Algae Outbreak

[seesquared]

So I have had my tank up and running for around two months now and in the last few weeks I have seen more and more algae grow on my san bed. It is mostly greenish/brownish in color and some of the spots are developing small bubbles. I am working on getting my carbon and gfo reactor back online, but I was wondering if there is anything else I can do to prevent the algae from building up. I have been manually turning the sand, but it still keeps coming back a day or two later. I have many nassarius snails and have been looking for sand sifting stars but all stores are out of them (AW even said they don't sell them any longer because they are detrimental to the overall quality of the reef) -- I dunno about that, but i do know there is a lot of algae on the sand!

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions on what else would help alleviate this issue.

Please Help! Thanks in advance!

Connor

[jrod11]

Hey Connor,
I'm currently battling some of the same situations. Sounds like it is cyano.

Here is what i have been told when I posted here and also on reef central:

- try and siphon out some of the algae
- do water changes
- feed a little less
- run carbon and GFO
- you can also try turning off your lights and covering the tank with a blanket for a day and it will maybe die off.

hope that helps, mine is starting to go away.

[h20poloman]

While algae issues are very common with new tanks some of things besides what jrod mentioned that you should think about that I would add would be:

If you mix your own salt, make sure your RO/DI filters are still in good shape, providint zero on a TDS meter

If the algae is mainly on the sandbed, do you have enough flow in the tank

Feeding less or smaller portions making sure your fish eat what is put into the tank versus just letting it drop onto your sandbed. Turning off your pumps when you feed can help with this.

If you are running a skimmer, is it big enough for your tank? While skimmers are not necessary I would suggest that the bulk of reefers habits require us to need one and typically one that is overrated for our system

The gfo and carbon reactors should definitely help. You can also just use media bags and place them in your sump if you don't have time to get the reactors up. It's not as effective as forcing water through the media when a reactor is used but you still gain benefits from it, I've seen this first hand on my tank.

Bump up the amount of water changes you are doing. I would say 99.9% of the time with most of these issues, while you can make a number of a adjustments above, a 15-20% water change should also be done. Now if you mix your own salt and your RO/DI filters are bad, that would be a case where you probably are just adding to the problem. Once a week water changes should be plenty if you are doing that high of a percentage of a w/c.

Hope that helps
Marlin

[hughjaas]

also, where did your sand come from- is it all new? if not, there are probably phosphates trapped in your sand bed. and since it's bound in the substrate and not floating in the water, it would be hard to detect.