Rate My Fish Tank

Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:28 am GMT   Reply      

Ok i have been screwin with this hair algae far to long....................i basically have a lot of corals waiting for me to pick up but i dont want to until i get this shit under control

i am doing weekly 25% water changes, ive raise salinity, lowered salinity to really no avail, it did wipe out a red slime out break i had.

i bought a new skimmer rated for 65 gallon tanks {mines a 20 long} ive moded the wet/dry filter and overflow so its basically a standard sump, new power head so i have stupid water movement and im still physically scrubbing the rocks pretty much weekly to remove hair algae - the last thing i havent touched is the sand bed, its 4 inches deep and 1 1/2 yrs old. I am not really sold on deep sand beds anymore and wondering if it's actually crashed . that being said


can i just syphon out a bunch of sand and let it recycle or will that cause a major tank crash

should i syphon out most of it and add a new bag of araglive

thoughts? ideas??


Boss

Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:55 am GMT   Reply      

I would think that removing half and then adding a high quality sand back in would give your tank the kick start that it needs.

Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:41 pm GMT   Reply      

maybe you have a different type of algae in your tank? Ive heard of a type of algae in the mediterannean that escpaed from a labratory and it has taken over the whole sea over there, they said it will eventually take over the world, being serious too, it only takes one cell to grow the whole plant, every cell has the genetic information to begin a new cell, if you have something like that youre so screwed you dont stand a chance... hopefully not though :))

Wed Aug 19, 2009 12:30 am GMT   Reply      

I actually had the same issue your running into a year ago. I bought an established tank and I couldn't get rid of the hair algae. I bought my current 95 gallon and transferred all of the rocks and sand over from the old tank. I scrubbed the hair algae off everything and strained my sand and rinsed out most of the crap with the old salt water from my system. I did this to 80% of my sand. My hair algae disappeared after two weeks and I bought a Long Spined Urchin that keeps all the algae in check. Down side is that he loves pulsing xenia's, so I can't keep those guys anymore. I'm not sold on deep sandbeds either. I just vacuum my sandbed every other week to keep it nice and white. There's a little biological filtration in the back side of my tank, but I've noticed a huge difference since I keep my sand clean. I figured the 160lbs of live rock is good enough filtration along with my protein skimmer and macro in my fuge. Anyways, I would suck out some of the nasty stuff and see what happens. Make sure you have enough pre mixed salt water, just in case your water quality changes. I never had a problem though, but I started doing weekly 20% water changes. Good luck Boss.

Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:05 am GMT   Reply      

i keep a 10 gallon tank running with mix in the basement at all times, as soon as i do a water change the RO/DI hose goes in and in fill it back up.

i think im going to suck all but about 1 - 1 1/2 inches out , i have a 7 gallon bow front not doing anything so ill put it there and then play with cleaning it without worrying about a tank crash

urchin eh? he likes the green crap? what do you feed him when he's done with algae? or does it come back enough for him to suvive? other than the occasional zenia that is {that sux, lol}

Blue...............christ i hope i dont have some sort of super algae !!!! that would be just m,y luck though, great now im gonna go down in history as the guy who wiped out the world with algae, lol

thanks guys

Boss

Wed Aug 19, 2009 10:17 am GMT   Reply      

The long spine urchins get pretty big and I have to trim his spines every once and a while. I don't have to supplement his feeding because there's enough algae growing to keep him healthy. I do occassionally feed my fish some ulva and red grac from my fuge. He'll munch on that as well. He eats any algae including the green stuff that pops up. I haven't seen green hair algae on my rocks since I got him. My xenia colony is in my 29 gallon:)

I don't think you'll have a major tank crash from cleaning your sand a little. It's crazy how much crap you'll suck up. I've been cleaning the sand weekly for about a month because I'm moving my tanks this weekend. My water quality is still reading perfect right now. Thank God...

Chris

Thu Aug 20, 2009 9:10 am GMT   Reply      

nice..........i have a lot of rock structure in there and not a crazy amount of flat sand area, does the urchin climb on the rocks without any issues, also i have a lot of flow can they handle that as well? if so i think i might order one

thanks for the tip

Boss

Thu Aug 20, 2009 1:51 pm GMT   Reply      

Urchins are sweet but they eat the purple algaes too. :( My pencil urchin was devouring the corraline algae in my tank.

Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:37 pm GMT   Reply      

No problem, they could climb virtually anything and high flow doesn't bother them. The only places he can't reach are behind my powerheads. He does munch on a little corraline algae, but nothing noticable. Good luck Boss

Sat Aug 22, 2009 2:20 pm GMT   Reply      

thanks bud

Sat Aug 22, 2009 3:22 pm GMT   Reply      

I'm mixing up emergency water right now and have 20 gallons of seasoned water ready...............tomorrow is the final assault on the algae in my tank - attack is schedualled for dawn............lol

seriously though, i am going to clean all the glass even the back and then syphon out about 1/2 of the sand from there ive ordered a dozen nassarious snails to replace the cleaner crew i had and 6 more lil hermits and a pencil urchin to take care of the rocks, we had a power outage for 10 hrs yesterday because a cold front and the edge of hurricane bill collided right over my head basically {4 inches of rain in 25 minutes, and a small tornado about a mile from me} but anyway i checked on the tank as it sat there dead calm last night and man i had hundreds of bristle worms and pods all over the place in the calm water, so i dont want to scrub the rocks if i dont have to and kill em again - i really think and hope all my algae issues are steming from my cleaner crew dieing off over time and the deep sand bed has been developeing anarobic dead spots in it because its not being stirred and is so deep {4 inches in most spots} - - -yet again we shall see

Boss

Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:53 am GMT   Reply      

Do you dose Ca and Kh boss

Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:16 pm GMT   Reply      

How did your final assault go Boss?

Tue Aug 25, 2009 7:39 am GMT   Reply      

lol didnt happen, blew a water pump on the jeep and ended up not doing it.......maybe tonight

no i dont dose puffed, Pimp is on my ass to start a two part regiment .......maybe ill order some tonight as well

Boss

Tue Aug 25, 2009 6:13 pm GMT   Reply      

I dont know how you dont dose. Your crabs snails and shrimp would love you if you did. even if its just 5 ml a day. It will help you out a lot.