Hydrogen Sulfide Smell from tank, related to GHA?

[Glasswalker]

Hi, so lately when doing cleanup of our system of Green Hair Algae that's been growing, My wife and I notice that for a day or two it stinks pretty bad of Rotten Egg (Hydrogen Sulfide Smell I think).

This is a long post, sorry for all the details, just wanted to include as much info as I could to help anyone who wants to offer input.

We have a 90G system (60G display, and 30G sump) which has been up for over a year. Been going relatively well, except we got a bit behind on water changes roughly 6 months ago as I had a lot of business travel. As a result our nitrates/phosphates shot up, and we got a nasty Green Hair Algae problem.

We've been battling it via many methods, and it's been quite persistent)

Anyway, not really looking for direct help with the GHA, as we're still waging that war lol... But the main concern and reason for this thread is that we've noticed the last month or two, an occasional spike of "essence of smelly-egg" wafting from our system once in a while. I know this usually means Hydrogen Sulfide.

At first we only smelled it from the algae itself (when removing it from the tank), so just chalked it up to being "algae stink". But lately now if we do a big round of cleanup in the tank, it will stink for 1-2 days afterward (it does go away after this though, until our next big cleaning, though sometimes if you stick your head right near the water in the sump, you can still smell a slight hint of it).

Getting a little concerned. So just thought I should check in.

Any advice/input would be appreciated!

Now for the details:

• Stock:
  • Pair of Percula Clowns (male and female, both mature)
  • Foxface (probably 4" long)
  • Firefish
  • Decorated Goby (who loves to constantly mix the sand up and build castles in it lol)
  • 1 Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
  • 4x BTAs (all split from the same one, now 1 is about 5" diameter, 1 is 3-4" diameter, and the other 2 are 2" diameter)
  • 2x Plate Montiporas that have been growing (one green, one red)
  • 1x Hammer Coral, which hasn't shown signs of growth oddly
  • 1x Rock Flower Anemone
  • 1x Orange Pavona Coral (small frag)
  • 1x Small Colony of Stag Acro, which nearly died of RTN, a few tips still alive.
  • handful of snails, assorted varieties
  • probably a couple dozen small blue hermit crabs
  • Dolabella Sea Hare (prob 3" in length) just added 2-3 days ago
• Feeding:
  • We used to over feed quite a bit. This likely contributed to the nutrient problem feeding the algae.
  • We reduced about 2-3 months ago to feed a small pinch of flakes, and a small pinch (5-6) of the small (0.5mm) pellets, or about 1 cube of frozen food per day. (alternating days of dry or frozen food)
  • We have recently reduced this cycle further to feeding every second day.
• Specs:
  • 60g display tank
  • Approx 60lb live rock in display
  • Sand bed is white aragonite sand, approx 1mm+ grains. originally was about 1" to 1.5" deep, but now varies from 1" to 2" in depth depending on the day and place (as the Goby loves to move it around, sometimes it's bare glass in one part, and a 2" pile somewhere, the next day the pile is somewhere else, and glass is showing somewhere else lol)
  • 30g sump with approx 10g fuge, about another 10lb of lr rubble in fuge
  • 1000GPH return pump from sump to display
  • 2x Hydor Koralia 750GPH power heads
  • Aquatic Life XS-UV LED fixture, 36" Model
  • Water comes from city water, run through RO/DI filter, tested regularly with TDS meter at 0.0 TDS.
  • Salt water mixed using Reef Crystals for water changes.
  • Chaeto being cultivated in fuge, with fuge grow lighting on opposite cycle as main lights
  • Running over-rated skimmer (150G rated) Bubble Magus Curve A5 (skims a full cup about once a week, and it's a nice dark green sludge)
  • Running additional media in a media chamber (high flow area directly in path to return) (inside media bags):
    • Seachem PhosGuard
    • Seachem Matrix
  • Dosing No3Po4x daily at 5ml currently
  • Also get a lot of GHA in fuge, try to scrub it down regularly when doing water changes
  • Change about 30G (empty the sump and replace) during water changes, every 2-4 weeks
• Params:
  • Salinity 1.025 (Refractometer, calibrated regularly to reference solution)
  • Temp fluctuates between 78 and 81 depending on the day, and ambient room temp (we're upgrading to a controller soon to reduce this swing from our heaters)
  • ph is around 8.0 - 8.1 (API kit)
  • Ammonia 0 (API kit, and ammonia alert badge in overflow)
  • Nitrite 0 (API kit)
  • Nitrate 0 (API kit)
  • Phosphate 0.0 (read with Hanna Checker Ultra Low model, and API kit)
• Additional History/Background:
  • So the GHA happened as I said I think about 6 months ago? Got out of control fast. Growing on sand bed initially, and then got all over the rocks.
  • We tried manual removal, but couldn't keep up, determined it was a nutrient problem
  • Nitrates were up to 25, Phosphates 1.0 - 2.0
  • Heavy water changes corrected the nutrient problems initially, but still GHA was growing
  • Shortly after this is when we noticed the egg smell when removing the GHA, and coming from the skimmate when cleaning skimmer cup (skimmate stank bad). And during this time skimmate was VERY green.
  • Started dosing the No3Po4X stuff (alcohol), and it helped a lot, much of the algae died off, but not all. some kept growing.
  • Got nutrient levels down to 0 on test kit, but assuming the algae is masking the readings.
  • Adjusted lighting spectrum (removed ALL red spectrum, reduced whites heavily, and reduced overall intensity and period. Max intensity is now only like 50%, and only lasts 1 hour, with slow round curve from start to finish of photo period, with beginning and end of cycle primarily focused entirely on blue spectrum and actinics. With total photo period only about 8 hours, but "white" or "high-intensity" photo period only 2-3 hours.
  • Ran like this for a couple months, got some headway on the GHA, but still couldn't kill it off
  • Added more crabs and some turbo snails at recommendation of LFS, put 20 of each in the tank.
  • A couple of the tiny hermits died off, and most of the Turbos died within 2-3 weeks. Can't seem to keep those alive.
  • Only other deaths we've had in the tank is our Porcelain crab died, and we couldn't remove him as he crawled deep under the rockwork when he went. But he wasn't too big. No large deaths in the tank at all.
  • It's been a couple months at least since the crab and snails died.
  • We also added some Coral (3 small colonies of Acros) same time as the snails... They all died of RTN. Though now we realize that may have been a premature purchase, need to get tank in order first. 2 colonies completely dead, and removed. One just the tips of the branches still have polyps left, and the RTN stopped, so we're trying to nurse it back to health and we'll frag it up later if it survives.
  • We just added a Dolabella Sea Hare to the tank this past weekend on Saturday Morning. He seems happy, and is doing wonders wherever he touches the rocks (gets them shiny and clean again!) hopefully he stays happy and keeps eating at that rate.

