I Am So Frustrated

[tabwyo]

Ok, after my family disaster I decided to get back into the reef game. I ditched the DSB w/ plenum in favor of a higher flow bare bottom system. I used the same rock from my previous system. Which wich went through a 3 month cooking process. Note, this rock had little to no visible hair algae when it was in the previous system befor being cooked.

Current tank is a 70T RR Oceanic glass aquarium. Return pump is putting out 980gph. Returned to spray bars runing along the back bottom of the tank to keep detritus from collecting under the rock. My skimmer is a Corallife super skimmer rated for a 220g aquarium. I have rigged it to run with a limewood air difuser as well for added skimming capability. I skim rather wet and dump a full skimmer cup of greenish brown, yet still clear skimmate a day. I recently added a 10g refugium with a 4" sandbed and cheato for added nutreint export and binding. I also run a media bag with carbon (changed monthly). other equipment is a closed loop running 1400gpm to two eductors for added flow. And a couple Seio powerheads that refuse to quit working. Also in for added flow. My coral seem fine. But almost every inch of open rock is now choked with flowing green mats of hair algae.

I siphon through a filter sock dially. Blow the rock down dailly with a turkey baster (then siphon what settles). Do weekily 10g water changes. Skim wet. Feed light. Have really good parameters. But I still have a crap ton of HA that I can't get rid of. I never had this kind of problem when I ran with a sandbed.

I't getting to the point where I am about to tear the whole thing down and set back up with a DSB/plenum like I had befor. My goal originally was to switch over to a higher flow, cleaner system and shift my focus from an LPS to an SPS dominated system. But I'd rather have an easier algae free softy tank than a PITA HA filled SPS tank.

[crvz]

Wow, sorry to read about this. Seems like you've got a lot of good things going on, can you describe your bioload (fish and feeding schedules)? You didnt really ask any questions, but I assume you're looking for thoughts/advice?

[tabwyo]

I have three medium sized green chromis, 2 medium sized tric-color damsels, 2 largish orange lined (now solid black) damsels, 1 yellow tang & 1 bi-color pygmi angle. I feed 1/8tsp of a coustun dry conocotion, pre-hydrated, every morning when I add a 1 by 4 inch sheet of nori. At night I add 1 cube Sally's Marine Cuisine (carnivor). All together I have a rough total of 15 or so inches of fish in a 85g total volume system. Not account for the solid displacement of all the rock though.

[tabwyo]

I gues what I am asking is. has anybody had to ever just ditch their rock and start fresh?? I have quite a few critters attatched but I can chisle off the chuncks that they are attatched to. I could cook the rock again. But I just did it right before the rock was placed in the system.

I am assuming that the previous DSB was picking up some slack and gave me the false sense of "know how" to attempt BB. But I check my params every three days. And the only time they got even minorly out of wack was right at first when I set up the system BB.

[crvz]

Hmm, well if you have hair algae you surely have a nutrient excess. In my opinion you do add a lot of food to the tank, but if you're skimmer is working as much as you claim it's hard to think that you're necessarily over feeding. That's the general idea behind bare-bottom, you gear it to take out the food that you add, and it seems you've got that figured out.

I wouldnt say that you HAVE to ditch your rock and start fresh, but I cooked mine for 6 months or more when I had hair algae growth similar to what you're experiencing. A quick fix would be to buy new rock, but then you still have to wait for it to cure.

[richhershey]

I had crazy HA in the 2nd and 3rd month of my setup. My phosphates where high, so I got a cheap phosphate reactor. It took about another month to start clearing up, but it worked for me.

[tabwyo]

I ran two phosban reactors from the get go and it got this out of hand. I do feed alot, but I do skim wet. As well as siphon every day and do routine water changes. I am positive I have excess nutrients. HA doesn't grown on rainbows and happy thoughts. But I can't get a reading to indicate that I have a nutrient issue. I am seriously wondering if the rock is just loaded and is directly feeding the ongoing outbreak. The HA doesn't grow anywhere except the rock. Perhaps the HA is binding up what's being leached. therefor using it befor it's allowed to concentrate to the point that I'd be able to get a measurable reading on it.

[richhershey]

I thought the same thing on my rocks, they where covered in HA when I got them. It took months for mine to clear up. Hopefully others may have some other ideas / solutions!

[Kimberfish]

I"m having kind of the same issue right now. Luckily I know someone with a phos meter and he tested me water. It came out at.1 instead of the recommended .03. My salifert test kits always read 0. I"m running a phos reactor too and I just added two additional bags of phos media to help ( and a seahare). Ask around and try to find someone with a meter.
how old are your lights?

