UV and a 200mg/h ozone unit (controlled by my profilux) that draws in to my bubble king supermarin 250. These factors should also help to reduce film algae growth as when it’s scraped off and goes in to the water column it should be nuked by the UV/ozone. I’ve also tried turning both off to see if I might be keeping the water a bit TO clean and that had a negative effect for some reason…still nope!

Next up was lighting but since I run two different tank on the same system with vastly different lighting setups and spectrums but that ain’t it.
Oh and I’m not feeding any live phyto or anything like that.

Under similar conditions in the past I'm used to maybe scraping the glass once a week just because…but could probably have stretched it to two.

So…I don’t get it is there something obvious I’m to stupid to see?

I knew I recognized this tank somewhere, awesome videos

 

[MnFish1]

Hi there! I’m actually kind of stumped when it comes to this situation and it’s something I’ve never dealt with in over two decades of reefing. Since transferring over to this system (almost two years ago) I’ve, for the most part, been dealing with very fast algae growth on the glass. Now, it’s not a major issue as it’s easily solved by scraping the glass but it’s not exactly fun maintenance. This is what the glass looks after about two days:

Now, you’re probably thinking that this guy just needs to get his nutrients in check but believe me, I’ve tried that. I generally run my systems at about No3: 5-10 and Po4: 0.04 - 0.07. I’ve also tried driving the nutrients down to zero (both on accident and by purpose) to the point where corals have started showing severe stress without it making any difference. I’ve also tried running my levels higher if, for some strange reason, HIGHER nutrients would help. Nothing.

My ICP tests generally come back without nothing major out of whack, perhaps some low traces from time to time and one time bromine was fairly high which I chalk up to a testing error. No high silicates or anything like that.

Other information is that I run both a 110w UV and a 200mg/h ozone unit (controlled by my profilux) that draws in to my bubble king supermarin 250. These factors should also help to reduce film algae growth as when it’s scraped off and goes in to the water column it should be nuked by the UV/ozone. I’ve also tried turning both off to see if I might be keeping the water a bit TO clean and that had a negative effect for some reason…still nope!

Next up was lighting but since I run two different tank on the same system with vastly different lighting setups and spectrums but that ain’t it.
Oh and I’m not feeding any live phyto or anything like that.

Under similar conditions in the past I'm used to maybe scraping the glass once a week just because…but could probably have stretched it to two.

So…I don’t get it is there something obvious I’m to stupid to see?

There are still excess nutrient in the tank - at least nutrients that the corals, etc are not using and that the algae is using. Curious are you doing any water changes?

 

[Treefer32]

I have this same problem on my 340 gallon in wall display. It's in a basement with no windows in the vicinity. It's also where my theater projector is so we made sure we had room darkening blinds and keep that room as dark as possible. I also run an algae turf scrubber that grows hair algae overfilling the unit in 5 days. I don't do any water changes, I dose trace elements (red Sea, A, B, C, And D) once a week - these include iron, potassium, and iodine, plus minute traces of others. I dose chaetogrow as well to keep my scrubber going. It's amazing how much trace elements hair algae consume!

I scrape my 6 feet, 31 inch tall front glass and 4-6 hours later I have film algae starting to grow back on. I've done the same as you, increased phosphates, decreased phosphates and it doesn't matter.

I've even let all 4 pains of glass grow solid film algae for a month, then I have to get the razor sharp scrapers out and scrap all panels. That takes me a good 1-2 hours to get them spotless. I have a reefmat 1200 that catches all the debris. I run an oversized skimmer, I have a nitrate denitrator that took my nitrates from 65 to 15 (currently).

As of yesterday my phosphates tested at .35. I've had them as low as 0.0 on hanna ULR tester. And I still had algae grow in on the glass like you said. I was letting it go high to see if that would help. I started having Cyano when phosphates were low. The cyano is 90% gone now, but no change to film algae.

