Any suggestions?

birdy

Active Member
Hi, I used to post on here a while back, I found out I was pregnant with twins and kinda let my tank go the past few months. Needless to say I have a hair algae problem. I am now restricted to staying at home and I would like to get my tank back to shape before my babies are born in March. Here is the rundown.
My Ph is 8.0and alk is 3.5 (I am trying to get both of these higher) , my ammonia, nitrates and nitrites, and phosphates register 0. I think phosphates and trates are showing up 0 because the algae is using it, my calcium is around 350 but I am trying to get it up by dripping turbo calcium every night.
I am starting to do weekly small water changes and pulling out as much of the algae by hand as I can. I have reduced the hours of light in my tank to about 5hrs a day. I just ordered all new light bulbs for the tank. The current ones are close to a year old.
I am also replacing all the filters in my RODI unit. I do this every 4-6months. I also ordered a replacement membrane but the old one is only a year old and I do not use that much water, How do I know when the membrane needs to be replaced?
I have a above tank refugium that is growing caulerpa great, but there is also a lot of hair algae in it. I do not feed much maybe two or three times a week. I have also been running a bag of phosphate sponge for the past week replacing every 48 hrs.
I have a cleanup crew and I am planning on adding to it soon.
If anyone has any other suggestions I would appreciate it and I will probably be posting frequently because I am suppose to sit on the couch all day and I am so bored:)
 

quazi

Member
start dripping kalk now. It will help on the CA and the alk levels and help percipitate phosphates.
You do not have much light for the tank, but it is time for new bulbs, which you are on top of.
Are you feeding the tank? With the low bio load, I hope you are not feeding much
Also, the RO is very suspect. You are already on top of that!
Good luck with the tank and the babies!
 

birdy

Active Member
I know there is not much lighting but I will not be adding corals anytime soon. I have not started dripping Kalk because I need to get the Ca level up and I have never been able to do that with kalk, only maintain Ca levels. But I may try to dose calcium early in the evening then drip Kalk for my top off.
Thanks
 
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