Now when we do cleanings of the hair algae (Scraping glass, picking it out of powerheads, and manually picking rocks, etc). Afterwards, there is lots of floating algae debris in the water, which gets caught in our mesh filter sock, which we let run for 24h-48h after the cleanup then change to get all the loose algae out of it. During this window the tank reeks of rotten egg.

It stinks bad enough after a cleaning that you can smell it through most of the main floor of our house for about 24-48 hours. Then it dissipates.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't have to do with the sand bed, as it's fairly shallow, course grain, and is mixed constantly by the Goby (and we have a handful of Nessarius snails as well digging around in there).

Parameters seem to test out very good, Coral is happy, fish are happy, no major (large) deaths, Chaeto is growing well, and is pruned regularly, only real issue is the dang GHA which we're hoping to get a handle on through manual removal, dosing of alcohol, Phosguard, and the help of our new friend the Sea Hare.

So, any thoughts on the egg stink? Anything we should test/look into? Any major risks? Any specific tests we can perform?

Thanks in advance for any input!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Yea if its shallow the sand may not be the culprit. Its possible you have a rock going bad.
You may want to stop the carbon dosing.

Have you read this one? HS be Randy? http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/rhf/
Make sure you have a lot of gas exchange and run a bit more gfo...

 

[Glasswalker]

Yea if its shallow the sand may not be the culprit. Its possible you have a rock going bad.
You may want to stop the carbon dosing.