I appreciate your story because I was going to add a 120 watt UV that would be primarily to manage parasites. However, this sized UV at 1300 gph is 4 times my volume turnover, which might be slow enough for parasites and fast enough for algae control. I was going to include a gate valve to control the flow rate through the UV if I want to raise the rate through the UV for algae. But, if you're still seeing algae growth within a day or so, that's not much different from my 6-12 hours of regrowth.

I even have an Abelone snail to assist with eating algae, it's approimately 4 inches long. Plus 3-4 other turbo snails that have gotten well over 2 inches in size. Yet, they just don't keep up with algae on the glass. They keep my rocks clean very well though.

 

[UMALUM]

Hi there! I’m actually kind of stumped when it comes to this situation and it’s something I’ve never dealt with in over two decades of reefing. Since transferring over to this system (almost two years ago) I’ve, for the most part, been dealing with very fast algae growth on the glass. Now, it’s not a major issue as it’s easily solved by scraping the glass but it’s not exactly fun maintenance. This is what the glass looks after about two days:

Now, you’re probably thinking that this guy just needs to get his nutrients in check but believe me, I’ve tried that. I generally run my systems at about No3: 5-10 and Po4: 0.04 - 0.07. I’ve also tried driving the nutrients down to zero (both on accident and by purpose) to the point where corals have started showing severe stress without it making any difference. I’ve also tried running my levels higher if, for some strange reason, HIGHER nutrients would help. Nothing.

My ICP tests generally come back without nothing major out of whack, perhaps some low traces from time to time and one time bromine was fairly high which I chalk up to a testing error. No high silicates or anything like that.

Other information is that I run both a 110w UV and a 200mg/h ozone unit (controlled by my profilux) that draws in to my bubble king supermarin 250. These factors should also help to reduce film algae growth as when it’s scraped off and goes in to the water column it should be nuked by the UV/ozone. I’ve also tried turning both off to see if I might be keeping the water a bit TO clean and that had a negative effect for some reason…still nope!

Next up was lighting but since I run two different tank on the same system with vastly different lighting setups and spectrums but that ain’t it.
Oh and I’m not feeding any live phyto or anything like that.

Under similar conditions in the past I'm used to maybe scraping the glass once a week just because…but could probably have stretched it to two.

So…I don’t get it is there something obvious I’m to stupid to see?

I was in the same boat months ago and this worked wonders.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I

I knew I recognized this tank somewhere, awesome videos

Thank you. Appreciate it my man

I have this same problem on my 340 gallon in wall display. It's in a basement with no windows in the vicinity. It's also where my theater projector is so we made sure we had room darkening blinds and keep that room as dark as possible. I also run an algae turf scrubber that grows hair algae overfilling the unit in 5 days. I don't do any water changes, I dose trace elements (red Sea, A, B, C, And D) once a week - these include iron, potassium, and iodine, plus minute traces of others. I dose chaetogrow as well to keep my scrubber going. It's amazing how much trace elements hair algae consume!

I scrape my 6 feet, 31 inch tall front glass and 4-6 hours later I have film algae starting to grow back on. I've done the same as you, increased phosphates, decreased phosphates and it doesn't matter.

I've even let all 4 pains of glass grow solid film algae for a month, then I have to get the razor sharp scrapers out and scrap all panels. That takes me a good 1-2 hours to get them spotless. I have a reefmat 1200 that catches all the debris. I run an oversized skimmer, I have a nitrate denitrator that took my nitrates from 65 to 15 (currently).

As of yesterday my phosphates tested at .35. I've had them as low as 0.0 on hanna ULR tester. And I still had algae grow in on the glass like you said. I was letting it go high to see if that would help. I started having Cyano when phosphates were low. The cyano is 90% gone now, but no change to film algae.

