toothbursh a bad idea?

[mdcorcoran]

hey everyone,
i've been reading your advice for a few months now, and I just registered here yesterday so now I can post. I live in milwaukee and i have a 10 gallon tank, about 1.5 months old. i heard someone talking about using a soft toothbrush to remove algae from LR, and I was wondering if any of you would condone or condem this activity. I've attached a picture of the hairy reddish brownish algae that concerns me. i'm not too sure about this picture posting stuff, i'll try to host it on my website.

michael

[socal surfer]

Alot of people say that the toothbrush will actually pread the algae if you scrub it. I still have heard of a lot of people doing this ne ways and having good results. You could drill a hole in the back of the tooth brush and hot glue airling tubing to the hole so that you could siphon out the algae while you are scrubbing it off.

HTH

[Calvinc4s]

What type of grazers do you have?? I would focus on a clean up crew. I used a tooth brush on my LR a couple years ago (not mine, my girlfriends). It didn't work as well as a pack of hungry turbo snails.

[josie521]

or a scopus tang..

[mdcorcoran]

i've got 2 small cleaner shrimp, a coral banded shrimp, 2 turbo snails, 11 blue leg hermits, and 3 reef hermits. filters are a biowheel mini and a biowheel 125, also have a rio 90 powerhead. light is a 50/50.

michael

[mikeMersot]

i have used a toothbrush when i had really bad algae problems, but it rips off a lot of other life too,

[Rick O]

Hi Michael. Welcome to TRT.

You can use a toothbrush to remove algae but you should remove the rock from the tank and scrub and rinse it in a bucket of old tank water.

You also need to cure the source of the algae. Tell us a little more about your tank. What are the inhabitants? Are you using RO water? What's your maintenance schedule?

[mdcorcoran]

I' not too sure what you mean about RO water. The water in the tank is from our tap, treated with chlorine remover stuff. Sg (why do they say Sg instead of density?) is around 1.025. I have about 10 pounds of crushed live coral as the bed, about 1" deep. 15# of live rock. The light is a 50/50, and usually on 14 hours a day (i think its too much, right?).

the inhabitants are:
percula clown
mandarin goby
2 blue damsels
coral banded shrimp
sebae anemone
curly-q anemone
2 cleaner shrimp
2 turbo snails
3 reef hermits
11 blue leg hermits

for maintenence, i wipe down the accesible parts of glass with a scraper probably about once a week. i'm assuming this is incredibly negligent, but the water hasn't been changed yet. i plan on doing a 2 gallon change (20%) next weekend.

today i got some Nitrate Sponge filter and added it to the filters on the biowheels. also got some phytoplankton.

[mdcorcoran]

woops, just noticed a typo, the spec. grav is 1.0225, not 1.025

[mikeMersot]

RO water = Reverse osmosis, which utilizes a thin membrane to remove dissolved solids and other contaminents from the water. The tap water is probably a main cause of algae problems, plus the young tank is probably not able to handle that bioload. as far as the SG goes, the sg is the density, divided by the density of freshwater, thus giving a unitless quantity, I suppose you could measure the density of your water, but I think most people find it easier to use the ratio. anywho, I assume you have a 50/50 NO, which in my opinion 14 hours a day would not be too much for those anemones, of course it will also promote algae growth. Your best bet is to limit your nutrients to fight the algae, as limiting the light is not really an option because of the anemones. I have never worked with a system that small, but I would say use purer water, limit bioload, and maybe get a skimmer, but I dont know how a skimmer would work on a nano. Try to get to the bottom of the algae problem, and in the mean time scrubbing in old water could probably help. sorry so long, its late and im babbling good luck!

[asmith]

Originally posted by josie521
or a scopus tang..

No tang should be kept in a 10 gallon tank. That should not be an option.

Andrew

[broadwave]

mdcorcoran,

Definately go with some sort of water purification. Your Phosphates / Silicates must be off the chart!!!! A Kent Hi-S RO system would be perfect. Also use a phosphate media in your power filters if it can fit and change it weekly.

Do not go with a Tang of any type unless you have a 55 gallon or larger tank!

Your best solution for a "fish" would be an algae / sailfin blenny.
By the look of your pictures he'd be fat in no time.

I know on Nano reefs, protein skimming is somewhat taboo. However, Julian Sprung uses 2 Tunze skimmers on his 15 gallon tank ( he also uses a 40 gallon sump for this tank). Either way I would incorpaorate a protein skimmer as well. I use a Red Sea Prizm skimmer on my 10 gallon Nano.

[broadwave]

I forgot to mention, you said that you will be doing a 20% water change next weekend?

One rule of thumb, the smaller the system the bigger the problems.

What that means is that on a smaller body of water (10 gallon tank) there is alot less room for error than say on a 100 gallon tank.

On a small system as yours I would be doing a 20% water change weekly.

I change 20% on my 10 gallon nano weekly and on my 75g reef i change about 5 gallons a per week which is about 28% monthly.

[Alice]

I'd say pull the rocks out, scrub them, rinse them and then put them back.

Others that have posted are correct though, if you don't get to the source that is causing the algae, it will come right back.

Nuisance algae problems are almost always traced back to one or more of the following:

Source water...tap water will give you major headaches. If you can't afford an RO system, and with one 10 gallon tank, I don't know that I'd plunk down the $ for one, you could just buy purified water from the grocery store. You could also get a tap water purifier from Home Depot or similar. A TWP won't eliminate as many impurities as an RO/DI system but if your water isn't too horrible to start with, it will certainly help.

Too many nutrients in the system. Whether from over-feeding, too high of a bio-load (too many animals=too much waste), lack of water changes or other export methods such as a skimmer.

Lack of circulation. "Dead areas" in the tank allow detritus to build up and algae can gain a foothold.

Aged lights. If the lights haven't been changed out within the guidelines for the type of lighting, the lights will have had a spectrum shift, allowing more of the red spectrum to come through and algae will thrive.

There are other things that can cause algae blooms in the tank, such as rusting pump impellors or a foriegn object rusting in the tank, but the four causes above are usually the biggies.

You didn't say how long your tank has been set up but you do have a high bio-load for such a small tank. I have a 17 gallon nano that contains 2 small fish, a serpent star, an urchin, about 10 snails, a few hermits and assorted soft corals and I'm always worried that I'm overloading it. I'm assuming with the anemones and fairly low lighting that you are feeding the anemones rather frequently to insure their survival and feeding the other inhabitants as well. That amount of load combined with the tap water and no skimmer is more than likely what has brought your algae blooms about.

Scrub the rock, change your water source, limit the feeding as much as possible and do 2-10% water changes a week and see if that doesn't help clear it up. You might check some of the nano sites for some info on skimmers suitable for small tanks.

Good luck

Alice

[Chad]

two anemones in a 1 1/2 month old 10 gallon tank and all those other fish? Wow.