help! algae attack!

[alnjba]

Hi, my 120g tank that has been cycled for about 2 months has been through the brown diatom bloom. Now I have green algae everywhere and my coral is turning white (I have 2 pieces, no fish, snails, and a few hermits). Some of the algae is filamentous, some of it sheet-like and there are bubbles (bubble algae?) everywhere. It is growing over my beautiful coraline algae on the live rocks and is taking over the tank!

NH4, NO2, NO3 all OK, phosphate is 0.2 ppm, calcium = 550

Any suggestions?
As always thank you!

jim

[Prismaco]

Little Green Balls - Dont pop them, pick them off
Sheet Like Algea-
Check this out, earlier thread on that algea

How many Crabs and snails do you have ?


-Paul

[Prismaco]

Oh yea, are you using RO water ?

-Paul

[foobuddha]

Good start Paul! We're on the right track!

Jim, your tank is still in it's young stage. Don't be to worried right now. Be sure to use only RO (preferably RO/DI) water for top-offs and when mixing water. If you haven't been, I suspect it's likely you have phosphates and nitrates that are bound up in the algae now and for that reason, not registering on your test kits. In addition to number of snails and crabs:

What kind of bio-filtration do you employ?

What kind of corals do you have in the tank? You say they are turning white, are they SPS?

What kind of lighting do you have?

Regarding the green 'sheet algae', is it growing like the purple coraline does? If that is the case, relax, that _is_ coraline, just green coraline.

As far as the bubble algae goes, some recommend emerald (mithrax) crabs, some recommend a fish whose name escapes me.

If you are keeping sps, and it indeed is bleaching, I'll leave that to someone else.

[Geoff]

do you know the kind of corals? if not if you could post a pic that would help a lot. your tank is fairly new. it takes a while for all of the different algaes to take their turn in the tank.

G~

[alnjba]

thanks for all the replys. I am using RO water, biofiltration is 120 lbs of live rock 24/7 skimmer located in a 30g sump. Lighting is compact fluoros and actinics (on about 8 hours/day). My corals are a zooanthid, a small porities and an orange lobophyllia (which is turning white). I have the lobophyllia about 1/2 way down the tank, is it too near the top?

lastly, the green algae isn't coraline, it's just growing over everything!

thanks again!
jim

[ReefDave]

are the bubbles green and really hard, or are they more like air bubbles under the green sheets of algea?

[Prismaco]

Its to early to add corals...you are still going through the algea blooms...



-Paul

[alnjba]

they are like air bubbles under the green sheets; I didn't realize that I had to wait for the algae blooms to recede to add corals, are they doomed?

thanks!
jim

[Prismaco]

You need to wait for your tank to cycle...may have not cycled all of the way...


-Paul