I appreciate your story because I was going to add a 120 watt UV that would be primarily to manage parasites. However, this sized UV at 1300 gph is 4 times my volume turnover, which might be slow enough for parasites and fast enough for algae control. I was going to include a gate valve to control the flow rate through the UV if I want to raise the rate through the UV for algae. But, if you're still seeing algae growth within a day or so, that's not much different from my 6-12 hours of regrowth.

I even have an Abelone snail to assist with eating algae, it's approimately 4 inches long. Plus 3-4 other turbo snails that have gotten well over 2 inches in size. Yet, they just don't keep up with algae on the glass. They keep my rocks clean very well though.

Interesting. Yeah, same here. I have no algae to speak of on the rocks. I’ve also fiddled around with flow rates on the UV without much success but you can certainly try, our experiences might not match down to a T in that regard.

I was in the same boat months ago and this worked wonders.

Interesting. I’ve dosed some different bacteria’s on and off but haven’t seen any improvement in terms of the growth. Might as well try that!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

There are still excess nutrient in the tank - at least nutrients that the corals, etc are not using and that the algae is using. Curious are you doing any water changes?

Yeah, that stands to reason but I don’t see how haha. Unless it’s somehow in a form that’s much more available to algae than the corals and doesn’t show up on standardized tests. I come that ammonia is more bioavailable to corals than nitrate but unless there are gaps in my knowledge (which there very well might be) there’s not a huge inverse of that in terms of nitrates.
Oh and I’ve also driven the nutrients so low that it induced Dinos but the film algae was still there.

Yeah, I do 10L daily via AWCs. I’ve also tried different salts (not related to combating the film algae) without any obvious change.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hi there! I’m actually kind of stumped when it comes to this situation and it’s something I’ve never dealt with in over two decades of reefing. Since transferring over to this system (almost two years ago) I’ve, for the most part, been dealing with very fast algae growth on the glass. Now, it’s not a major issue as it’s easily solved by scraping the glass but it’s not exactly fun maintenance. This is what the glass looks after about two days:

Now, you’re probably thinking that this guy just needs to get his nutrients in check but believe me, I’ve tried that. I generally run my systems at about No3: 5-10 and Po4: 0.04 - 0.07. I’ve also tried driving the nutrients down to zero (both on accident and by purpose) to the point where corals have started showing severe stress without it making any difference. I’ve also tried running my levels higher if, for some strange reason, HIGHER nutrients would help. Nothing.

My ICP tests generally come back without nothing major out of whack, perhaps some low traces from time to time and one time bromine was fairly high which I chalk up to a testing error. No high silicates or anything like that.

Other information is that I run both a 110w UV and a 200mg/h ozone unit (controlled by my profilux) that draws in to my bubble king supermarin 250. These factors should also help to reduce film algae growth as when it’s scraped off and goes in to the water column it should be nuked by the UV/ozone. I’ve also tried turning both off to see if I might be keeping the water a bit TO clean and that had a negative effect for some reason…still nope!

Next up was lighting but since I run two different tank on the same system with vastly different lighting setups and spectrums but that ain’t it.
Oh and I’m not feeding any live phyto or anything like that.

Under similar conditions in the past I'm used to maybe scraping the glass once a week just because…but could probably have stretched it to two.

So…I don’t get it is there something obvious I’m to stupid to see?

Not abnormal. Ive gone from every 4 days to 2 days and its film algae and you would think with all my tangs- It would be zero but not the case. I use the magnetic algae scrubber which takes all 2 minutes.

 

[Treefer32]

Not abnormal. Ive gone from every 4 days to 2 days and its film algae and you would think with all my tangs- It would be zero but not the case. I use the magnetic algae scrubber which takes all 2 minutes.

What's funny is my tangs and angel fish follow the scraper on the glass. They eat the algae I scrape off the glass as I scrape it. I've almost smacked my fish a couple times with the scraper. They want every morsal I scrape off. They think it's feeding time.... If only they ate it off the glass...

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Seems like a normal sign of a healthy tank.