Have you read this one? HS be Randy? http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/rhf/
Make sure you have a lot of gas exchange and run a bit more gfo...

Thanks, I actually have read that article, and it's extremely detailed

The main take-away I had from it is that there are a multitude of sources for it (primarily the breakdown of proteins), and that it's detectable by humans in a saltwater aquarium at far lower concentrations than are toxic for most marine animals.

Also that it's breakdown is accelerated by light, along with many other factors, and it's toxicity can be affected by several factors as well (including PH being a big one).

As for gas exchange, have tons. My powerheads cause a lot of surface activity, and my sump design has several design factors that cause significant surface agitation. Not to mention the skimmer running 24/7.

I am curious about your comment on running more GFO though, the Phosguard actually isn't GFO, it's an Alumina Oxide based Phosphate/Silicate absorber. I don't have any GFO in the system. Also curious what the GFO does with relation to Hydrogen Sulfide (or are you just recommending that to help with the GHA). We added the Phosguard specifically because the alcohol dosing is doing a great job at keeping nutrients low, but it's more focused on Nitrate (kills phosphate too, but phosphate was able to be measured with just the alcohol dosing, at very minimal levels, while nitrate was absolutely zero). Also the Alcohol dosing doesn't seem to help silicate at all, and while we're not testing for silicate, we suspected it could be feeding the GHA.

So we felt a method that is more targeted to phosphate/silicate to use in concert with the alcohol would help us kill the nutrients that are feeding the algae more effectively.

Also I never thought of a rock going bad... That said it doesn't seem right considering the rotten egg smell only gets bad when we do an algae cleanup, (or when we empty the skimmer cup just because it stinks to high heaven) lol... But I would think if it's a rock going, that would be a constant state thing...

Also I'll be running carbon soon, waiting on my order of carbon to arrive so I can put some in that media chamber. Wanted it in there in case the Sea Hare does a toxin release thing (as they are reported to sometimes do), and from what I understand carbon will also help with the Hydrogen Sulfide as well...

More research definitely called for. Thanks!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Also curious what the GFO does with relation to Hydrogen Sulfide

re read the article on that one.its a bider for the sulphur Ion as I recall.

So we felt a method that is more targeted to phosphate/silicate to use in concert with the alcohol would help us kill the nutrients that are feeding the algae more effectively.

Id like more experienced input, but if you've been carbon dosing a while now, population may have bloomed to a point to create the correct bad environment for bacteria to begin to die off .
If you have a very old rock, I would suspect that.

 

[Glasswalker]

re read the article on that one.its a bider for the sulphur Ion as I recall.

Oh interesting! I missed that in the article. That's good to know. I can always switch to GFO in that case instead of the PhosGuard.

Id like more experienced input, but if you've been carbon dosing a while now, population may have bloomed to a point to create the correct bad environment for bacteria to begin to die off .
If you have a very old rock, I would suspect that.

Also interesting, though I don't have any old Rock. all my rock was dry rock when I started the tank. I've been carbon dosing for several months now, so unsure if that could create the bad situation. And I don't believe I'm overdosing (based on instructions on the No3Po4x bottle it says the low end maintenance dose is like 1-2ml per 25Gal of water column, assuming my system is prob 75g of water, that's 3ml on the low end to 6ml on the high end. so I'm dosing 5ml per day right now as I'm still trying to drive down the GHA. I could drop it to 3ml per day though to see if that helps the smell any...

I'm concerned though that I need to stay ahead of the GHA, which is why I'm reluctant to stop the carbon dosing. It took nearly a month of carbon dosing to get the bacterial colonies built up to a point where they controlled nutrients effectively. Would I not have to "re-build" that if I stop feeding those bacteria letting them die off?

Also what are your comments to the fact that it seems to only show itself when I do a massive algae cleanup?

Thanks again!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

On clean up I'm not sure. That makes little sense to me.
As long as your sure it's a sulpur smell I'd stay on that track.

On Gha , nutrints only do so much. CUC it really going to be your best best along with manual removal.

Your positive it's Gha?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Let's get eyes on this. I must be missing something.
#reefsquad @brandon429
With low nutints what else is driving algae growth
In fresh water systems I dose a carbon source to grow plants. Could that be a factor?

