Newbie who rushed a bit. Tail between my legs. Looking for advice on closed polyps and brown algae.

[Roatan Reef]

Tank is waaaaaaaaay to young for corals!

 

[JasonG1]

It's clear to me reading all your very helpful advice that I need to chill out. Before setting this up (and in the first month) I watched 30+ hours of videos, 20+ hours of reading this site...and thought I knew enough. I figured I could buy my way out of issues when I need to get the basic parameters correct and stable first and that could take many months/a year. And I'll need to deal with the ugly phase one way or another. What I've gleaned from the posts is I should stop making big changes, stop adding chemicals or new equipment right now, and focus on slowly get my pH and Salinity up. @ReefEco was right...I aimed a pump return up to agitate the surface and my pH dropped further (7.15 on my "not recalibrated" electronic pH meter). While not re-calibrated yet, it went down on the same device. So...off to read about the best way on a new tank to slowly/safely increase pH. I'm in very hot Southwest FL in a newer/tight home so opening doors and windows is not an acceptable solution.

 

[twelvefive]

It's clear to me reading all your very helpful advice that I need to chill out. Before setting this up (and in the first month) I watched 30+ hours of videos, 20+ hours of reading this site...and thought I knew enough. I figured I could buy my way out of issues when I need to get the basic parameters correct and stable first and that could take many months/a year. And I'll need to deal with the ugly phase one way or another. What I've gleaned from the posts is I should stop making big changes, stop adding chemicals or new equipment right now, and focus on slowly get my pH and Salinity up. @ReefEco was right...I aimed a pump return up to agitate the surface and my pH dropped further (7.15 on my "not recalibrated" electronic pH meter). While not re-calibrated yet, it went down on the same device. So...off to read about the best way on a new tank to slowly/safely increase pH. I'm in very hot Southwest FL in a newer/tight home so opening doors and windows is not an acceptable solution.

Bringing up salinity will increase alk and ph, don't buy anything until you get that worked out and figure out your actual baseline.

 

[jda]

Your tank does not have a pH of 7.15. Don't worry about this.

Opening the windows is the still the best solution. You don't have to warm up your home to do so... you just have to exchange some air, not warm the place up. A few minutes with a box fan can replace several thousand CFM of air in one minute. Think of this as cracking a window in your car if somebody cuts a nasty fart on a winter day... just gotta dilute the air for a few seconds, not make everybody cold by driving the rest of the way home with the windows down. The human will thank you for this too if the co2 is over 800.

If you think that additives are cheaper or safer, then just consider the cost of a few pennies of AC, even if you do warm the home up a bit, compared to buying a reactor, soda ash, shipping on all of that, the waste, etc. The human and pet benefits are priceless, IMO. If you open the windows when it is cool, then there is nearly no impact to temperature. If there are allergy issues and you still live in South Florida, then that is different.

Even if you get a skimmer, if it is mixing high co2 air, then the pH will not rise.

You are on the right track - top with the media or additives. You can use some of these as an overlay once your tank has an ecosystem if you need to fine tune. Right now, you are not letting nature do it's thing and her thing is better than yours.

If you really want to skip most of the uglies, then see if there is a pack of live rock from the ocean that fits your fancy. You can likely just drive up to Tampa and cherry pick some if you are in South Florida.

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

I'm new to the hobby, hoping for advice, and wondering why my Green Star Polyp hasn't opened in 2 days and if the brown growth shown in the pics is a "safe" nuisance algae.

I sadly admit that I rushed like I said I wouldn't. I understand if folks don't want to help since I rushed.

My tank started with 2 clowns and Dr. Tim's to cycle. 20% water changes were done every few days to keep Ammonia and Nitrite as low as reasonable. After 2 weeks, I had 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, and 1 Nitrate so I added a six-line wrasse, yellow clown goby, and magenta dottyback...still doing 20% water changes every 3-4 days with RODI & Aquaforest carefully measuring SG. I knew I should probably only add 1 fish at a time, but the LFS guy told me in a tank my size, these 3 little guys would be fine (I'm suspicious) and my children were hassling me. A week later, I added a piece of green star polyp and 4 small hermit crabs. I realized adding the green star polyps meant I need to turn on my AI Prime (which I thought I'd leave off [or very low] for months). Well now with the lights on...why not add 1 zoa (which I did on Saturday 6/3/23). I noticed about that same time that some brown algae was forming on the tops of the rocks and sand bed directly under the light. So I reduced the intensities on the AI Prime channels...~20% down to ~15% and reduced the hours per day from 11 to 8 (also too much too fast I think). Also, I saw Nitrites increasing over the last week (but 0 ppm Ammonia), so did (3) 20% water changes over 1 week, and may have found the source of the Nitrite spike on this new tank...a dead hermit crab.

All fish appear healthy and hungry. Here are my issues:

1) The polyps haven't opened in 2 days so, thinking it was the light reduction, I just increased the light back to previous levels, but still only 8 hours/day.
2) The brown algae seems to somewhat disappear at night and return further expanded each day. Is it normal to largely disappear at night then return the next day?
3) The new zoa frag (that looked pretty pink at the LFS) just look brown in my tank.

Below are my tank and water details.

Can you please let me know what you would do if in my situation? I can take the jabs...just looking to get on a good path forward.

1 month old 40 Gallon IM AIO with Carib Sea sand bed, 30 pounds reef saver, AI Prime 16. Aquaforest Reef Salt and RODI with 0 TDS output. Running carbon and GFO packs (both replaced on 6/4) and filter sock. I dose Vibrant and Microbacter Clean according to their instructions. (2) clowns, (1) six-line wrasse, (1) yellow clown goby, (1) magenta dottyback, (3) hermit crabs, (1) Green star polyp frag, (1) zoa frag

Parameters measured on 6/7/2023:
Temp 77.3 (average of 77.0, 77.3, 77.4 readings)
Salinity (Milwaukee Refractometer): 1.026 SG
Salinity (TM High Precision Hydrometer): 1.023 SG (I trust this more)
PH meter (https://amzn.to/3P037YN): 7.25 - stable for 1 month
PH (Red Sea): <7.6 (test kit doesn't show below 7.6)
Ammonia (Hanna Colorimeter): 0.0 ppm
Ammonia (Red Sea): 0.2 ppm
Nitrite (Red Sea): 0.5 ppm
Nitrite (Hanna Colorimeter): 38 -> (125), 72 -> (236) ppb
Nitrate (Red Sea): 1 ppm
Nitrate (Hanna Colorimeter): 3.3 ppm
Phosphate (Hanna Colorimeter): 0.14 ppm
Alkalinity (Red Sea): 8 dKH
Alkalinity (Hanna Colorimeter): 8.2 dKH
Calcium (Hanna Colorimeter): 455 ppm

Algae is normal at early stage.manual remove what you can via toothbrush & siphon(don't put Syphon near the zoa's!).
pH is way too low.as suggested point a wavemaker at surface & add a co2 scrubber to skimmer or feed airline out of a window.
The low pH is most likely reason for upset GSP.
Try adding some live rock and more CUC.
I bought two Kenya trees I didn't really want purely because they were mounted on big chunks of live rock that was crawling with pods.it helped stabilise things in a noticeable way pretty quickly.
Dry rock is a pain & will leach phos for sometime.
Ride it out & do what you can.
Salinity & pH would be my first priority