Saga of a neglected tank......

[Mickey]

I've been battling some cyano and dinos in my display tank for quite a long time and I'm sorry to say I really neglected things while I was working on getting my basement sump up and running (described in My Thank Thread). Not to make excuses but a number of other things have also gotten in the way:
- I was away for 6 weeks in Florida escaping the cold in New England
- Hubby needed some surgery on his face to remove a melanoma
- my Apex brain failed and needed to be replaced as Neptune said it was no longer supported (A2 bought in 2017) and they wouldn't check it out or repair it.

Anyway, tank really took a major turn for the worse, started slowly then really took a dive over the last three months. When I got back from FL the rock work was entirely covered with red cyano. Lost a number of corals, including euphylia with many, many heads. Duncan coral with too many heads to count has been pulled in for 4 almost 5 months.

I've been vacuuming out the cyano every few days for weeks. I identified under the microscope cyano on the left side of the tank and interestingly enough, spirolina on the right side. Only a little dinos but enough to scare me since I've battled those before. Seemed to be a mix of LCA, procentrum and Ostreopsis. Finally at end of March I used Chemiclean out of despiration. I figured things couldn't any worse. Spirulina mostly gone but still had red cyano that needed vacuuming every few days. I also have been dosing silica for the last two years or so after my last battle with dinos. Tank is now covered in what I think is hair algae. When it first started a few weeks ago I thought it was an overgrowth of diatoms so I cut back some on the silica.

Today I spent about 4 hours scrubbing the rocks and the overlow walls where I could and trying to vacuum out as much as possible. Walls are still bad and need a better scrubbing but reef structure looks a bit better. I also took out the corals which were dead and covered in the stuff.

Tank parameters:

72" x 30" wide x 24" high set up initially in September 2005. I've always had high nitrates and high phosphate (like over 1.50 high) but I've been bringing those down slowly over the last 6 weeks or so by slow dosing LaCl. I'm sure my rockwork has a ton of phosphate built up.

Nitrates: 19.8
Phosphate: 1.36
Silica: .15 (only dose M,W,F)
Alk: 10.95
Calcium: 384 (too low)
Mg: 14.73
Temp: 80.8 (raised from 78 a few weeks ago)
pH: 8.21
Salinity: 35.2

I'm ordering a new CUC today and debating how many Mexican turbos to add as I want this hair algae gone but I don't want them starving to death afterwards.

Pictures: Before


After cleaning:




Still a lot more scrubbing to do, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.

Anything else I should do or add to the tank to get rid of all this junk. I kick myself for letting it get this bad.

 

[Mechano]

If you have ostreopsis imo , this is the most biggest problem on your hands as they are very toxic. Add some carbon for sure.

If you do have quite a bit of dinoflagellates, then I wouldn’t be scrapping the glass etc as you just made the perfect home for new very fast growing Dino’s to grow opposed to the lesser problematic cyano/other algae’s.

Not sure if it was a typo, but is your phosphate level actually 1.36? Or .136?
Also don’t bother with raising the temp for Dino’s as it’s a myth.

 

[Mickey]

If you have ostreopsis imo , this is the most biggest problem on your hands as they are very toxic. Add some carbon for sure.

If you do have quite a bit of dinoflagellates, then I wouldn’t be scrapping the glass etc as you just made the perfect home for new very fast growing Dino’s to grow opposed to the lesser problematic cyano/other algae’s.

Not sure if it was a typo, but is your phosphate level actually 1.36? Or .136?
Also don’t bother with raising the temp for Dino’s as it’s a myth.

Thanks for your thoughts. No, the phosphate level is not a typo. As I said, it has been well over 1.00 for many, many years and has never been a problem before. There are also others who have run phosphates this high who also say it hasn't been a problem. Read some of Rich Ross's posts in various places.

I have been running carbon and I've been changing it frequently.

One of the reasons things got so bad was because I wasn't scraping things off and had also held off on water changes to try to limit any traces that might be feeding things. Everything just kept getting worse. I am a bit worried about having cleaned off the rocks, but it was smothering corals. Lost quite a few before I took this action as I had tried everything else I could think of. I also have been reading lots of posts on R2R, including most of the long threads about dinos.

 

[Mechano]

Thanks for your thoughts. No, the phosphate level is not a typo. As I said, it has been well over 1.00 for many, many years and has never been a problem before. There are also others who have run phosphates this high who also say it hasn't been a problem. Read some of Rich Ross's posts in various places.

