Algae taking over

quoc

quoc

New Member
Help,
Since last week green and reddish algae are taking over my tank. The green algae are on my substrate and the red algae are on the glass. How can I get rid of them with out harming my tank. So far no fish has died but it seems like my tank will be nothing but a algae tank pretty soon.
Nitrate, Nitrite, and Ammonia are where they suppose to be, temperature around 78 F. I have 2x55 watt PC and 2x40 watt NO. Since the algae breakout, I have left only my NO on for about 8 hours. Also, I did a 20% water change w/ DI/RO water. My tank has been setup for about 8 months now and this is the first time I have seen algae growing this bad.
Please Help!!!
[ July 27, 2001: Message edited by: Quoc ]
 
beth

beth

Administrator
Staff member
What type of setup do you have in terms of filtration, lr, ls, skimmer, etc? And tell us what your nitrate and phosphate levels are.
Have you tested your source water for nitrates and phosphates?
 
tacks

tacks

Member
Phosphate and silicate can cause bad algea blooms but with RO/DI, I don't think that's your problem. Do you have a test kit for phosphates? Have you added any live rock recently? Also, this is a long shot but, you may need to change your bulbs... or Are they new lights? I know your tank has been set up for 8 months but did you recently upgrade your lights?
For the time being, you should purchase a clean up crew. I got one from this site and was very pleased. A clean up crew will help but it is only a bandaid. You need to find out what is causing the bloom and fix it. Hope I was of some help.
 
quoc

quoc

New Member
i have not tested for phosphate yet. the lights was just one 40 watts then i upgraded by adding the powercompact and another 40 watts no. my tank has a skimmer running all the time in a sump and it is producing alot of junk. i also got about 55 lbs of live rocks.
 
quoc

quoc

New Member
The light upgrade was about 3 weeks ago and a week after the algae grew out of control. So is a clean up crew a good solution to rid the algae? I am planning to buy a clean-up crew here but I read somewhere that having any kind of crab in your tank is not good. Is this true?
Thanks
 
oceanblue

oceanblue

Member
Quoc,
More than likely it's the lights. Either the difference in lighting strength or the quality of light, or more than likely both. I have just recently added a 4x55w Jalli PC stip, replacing 4NO daylights, and leaving the NO actinic. I was expecting it, and baboom I had a nice full swing red algae bloom on my hands! Another thing I had run into in the past when switching to my first PC lights,(and this is growing to fact status in the hobby) the bulbs were from an unknown manufacturer. I had experienced much much algae growth and no matter what I did, I couldn't keep the algae down. Turns out that most of the PC actinic lights are off in frequency. They are supposed to be peaking at 7100K, but the only ones that appear to do it are the coralife bulbs. All the lfs in my region are telling everyone with PC's and algae problems to switch to Coralife bulbs when they can. After doing so in the old fixture and buying the new one with CL bulbs, the tank seems to have less present cyanobacteria, and I think they look better than the other bulbs. hope this helps! ciao, Dave
 
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