[gregr]

Background: I was far too late in doing something about a hair algae outbreak in my tank. By the time I finally tried to fix it the algae had completely taken over the tank. I removed the causes (bad bulbs, bad ro/di water and overfeeding) and started trying some of the recommended cures- gfo, gac, snails, hermits, massive quanitities of water changes, etc. but still the hair algae thrived. The water was nice and clear and the corals actually looked good but the tank itself was hideous. Then I tried Algaefix. I think I got to 9 doses and it made a small dent but didn't solve the problem. Then I did 4 months of vodka dosing. Skimmer output increased, mushrooms, anemones and leathers hated it, algae decreased a bit but not a lot. Ok. Oh yeah- it took the nitrates down from about 12.5 to 5.
About a month ago I stopped dosing vodka and added some sea hares and manually plucked algae (was plucking during vodka dosing days too). Forgot to mention that there was cyano present, mostly starting with that Algaefix. Well, a month after stopping the vodka and the cyano is gone and the hair algae is about 75% gone. I was expecting a big increase but no.
It sure seems like stopping the vodka has cleared the tank up. But how could that be?

[gandorf2000]

my guess would be the sea hares

[gregr]

The sea hares definitely have had an impact but I think stopping the vodka has had a lot to do with it because there are areas that the sea hares haven't touched that are totally clean now.

[jeanne]

I am very new to this hobby but do love it! What an amazing story about the algae. Vodka??? The best investment I made was my Lawnmower Blennie. He is totally awesome and the best housekeeper any one could have. He was only 9 bucks too! Tank is almost clean. I have to watch putting in too many nutrients. It's my downfall. Jeanne

[gregr]

I have a Lawnmower blenny- great fish!
I found out some more info on the vodka and hair algae issue. Here's the explanation as best as I can relay it:
vodka is a source of carbon/sugar. Adding sugar to an aquarium creates CO2. CO2 is what people add to freshwater planted tanks- to get the plants to grow. So as I was dosing the tank with vodka to reduce the phosphates and nitrates (which it did very well) I was also feeding the hair algae. The water quality was improving but the hair algae still had plenty of fuel. Now that I'm no longer dosing vodka the hair algae is going away.

[jeanne]

Thanks for the info on sugar dosing. Just curious how much did you put in and how often? I still have some hair algae and my tests come out zero for nitrate and ammonia and phosphate.Glad its gone. Thanx Jeanne

[gregr]

Hi Jeanne-
First thing is to find out why the algae is present and fix that source. If fixing whatever was feeding the hair algae isn't possible or doesn't get rid of the algae completely, or if you want to run a low nutrient system then vodka dosing is for you. Directions are here. It's important that you don't over-dose the tank because you can lose everything.

[jeanne]

Thanks Greg,
You have been most helpful. I will do my best to figure the answer out. I do put too many nutrients in the tank. I suppose I'm afraid my Mandarin will die if not. It may also be my canister filter,(cascade 700) My protien skimmer is giving out light green and not dark brown or black scum. So it appears its trying to filter out the algae. I did dose it with algae fix so am sure that is why its light right now. Keep you posted again thanx, jeanne

[gregr]

Light green skimmate, and lots of it, is exactly what you want when you're using Algaefix. Very important that the skimmer is working well when you use that stuff. Are you rinsing the food before you put it in the tank? I was surprised how much that helped. If you have lots of liverock and a good skimmer and keep up with your water changes you probably don't need that cannister filter at all.

[jeanne]

Many thanks again. My protein skimmer is a venturi Aquarium systems hang on the back for a 75 gal tank. Mine is a 55 gal and I do clean it also. It is now collecting dark green scum so I assume that is good? I have not rinsed the food. yikes! I appreciate the help. Jeanne

[reefdude]

gregr, it seems to me like your nitrates are in the "danger will robinson" zone. They should be zero, and yours are around 12.5? That could be an issue, also silicates and phosphates are a huge issue too.
Since you had problems with nitrate and probably phosphate too, the vodka is bumping up your bacteria crop, essentially starving out your algae, but then the only thing fueling your algae was the c02 generated by the vodka, and since you stopped that, et voila.... I think anyways, makes sense in my mind.

I made the mistake of dosing with 40% instead of 80%+ ( i live in canada) and it just made my tank go from nice and algae free to a grassland haha. oooops.

now I've since stopped, my phosphates are a little high, .25-.4ppm, and everything else that matters is zero or damn near close to it.
but now I'm getting little bits of cyano growing on top of my hair algae.

I don't get it.
The only thing I can think of is the fact that I just bought my lights used and that the owner didn't know how old the bulbs were??
I'm thinking that's where I go next.
although 80+ dollars a bulb ( halide) is pretty extortionate don't you think?

also thinking of adding a foxface this week. thoughts?

