I have an 80 gallon saltwater tank that gets filtered by a penguin biowheel 200 by marineland and a Catalina Ultra 100 External filter(which i just installed yesterday), it has reef lighting, im planning to add corals asap, i dont know if i am over feeding, i feed the fish one block of brine shrimp once a day, (im guessing i am over feeding) i get blankets of purple algea covering my sand and believe me it looks extremely unsightly and also purple algea that covers the rocks in vast amounts. (note the catalina ultra was installed yesterday and i did a water change today) so the catalina hasnt been filtering the tank for more than 24 hours, so anyone know what the problem is and if it will change with the new filter, or what i can do to stop the algea.
*Edit* as you are reading this i am intalling a Protein Skimmer, info on this will help too. thanks*
no im not talking about coralline algea that grows on the walls of a matured tank. im talking about the purple gunk. that is very slimy and i know it is bad for the tank i just dont know how to get rid of it
oh,for starters,u can siphon them out when u do yr water changes. there are a few areas u will need to look at for the causes.
yr PO4 levels could be high induced by the brine shrimp feeding(frozen cubes,i guess?) run a PO4 media like Rowaphos or Sorb4.
how are u doing for flows?
never use Red Sea marine lab testkit before so not sure. anyway,there are a lot of PO4 testers in the market like Salifert,Sera etc etc. here's a list of the frequently used ones.
http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/toppicks/tp/tptestkits.htm
levels of 0.05 ppm-mg/l being acceptable.
thanks alot ill look into those. i just tested ammonia alkalinity ph nitrite etc etc on my red sea kit and i was wondering what would be an ideal level for ammonia, 0?
more water movement and more water changes should also help{a purified water ro ect.}drain and rinse your brine shrimp before entering tank packing juce is high in nutrients}
Do water changes with RO water to get rid of phosphates and nitrates...Also, brine shrimp isn't a very good staple for your fish unless it's soaked in some kind of vitamin or spirulina or something. There's little nutritional value to it. I fed my purple tang brine shrimp for too long and he lost his color, now I'm feeding him New-Life Spectrum Thera-A and Formula 2 pellets and he looks amazing! Learn from my mistake, haha.