[tabwyo]

Current T5's are under 6 months. I got a deal on a bundle of them (like 40 bulbs for 95 bucks at a going out of business sale).

I have never had luck with Sailfert kits being anywhere close to accurate. But I have access to a lab (actually I am the regional lab manager). We routinely test produced water, oil, condensate and parafin for PO4,NH3/4, Carbonate hardness,NO2/3, Fe & Ca down to units in the PPM range. All but the Fe are the routinely tested properties in the reef aquarium hobby. My PO4 hovers between .01 and .015 w/o a reactor and stays at .005 to unmeasurable with a reactor. But some of my critters reated badly to this so I figured I could live with .01-.015.

[tabwyo]

I am going to cut back to 1 feeding a day for a while and nori every other. Once in a while I catch the Tang and angle grazing on the HA. And I have withheld the nori befor to encourage them to get after the bad stuff. they seem to preffer one particular patch and they squabble like scalded hens over it.

Next up is a scrub, dunk and swish. I am not entirely happy with my rock arrangement as it is. And I am toying with the idea of removing the massive stock overflow. And riging up a standpipe style overflow. This will free up a bunch of waisted space in the tank. So I can to this while I am modifying the tank.

[scoop]

I have a bb 75 gl and recently had a small outbreak of algae. I only have 5 fish, a pair of gsm clowns, 1 starry blenny, 4 line wrasse, and a small tomini tang. I have a huge skimmer, Octo dnw 200 w/ mesh mod, I skim wet and take out over 1 cup/day of med green gunk. I have always done weekly 10 gl water changes and I use a turkey baster to clean the rocks before the change. To take care of the algae I have dramatically reduced my feeding, I now only feed about 1/2" by 1/4" piece of rod's food 4 or 5 days/week and a piece of nori about 3/4" by 1.5" 2 or 3 times/week. All the food is gone w/in 10 sec max, never see any hit the bottom, and the nori is gone is less than a minute. The fish always look hungry, but they appear healthy and don't appear to have any health problems. I started this feeding regime about 4 weeks ago and the algae is almost gone. I really think the issue isn't about the power of the skimmer it is about the ability to get all of the garbage to the skimmer. My tank is rr and it has that offset return and it is very hard to get the flow to where it is moving all the excess crud in to that spot. I have 3 Koralia 3's for flow and a sea swirl on my return powered by an eheim 1260. I have plenty of flow for my corals, but not to get the crud to stay suspended at all times until it is sucked in the return. IMO You should consider dramatically reducing the amount of food you are putting in and let time do it's job on that algae, or find a way to get your flow such that all detritus is suspebded until it gets sucked in to the return.

[tabwyo]

In all honesty. I keep most everything smaller than quarter sized flakes of coraline and empty snail shells blown off the bottom. I have two spots that collect fine detritus and those are the spots I clean out daily.

I don't intend to come of as looking for a beautifull tank with no work. But it does frustrate me that I put in close to two hours a day in tank maint and it still looks like hell. When I used to put in maybe 2 hours total a week and had a stellar looking tank. The reason for going BB was to make keeping the tank clean easier. And now that I spend this much time physically doing so and growing HA like dandelions. I can't really see the pay off.

[tabwyo]

It did just dawn on me that when I set up the BB system. I added 25 pounds of "dead" tonga branch base rock. But thinking about it. The algae isn't growing on the new rock. And coraline really took to it. Which is another odd point. In all of my othe experience when PO4 was an issue. Coraline growth was seriously inhibited. Coraline is as bad as HA in my tank except the fact that I like the looks of it vs HA and don't mind scraping my glass.

The only thing new in the system that wasn't there when it was a dsb/plenum is... the new base rock, a beefier skimmer, the T5 lighting and a ball of cheato. I am getting red flag results without the red flags to warn me.

[EdFink]

There is nothing wrong with the BB system you have set up.I bet you'd have the same exact problems if the sandbed was in place from the start. I know you said the rock was cooked, but it seems obvous that the rock is laden with nutrients.

How is your rockwork setup.......is it open enough for the flow you have? Make sure the rockwork is getting the right flow. Where's all this detritus coming from in the first place? My bb system creates very little detritus that has to be siphoned up...........mostly just snail pooh. If I basted my rock nothing would come out.

Do you have a clean up crew? I know at times I've accused my export system of not working well enough when I had very few snails in the tank. Whenever the bottom of the tank starts to grow algae I know my snail population is too low.How long has this been set up?