I have been running carbon and I've been changing it frequently.

One of the reasons things got so bad was because I wasn't scraping things off and had also held off on water changes to try to limit any traces that might be feeding things. Everything just kept getting worse. I am a bit worried about having cleaned off the rocks, but it was smothering corals. Lost quite a few before I took this action as I had tried everything else I could think of. I also have been reading lots of posts on R2R, including most of the long threads about dinos.

Still with that being said, the phosphates at that level are pretty high (mine sit between .2-.3ppm and when it teeders toward the higher side I notice Film algae and a small patch of Derbesia algae. That tells me it’s time to check nutrients and nutrients balance.
(I keep my nutrient as close to a ratio of 100:1
Nitratehosphate eg. .1ppm phosphate to 10 nitrate)
I would suggest trying to get those 2 nutrients in more of a balance , also considering the age on your system, might be worthwhile doing an ICP test to see if the system is lacking a particular trace element or opposite, it has accumulated to much of a trace element.

Good luck

 

[rc8t6353]

Im a very firm believer in rip cleaning. My last tank had gotten pretty bad at one point. I would pull each rock out, one at a time and scrub it and rinse in new water. Scrape all the walls, then do a massive water change. I repeated this once a week, and along with a reinforced CUC it didn't take long to get back on track. GFO will help you get the phosphates down. Just go slow with it so the water isn't stripped too fast

 

[Mickey]

I hear ya. When all this started going downhill I did bite the bullet and have been slowing bringing phosphate down as I said in the original post. With a system so old, there's lots of phosphate in the rocks too so it is taking a while. I test every week and it initially made good progress but has slowed down as I assume the rocks are now leaching. I also do periodic ICP tests and most things are in line. Obviously phosphate is always flagged and there's a couple elements that are sometimes low like Strontium and Molybdenum but water changes usually resolve those and I've changed a lot of water in the last few weeks.

 

[cngh]

I just wanted to encourage you to stick with it. It'll be a tough and long road, but every step brings some progress.

I could have written your post about 4 months ago. I had severely neglected my tank due to life taking up a lot of time and energy. I had no will to deal with the tank and when stuff started going downhill, it gave me even less incentive (kinda backwards thinking....). I hadn't done a water change in probably close to a year, hardly cleaned the skimmer cup. Hadn't changed GAC in months. The tank was a mess.

I was on the verge of breaking it down and selling, but my kids were really sad about that prospect. So, I told them I'll give it one more solid go and see what happens. At that time, my nitrates were over 100 (salifert), and phosphates were at 1.70 (Milwaukee), alk/dkh was barely 5.8 or 6, thick mats of long green hair algae on every rock and surface, bubble algae, corals dying, fish very unhappy and unhealthy, hardly even saw them bc they didn't want to come out.

But, weekly water changes, scrubbing rocks and siphoning out the algae, dosing diy NoPox, staying on top of my skimmer, regular changing GAC, using phosguard, replacing my lights, cleaning and adding powerheads to improve flow and reduce dead spots, dosing AFR, stabilizing alk (had a big spike to almost 12 from lowering nitrates), adding an urchin and a handful of emerald crabs (snails don't survive long in my tank for whatever reason), and now my tank is night and day from where it was 4 or so months ago.

Still have hair algae, but it's a fraction of what it was. Nitrates are at 5 (I had to stop NoPox bc nitrates were at 0 for a bit. I had to dose neo nitro to get a measurement), phosphates are btwn .2 and.3 (trying to halve that), alk has been more stable ard 9ish. Fish and corals are way way way happier. Corals aren't perfect, but they have a lot to come back from. But so much better. I didn't use flux, but I bought some just in case. Probably won't use it now tbh.

Anyway, sorry to hijack. But you can do this. If I can, you can. Good luck!

 

[Mickey]

Im a very firm believer in rip cleaning. My last tank had gotten pretty bad at one point. I would pull each rock out, one at a time and scrub it and rinse in new water. Scrape all the walls, then do a massive water change. I repeated this once a week, and along with a reinforced CUC it didn't take long to get back on track. GFO will help you get the phosphates down. Just go slow with it so the water isn't stripped too fast

I wish it were that easy but a rip clean just isn't possible with a system this size, at least not for me. First this is a 20 year old system and most of the rocks are very large and heavy so difficult to lift out if I can even get them apart. Second, with the way my canopy is and the lights, there's not enough room to maneuver some of them out. Tank is eurobraced around the perimeter and also has two 5+ inch wide cross braces. Wish I could do it all over again as things have progressed in the hobby so much a new tank would be easier in lots of ways, but that's just not in the cards.

