I Am So Frustrated

[tabwyo]

My rock works was intentionally set up to allow lots of open space. My clean up crew is solid. I'd estimate close to 60 various snails and the odd surviving hermit. The only thing growing on the starbord bottom is coraline a few patches of GSP's.

[scoop]

When I was speaking of export, I didn't just mean ditritus build up on the bottom. It's the process of all of the water in the tank circulating through the entire system, including the skimmer. I do understand your frustration, I have it frequently because of the amount of work I do to keep the tank clean. I'm just mentioning the idea because I have found my recent improvements due to overall circulation and to much less feeding. I put in so little now and so infrquently I think my fish are going to die. However, I know there must be high nutrients in the tank to keep the algae alive and they only come in through feeding and can only go out if all the water is being filtered through the skimmer. I am not feeding every day, and I see people here that feed only 2 or 3 times/wk and very small quantities and don't have any issues w/ fish starving or corals dying.

[tabwyo]

I have switched to alternating my feeding. 1 day a strip of Nori and the next day a cube of frozen. I am coming to the conclusion that I may really need to just tear the syatem down. Make my desired improvements to the tank. And just set up to cook the rock for 4-6 months. It's obvious I didn't cook it long enough to begin with. I want to open up the rock work a bit to. Aquascaping this tank is a nightmare. It's tall so all the room I have is really verticle room.

[scoop]

Good luck w/ re-doing the set up. You might want to just wait a few weeks w/ the new feeding schedule and see if it makes any difference. I had a really bad algae problem in my first tank and I ended up just buying new rock and cooking that for a few months then switched out the old rock and went to the new. That way the tank was never really 'down' and I didn't lose any fish or corals.

[tabwyo]

All I did was mention switching back and my wife was all over it. She's hated the new setup from day one. She's the desciding vote in the house. I'll rig up some temporary pvc rack for my coral to use while the rock cooks.

[tabwyo]

After a month of a very light feeding schedule I still have outrageous HA. New base rock is in a vinegar bath right now. After a few days I'll swap out the acid with fresh and let it sit a couple more days and then put in SW and a couple hunks of LR from my refugium so seed it. I'll be swaping out rock in a month and a half or so.

[gwaco]

just curious , but what were your nitrate levels at ?
in the six hundred i was having a problem with h.a. , and it turned out to be high nitates feeding the algae and not phosphates . as soon as i got the nitrates down via a sulpher denitrator the h.a. disappeared in about two weeks .

[tabwyo]

I had a issue with nitrated when I was doing monthly water changes. they have practically gone away since I beefed up my skimmer and switched to 10% weekly WC's.

[AquaMan91]

you know the problem could be the starboard...the chemical used to process that stuff is full of phosphates...so essiently youll get algae until all the phosphate has been removed..

[Ratpack]

Originally Posted by AquaMan91

you know the problem could be the starboard...the chemical used to process that stuff is full of phosphates...so essiently youll get algae until all the phosphate has been removed..

Interesting, is that the same for pretty much all HDPE? The reason I ask, is I am in about the same boat here. My tank is BB and I went that way in order to not worry as much about how much I fed. I am now getting little tufts of HA. It isn't taking over very fast, but they are there. I have cut my feeding down a lot and doing weekly WC. It is starting to subside a little, very slowly I think. Wondering now if it is because my HDPE was leaching. Tank is only 4 months old.

[Ratpack]

Originally Posted by AquaMan91

you know the problem could be the starboard...the chemical used to process that stuff is full of phosphates...so essiently youll get algae until all the phosphate has been removed..