 

[Glasswalker]

On clean up I'm not sure. That makes little sense to me.
As long as your sure it's a sulpur smell I'd stay on that track.

On Gha , nutrints only do so much. CUC it really going to be your best best along with manual removal.

Your positive it's Gha?

Yeah definitely spikes the smell on cleanup. Smell is gone today when I got home from work, did cleanup last night.

Pretty sure it's gha, can't name species though.

As for smell, last night I'd definitely say was "rotten egg" but today, only remaining smell was "wet dog" coming from sump, and it was much more mild (had to stick head in sump and sniff to smell it).

Will upload a pic of the gha in a bit for reference

 

[Glasswalker]

Your positive it's Gha?

Here is promised pic of the GHA, mobile app wouldn't let me upload for some reason.

 

[Sabellafella]

Here is promised pic of the GHA, mobile app wouldn't let me upload for some reason.

Ive experienced this myself aswell, get a real bad smell like that from cleaning out algae

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

How exactly are you removing algae? If you rip it out you may be exposing hydrogen sulfide from underneath. Also, there may be strong smell from algae that are other compounds.

 

[Glasswalker]

How exactly are you removing algae? If you rip it out you may be exposing hydrogen sulfide from underneath. Also, there may be strong smell from algae that are other compounds.

Hey Randy, thanks for confirming at least it's possible that algae removal can cause release of Hydrogen Sulfide, and the strong algae smell may also be a contributing factor (could be a little bit of HS, mixed with algae stink of some kind).

Any further insight on what those other compounds might be?

As for how I remove algae, a few methods actually:

• Pull it from rocks either with bare fingers, or with long stainless steel forceps
• Scrape it from glass areas with a razor blade.
• pull it up from sand, with forceps/fingers which usually brings a little bit of sand (that it's directly rooted to) with it, in that case we just throw the sand out with the algae
• In the sump we've scrubbed the rocks with brushes (never done that in display, as we've got coral and anemones attached to most of the bad rocks, and can't remove them, easily scrub around them without harm)
• For Power-heads we remove them from the tank and clean them off in a sink by hand removing caked on algae, and then disassemble and scrub them down to clean
• Same with our overflow siphon screen (which gets caked with algae as well).

Usually I do all of the above in a large cleanup (which I'm currently doing approx once a week). and occasionally just going in and picking at the rocks maybe another 1-2 times a week.

It's the large cleanups that tend to stir up the stink real bad. As I said it was definitely rotten egg stink (sulfur) but now that I smelled the more "pure algae" smell which I think is a bit more "wet dog" I realize it may have been mostly a stronger version of that, with a little bit of sulfur mixed in. Hard to say until I do another cleanup and smell it again.

As I mentioned there is a LOT of green in the skimmer cup every time we empty it too, and that thing stinks bad (it is the absolute king of nasty when emptying it). It's a nice dark skimmate (always has been) but since the algae got bad it's got a lot of green in it. And the skimmer cup definitely has that rotten egg sulfur smell (all as part of it's fragrant sewer bouquet)

Note the algae outbreak was quite bad, it's on the light-facing side of almost all the rock, and grows on the glass fairly quickly as well (as well as small patches on the sand bed, but the goby keeps that mixed up so it tends not to take root there easily)

I know the amount of algae present can mask nutrient readings. But I'm still shocked, I've heavily reduced lighting, the tank is not exposed to any sunlight (it is in a place in our house that is 100% sheltered by multiple walls/doors from all outside windows, it's on an interior wall facing into a room with no windows). We've reduced feeding heavily, we're doing water changes, added filteration and changing socks regularly, we're dosing carbon, and using a Phosphate/Silicate absorber, and readings are all coming back zero for all of the above. But it's still going crazy.

Anyway, here's hoping the Sea Hare can eat a bunch of it, and help me (with continued manual removal/cleanup) to get ahead of the growth enough that it stops throwing off readings, so I can accurately read nutrient levels.

Any other suggestions/thoughts (on the stink mostly, but also any suggestions on the GHA would be appreciated too lol, though at this point I've read a hundred articles, and forum threads, and tried dang near everything, I'm sure it's just a factor of time and diligence to get it back under control).