20L tank problems (1 Viewer)

[Guest]

Im taking all my corals and LR out of my 20 tonight. Plan is to cut out the spray foam on the back wall and scrub all LR to get the Hair alage off. I cant get it under control. I feed once a week yet it blooms and blooms. I have changed out all my lights to. All my macro in my sump died off. I cant seem to keep that stuff alive. I have use 3 different types of caulerpa and even cheato. If I continue to see a downward spiral Ill be tearing this tank down for good and just wait till i can put up my 90. Any opions on what I should do to help battle this problem?

I had this kind of problem a year ago with my other 20 and I ended up loosing 95% of my corals and fish. If it happens again Im not restocking just taking it all down. I have tried running phosban to make sure there are no phosphate and there isnt. I just added 2 mexican turbos, 2 margaritas, some blue legs and scarlets. the cyano is growing like crazy to.

 

[Guest]

Are you using ro water? Your die off of macro could have contaminated your water and may be the cause of the hair algea.Where are your nitrates? I would do several very large water changes and continue to monitor parameters until they get to zero. Good luck scrubbing. I have tried it and it helps a little, but not a lot.

Jen

 

[Guest]

I have seen even small amounts of macro die and cause an explosion of hair algae. Macro is packed with all of the building blocks of cyanobacteria and hair algae. That is one reason macro works so great to control nasty unicellular algaes. I have had this problem a lot in the past, usually in smaller tanks. I couldn't always find a reason why. Sometimes I would have more cleanup crew in a 29 gallon tank than I would have in a 125, and still had a tank full of bad algae. Very frustrating, but can be fixable even if you can't figure out why it started.

 

[Guest]

should i pull all macro out and not use it? I haven been able to get any to grow even before this happened. This all started before the macro die off.

 

[Guest]

oh i have a RODI unit too. It says it does 100gpd but it doesnt do that much. more like 30. I have low water pressure.

 

[BrianPlankis]

How long have you had the RO/DI? What is the TDS of the water coming out? Do you have a skimmer on the tank?

B.

 

[Hurdicuss]

I would also take into consideration the fire shrimp & firefish being MIA. If they are indeed dead and still in the tank, then they are more than feeding the problem as well. I had that explosion of red slime in the pico too and it seemed to happen after the clown goby went missing. I tried the reccomended regular water changes + siphoning out what slime i could. It still grew back considerably fast and i ended up taking it down.
I would really hate to see such a nice 20 get taken down and i will help you out where & if i can...but if it comes down to it keep me in mind! Later man,
J

 

[Guest]

I would take all the macro out for now, then I would do a rock by rock removal and cleaning. Not all at one time, but from one end to the other as you search for problem areas and things that can be removed to improve water quality fast. In a small tank this can be accomplished by using a bucket with salt water and just moving each rock into it while you clean that area with a suction thingy. Well that is what I would do before I tore it down.

Jen

 

[Guest]

I agree with Jen, removing the macro for now would be a good idea. When the slime starts to take over and hair algae spreads, macro tends not to grow so quickly, if at all. Better to take it out than have it fragment and decompose.

 

[Guest]

I pulled out all macro the other night except the cheato. I cleaned all my rocks off to my best ability. I even added an extra 5 lbs of LR. the sand was pretty dirty so i stirred it up and siphoned it out as well as i could. i did a 50% water change. added a maxi jet 600. two days later my sand is covered in cyano....WTH!
garage - I have had the unit for a year now. I change my carbon and sediment filter every 2-3 months and my DI resin when it changes color. I dont know the TDS because i dont have a TDS meter. I do not have a skimmer any more. I had some issues with the skimmer like filling my tank with micro bubbles. I even installed a bubble trap but that didnt help. I was working on a new sump so i could run the skimmer but I had to put that off.

 

[Guest]

stirring up the sand added lots more to the water, but keep it up. siphon the sand every day and add back fresh salt water until this stops. I would also add some live rock or a seasoned sponge from a different tank to add some good bacteria back to the water. when you are doing lots of changes, you can upset the bacteria balance. It sounds like you may have to break it down at this rate. Sorry for all your troubles. I can definately relate. Add back the skimmer for now, even with the bubbles, it will help to stabalize the tank. I have had no luck on tanks without skimmers. (jme)

Jen

 

[Guest]

Man I went through this problem not to long ago and had to tear my 40G down. my problem was phosphates.. go check on that... i never had any calurpra so not sure what to tell you but the cheato should do great under and condition my grew like crazy.

i had tried phoseban and phoszorb and neither worked...

did you change/add anything to the tank before this happened. i know when i first added my sump to my tank that my whole tank cycled again becuase of the sand i added was new. also uncured LR could do that as well.

also try checking for copper... if there is any hint of that stuff things can go sour fast for the corals.

sorry for the lost... i know how you feel

 

[Guest]

no copper that I know of. I was running a phosban reactor but this was going on before that. As for the seasoned LR and sand. I have a bunch of LR from different tanks and half of my sand is from different tanks.