[gregr]

I got a foxface and it's done a pretty good job munching algae. Sea hare has eaten more but they don't live very long- of the 4 I bought only one is left.
Personally I think that nitrates in the 5-10 range are fine. I've seen a lot of tanks that didn't have zero nitrates (weren't ULN) and the corals were amazing. In my tank right now the corals look pretty awesome- color and polyp extension is great, and the nitrates are close 5-10 (Salifert). I admit that's just my opinion though. Phosphates could be a completely different story but I've been able to control phosphates by rinsing the food, reducing the bioload and making sure my ro/di water is 0ppm TDS. The source of all my troubles was bad ro/di water. There is so much chlorine in the water here that it was killing the ro membrane in two months. I was totally clueless. Now I have a great big carbon tank (looks like a 10 lb. CO2 tank) in front of the ro/di unit. That should greatly increase the life of the ro membrane and di cartridge. Anyhow- I take it you want an ultra low nutrient system? Or were you just trying to lower nitrates and phosphates even though you didn't have algae issues? I know that cyano showed up when I dosed vodka and disappeared within about 2 weeks of stopping the vodka. How long ago did you stop dosing? I'm thinking maybe the loss of all that vodka generated bacteria might cause some cyano if you don't have enough sand/liverock/skimmate, etc. It could be old bulbs too- I have seen that happen in my tank- cyano and hair algae.

[reefdude]

I have 200+ lbs of live rock in my 90 gallon tank... i had 90 lbs, and then a friend was getting rid of their 120 gallon, so they gave me all of their live rock and corals, unfortunately at the time i just had flourescent lights and everything that relied on the light died. As for my vodka dosing? probably 2 or 3 weeks ago, might have been later than that.
BUT the reason that the 120 gallon tank got dismantled is because they had an outbreak of cyano that would have blown your mind. anyways I'm still dealing with that cyano to this day, i get random blooms every now and again, even though i've scrubbed all the live rock with a really hard scrubby and done a freshwater, followed by a Hyper salinity bath to try and kill everything, and it hasn't worked yet. Is it possible that the rock itself is just crap?

and as for my ULN setup? I'm new to reef keeping so I want to keep every type of setup I can, just to get a feel for it. Last year I had problems keeping my nitrates down, now I have everything in check, just sorta screwing around to see what works and what doesn't. Isn't that what reef keeping is all about?

also, I'm wondering on some corals, i have a frogspawn and some sort of leather, as well as a HUGE pink tip anemone, and he's probably between 8-10 inches across when fully extended.
maybe some mushrooms and a brain? I just want cool stuff, the tank is the centrepeice of a room, so it has to look pretty.

also, i was looking into a clam, derasa or maxima?

[gregr]

Hard to find decent sized Maximas these days. Derasas are great.
Have you tried any GFO/phosphate remover yet? Small reactors are cheap and if you get rid of the phosphate issue you can always use it for carbon. I've heard that liverock can absorb metals and such- thought that was my issue but once I finally fixed the source the algae started to go away. Before that I was treating the symptoms and that just made things a little better but never solved the problem completely. By the way- my Salifert tests consistently came up zero for phosphates but obviously phosphates were present.
Anyhow- if you aren't interested in a predominantly sps tank then ULN is not needed in my opinion. All of the corals you mentioned should do fine with a small amount of nitrates. Except maybe for the anemone but I'm not so sure about that either. I used to keep a bubble tip that grew from about 3" to massive, splitting many many times over the years, and in those days my system was far (way far) from ULN.

[reefdude]

Yeah, i know i have enough light 2x 250 watt 10k halides, 2 VHO actinics...more than enough to grow anything i want, and what kind of reactors are they? i just have a crappy phosphate absorber, it brought it down from .5 to .25-40 in about 2-3 days? i should have phosphate reduction in 3 weeks at that rate right?

[gregr]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you- work got busy for a little while there.
Anyhow- here's a link to a reactor that will do the job nicely.
It sounds like you're using an aluminum based media- whitish, right? Aluminum based media is good but it's supposed to be changed frequently or else all the stuff it absorbed will leach back into the system. Granular ferric oxide (aka GFO) is a longer term solution. The GFO goes inside the reactor and it will reduce your phosphates considerably. Basically you keep the media in there until the phosphate levels in the tank start to go up again. In other words, there is no fixed number of weeks that the media lasts- you just have to test the water. To give you an idea though I think an average of 6 to 8 weeks is pretty average. GFO is not cheap either- you might want to look at Bulk Reef Supply for it. They have reactors too.

[reefdude]

Nope, looks ferric.
Aquarium Pharmeceuticals I want to say.
I'm at work right now but I'll let you know the brand when I find it out.
It looks like rust and comes loose with a velcro media bag inside the bottle/container.

[gregr]

That's GFO then- no need to check the brand. Get a reactor for it- it's a much better way to use GFO.
If you can't fix the source of the phosphates then plan on using GFO indefinitely. That is not fun- it's expensive and, in my opinion, pretty hard on acros. Much better to solve the problem at it's source.