I've been dosing a very low dose of LaCL for a month. I really don't want to up that dose as it's too risky. I've used GFO in the past and I found LaCl works much better and not as messy as long as you go with a dilute solution.

Here's a couple pictures of what it used to look like. First couple are a few years old.






and this is from just last November.


Pretty sad to look at it now.

 

[Mickey]

I just wanted to encourage you to stick with it. It'll be a tough and long road, but every step brings some progress.

I could have written your post about 4 months ago. I had severely neglected my tank due to life taking up a lot of time and energy. I had no will to deal with the tank and when stuff started going downhill, it gave me even less incentive (kinda backwards thinking....). I hadn't done a water change in probably close to a year, hardly cleaned the skimmer cup. Hadn't changed GAC in months. The tank was a mess.

I was on the verge of breaking it down and selling, but my kids were really sad about that prospect. So, I told them I'll give it one more solid go and see what happens. At that time, my nitrates were over 100 (salifert), and phosphates were at 1.70 (Milwaukee), alk/dkh was barely 5.8 or 6, thick mats of long green hair algae on every rock and surface, bubble algae, corals dying, fish very unhappy and unhealthy, hardly even saw them bc they didn't want to come out.

But, weekly water changes, scrubbing rocks and siphoning out the algae, dosing diy NoPox, staying on top of my skimmer, regular changing GAC, using phosguard, replacing my lights, cleaning and adding powerheads to improve flow and reduce dead spots, dosing AFR, stabilizing alk (had a big spike to almost 12 from lowering nitrates), adding an urchin and a handful of emerald crabs (snails don't survive long in my tank for whatever reason), and now my tank is night and day from where it was 4 or so months ago.

Still have hair algae, but it's a fraction of what it was. Nitrates are at 5 (I had to stop NoPox bc nitrates were at 0 for a bit. I had to dose neo nitro to get a measurement), phosphates are btwn .2 and.3 (trying to halve that), alk has been more stable ard 9ish. Fish and corals are way way way happier. Corals aren't perfect, but they have a lot to come back from. But so much better. I didn't use flux, but I bought some just in case. Probably won't use it now tbh.

Anyway, sorry to hijack. But you can do this. If I can, you can. Good luck!

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm trying. I just hope I don't now get overrun with dinos. I battled them in 2019 and again in 2022 and not sure I have the energy to do it again after all this.

 

[Mechano]

Quick question too. Have u had an Icp done on your reef recently?

It’s discouraging I know with the risk of Dino’s (the bloody plague)

You said yourself you are see progress when you keep up the maintenance. Keep it up.

I’d say next step is to do an Icp to get an idea. You never know if something is lacking or overkill with trace elements.

This feel like you know what your doing and seems like a classic old school “old tank syndrome” everyone used to deal with.

Rewind back to to my old system, before icps etc etc info of today and my old reef tank did a similar thing.
I really wish they had Icp testing to give me a “general idea” where my elements were sitting.

I also have a similar dimension system as you and would be totally reluctant to do a whole tank makeover.

Good luck and keep your head up. You tank looked beautiful in its prime. It can still be

 

[Mickey]

My last ICP was the end of January. Maybe I will do another one in the next few days. It certainly can't hurt.

 

[Mechano]

My last ICP was the end of January. Maybe I will do another one in the next few days. It certainly can't hurt.

Good call

 

[Nano_Man]

Your reef was stunning in the past so it can be beautiful again. I will follow your progress. It’s a great job you are doing bringing it back too it’s best

 

[rc8t6353]

I wish it were that easy but a rip clean just isn't possible with a system this size, at least not for me. First this is a 20 year old system and most of the rocks are very large and heavy so difficult to lift out if I can even get them apart. Second, with the way my canopy is and the lights, there's not enough room to maneuver some of them out. Tank is eurobraced around the perimeter and also has two 5+ inch wide cross braces. Wish I could do it all over again as things have progressed in the hobby so much a new tank would be easier in lots of ways, but that's just not in the cards.

I've been dosing a very low dose of LaCL for a month. I really don't want to up that dose as it's too risky. I've used GFO in the past and I found LaCl works much better and not as messy as long as you go with a dilute solution.

Here's a couple pictures of what it used to look like. First couple are a few years old.






and this is from just last November.


