What caused my sudden algae bloom?? Plz Help (1 Viewer)

[Rel]

S.G: 1.026
Po4: .25
Ammonia: 0
No2: 0
No3: 10
PH: 8
Ca: 475
Mg: 1400
DkH: 9

Not sure if you can tell from the pic but my sand bed is yuck ! It’s a 24 gal cube with built in sump, housing a skimmer, refugium with chaeto, chemi pure, filter floss, bio media, and a black filter sponge. Tank is 5 months old and I thought I’d got through the worst of algae blooms. In basically 2 days I went from clear sand to brown. My phosphate reading has always been 0 so I was surprised today to see it at .25. Any ideas as to how I can get my parameters in check and get rid of the algae?

 

[steveb]

what type of foods do you feed? flakes and pellets tend to have phosphates in them. frozen drained foods are good as long as you are not over feeding.

Phosphate can be lowered via water changes, carbon dosing, granular ferric oxide, alumina oxide or lanthium chloride.

 

[Rel]

what type of foods do you feed? flakes and pellets tend to have phosphates in them. frozen drained foods are good as long as you are not over feeding.

Phosphate can be lowered via water changes, carbon dosing, granular ferric oxide, alumina oxide or lanthium chloride.

Thanks for your response Steve! I’m doing another water change tonight. Every Sunday I change 5 gallons. I will look into the other methods you listed. As a beginner I try to keep it simple. I’m really interested to know why this suddenly happened. Maybe my rodi isn’t working efficiently.

 

[Rel]

Thanks for your response Steve! I’m doing another water change tonight. Every Sunday I change 5 gallons. I will look into the other methods you listed. As a beginner I try to keep it simple. I’m really interested to know why this suddenly happened. Maybe my rodi isn’t working efficiently.

Oh and I feed mostly frozen about every other day. I could be overdoing it with the coral feeding!

 

[steveb]

water changes are definitely simple. I'm doing an 90g change this evening. My 265g has a phosphate level I'm embarrassed to post. I used dry rock that wasn't cooked and had some macro algae die back.. it all releases phosphates. Thankfully mine is still in the cycling stage - the algae ugly portion...

 

[webster1234]

Looks like a diatom bloom to me. Your tank is likely still cycling. They should go away as your tank stabilizes. Just keep[ doing what your are doing and don't forget to vacuum your sand bed and blow your rocks off when you do a wc. I don't think it is nutrient related.

 

[johntdaballa]

If your using reef roids cut back on that !! Especially with a nano tank ! That coral target feeding will raise your phosphate


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[Reefahholic]

Pretty typical for a young tank. Did you seed with bacteria product initially?

I’ve had blooms in young tanks from a lack of bacterial diversity and ultra low nutrients.

You may wanna try a bacterial product like Dr. Tim’s, Brightwell, or Fritz and see how the tank does over the next few weeks.

 

[Cody]

S.G: 1.026
Po4: .25
Ammonia: 0
No2: 0
No3: 10
PH: 8
Ca: 475
Mg: 1400
DkH: 9

Not sure if you can tell from the pic but my sand bed is yuck ! It’s a 24 gal cube with built in sump, housing a skimmer, refugium with chaeto, chemi pure, filter floss, bio media, and a black filter sponge. Tank is 5 months old and I thought I’d got through the worst of algae blooms. In basically 2 days I went from clear sand to brown. My phosphate reading has always been 0 so I was surprised today to see it at .25. Any ideas as to how I can get my parameters in check and get rid of the algae?

When was the last time your phosphates were tested before they spiked to .25? I'm curious how quickly they rose from 0 to .25.

 

[PorpoiseHork]

I have noticed that my phosphates will spike a few times a year. I do regularly 20-30% weekly water changes, only use prepared frozen foods that I mix myself etc and I regularly see my phosphates spike up to .10-.20 despite my best efforts to keep then down. I never could figure it out until Chris from Unlimited Color Corals mentioned he was seeing the same thing and discovered it was coming from the water even though he has a multi stage RODI unit. To counter the phosphate spikes he added a GFO stage to his RODI unit. So I tested the water from my RODI unit and sure enough I was seeing phosphates to ther tune of .08-.10 yet my TDS meter read 0. I started have since added a small GFO stage to my RODI after the last DI stage and the phosphates have read .00 on my filtered water and my tanks have stabilized to .08 as well.