Pretty sad to look at it now.

I and many others know your pain. Use those pics of how the tank was as motivation to stay on course. You're already doing the right things from the sound of it.

 

[Jimbo327]

I would ramp up the LaCl dosing to slowly drop the phosphates down to 0.2 ppm. Just go slowly, and it should be fine. Drop the phosphates like 0.1-0.2ppm per week. Nitrates look pretty good.

For hair algae, I would do reef flux for 21 days at half dose. But make sure you pull as much of it out as possible before treatment.

Restock your snail and CUC population. A couple turbo and 10+ trochus snails.

Your system is not that bad, it can be easily corrected.

 

[Mickey]

I would ramp up the LaCl dosing to slowly drop the phosphates down to 0.2 ppm. Just go slowly, and it should be fine. Drop the phosphates like 0.1-0.2ppm per week. Nitrates look pretty good.

For hair algae, I would do reef flux for 21 days at half dose. But make sure you pull as much of it out as possible before treatment.

Restock your snail and CUC population. A couple turbo and 10+ trochus snails.

Your system is not that bad, it can be easily corrected.

I'm definitely pulling the phosphate down, and slowly. It will take a while to get it down to .2 or less given my starting point.

New CUC team already ordered. Should be here Wednesday. For now metal halides or off and only running blues for a couple of days to try to keep things from getting worse.

Not sure I want to go the Reefflux route, at least not yet. I've read too often that it doesn't work on hair algae. Plus I'm a big believer that chemicals should only be used as a very last resort. I have used chemiclean very occasionally and I always ended up battling something else shortly thereafter. I'll wait and see for now and rethink using reefflux if things don't look like they are improving in a few weeks.

 

[Mickey]

Your reef was stunning in the past so it can be beautiful again. I will follow your progress. It’s a great job you are doing bringing it back too it’s best

I and many others know your pain. Use those pics of how the tank was as motivation to stay on course. You're already doing the right things from the sound of it.

Thanks for the encouragement!

 

[Mechano]

I'm definitely pulling the phosphate down, and slowly. It will take a while to get it down to .2 or less given my starting point.

New CUC team already ordered. Should be here Wednesday. For now metal halides or off and only running blues for a couple of days to try to keep things from getting worse.

Not sure I want to go the Reefflux route, at least not yet. I've read too often that it doesn't work on hair algae. Plus I'm a big believer that chemicals should only be used as a very last resort. I have used chemiclean very occasionally and I always ended up battling something else shortly thereafter. I'll wait and see for now and rethink using reefflux if things don't look like they are improving in a few weeks.

Smart move not using reef flux. It’ll likely kill off the algae’s then Dino’s will be like “wow , look at all this Realestate we have now “

Not worth it

 

[Mickey]

Looking at the tank today there's still quite a lot of it on rocks as well as the overflow walls. It's better but still. I've got my fingers crossed that dino's don't take over where it is clear and will be watching very closely.

 

[Mickey]

Update...

Cleanup crew added on Wednesday 4/17 consisting of:

Acclimated them per instructions. Turbos, ninja stars, chiton were placed individually on rock. Trochus were held to the glass until they "attached" themselves. All others were placed as a group on the sand.

Thursday morning, three of the turbos were dead, nerites and ninja stars had not moved at all and look to be goners. Chiton nowhere to be found. Haven't seen anything else but could be buried in the sand. Very discouraging since I was counting on the turbos in particular to help out with the GHA. Left for a 9 day vacation Thursday night so just crossed my fingers.

Returned from trip and tank is the worst it's ever been. Rocks are totally covered, anemones mostly pulled in, euphylia that I had tried to save looks gone. Some coral that previously was not affected now has long strings in places. There's even two toadstools that have collapsed onto the rock they are on though polyps are out. Other toadstools (I have too many of them) seem fine. I just wanted to cry.

I checked my levels on Sunday and phosphate is still coming down now at .96, nitrates up to 25 which I think was okay considering tank was fed pellet food for 10 days. Other parameters all good. Fish all seem fine.

Took samples of algae and checked under microscope. Still some cyano though not nearly as bad, but dinos do seem to have multiplied. Lots of small cell amphidinium, some LCA, and not sure what else.

If tank were smaller I'd seriously consider tossing everything and just starting over. For now I'm trying to scrub in tank and siphon out what I can in small sections at a time but not sure that's really helping. Given the mortality from my cleanup crew order I hesitate to buy any more. I am thankful the fish are all doing fine.