Aquarium Products.. why should I use them?

[mony97]

I was at a LFS today and was looking around seeing if there was anything I liked, and mentioned to the owner that I was having a bit of trouble with some hair algae in my tank and asked for his advice. He immediately jumped into an odd explanation of what my issue was (something involving calcium, not phosphates, nitrates, or lighting)
I was not really sure what he was getting at but seemed to be saying that I needed to be using this that and the other thing to do, well this that and the other thing. He strongly recommended about 4 different products in less than 5 min. and seemed to be think less of me when I politely passed on all of them sighting I wasnt really sure about adding things to my tank..
So my question is are additives and other products worth the money and do what they say with no harm what so ever.. Or is the more organic way if you will, better? (i.e water changes and overall good husbandry).

 

[ajroc31]

Depends what, and what the problem is. I like my phosphate sponge, and purple up, although too much iodine, it turned my coral pink from green. I don't really care for calcium, much more concerned with alk, so I started to use Seachem reefbuilder, slow to build up the alk, so its stupid proof. Everything else, I kind of find useless, maybe on ocassion I will add some ammino-acids, or vitamins. Everything else is in the salts, so with my weekly 8% water changes, I am good.

 

[cranberry]

Originally Posted by mony97
http:///forum/post/3267780
So my question is are additives and other products worth the money and do what they say with no harm what so ever.. Or is the more organic way if you will, better? (i.e water changes and overall good husbandry).
Depends on what you are keeping.

 

[speg]

I've always believed that if you can not use the bottled stuff that you'll be better off.
Ever see the people's reef tanks that don't do a single thing to them and they have huge beautiful coral?

 

[mrdc]

I used to be an additive addict!!! Now I just use a handfull of items. I use phos-sponge in my reactor, purigen in my canister, pura phos-pad in my wet/dry and pro-dibio products. I have neo zeo but I have not started using it yet. I guess not all these are additives per say depending on how you look at them. Oh, I also use seachems alk and ca and kent magnesium. I am not a frequent water changer either.
Now back to your question. I think it all depends on how your tank looks and what you are housing. As far as nuissance algae, I would try to figure out what is causing it first which is easier said than done. I was having small bouts of cyano so I wanted to test out the pro-dibio products without changing anything else. After a couple of weeks the cyano has dissapeared and hasn't come back. I will continue with the pro product just to see what happens. I actually bought this product as a test just for this.

 

[bang guy]

Originally Posted by mrdc
http:///forum/post/3267832
As far as nuissance algae, I would try to figure out what is causing it first which is easier said than done.
I agree completely with this. Throwing cures at a problem without knowing the cause usually just creates another problem.
To determine the problem you need to look at all the information available to you (test and observe).

 

[beaslbob]

I recommend you balance out your tank with macro algaes then do the rest.
You very well may have to dose things for a coral reef tank.
And you will have to do other things as well.
But hair algae feeds off the same nutrients as the macro algaes. And your fish and cleaner crews may eat the macros. So you may need some type of refugium to protect the macros.
But people have had tanks run for years (especially fish only tanks) with little to no maintenance once the system is balanced out so the fish wastes are being recycled into fish food by various algaes.
my .02

 

[mony97]

Ooops I should have mentioned my set up. I have a 65g FOWLR that has been up and running for 6 months. I currently have 5 fish and everything is just fine out side of the hair algae. I do 10g water changes weekly which seems to have a great effect on my coralline algae growth, but has not done to much for my problem.
My nitrates have been at a stable 0 for quite some time now, and feed sparingly so phosphates should be low (I do need a test kit for this though!), I did switch the lighting about two months ago, and is about the time the hair algae started to pop up, so maybe I could run the lights less?
All in all though as an overall statement for my tank is there any must have products for a FOWLR set up? I cant really think of any myself and would like to be prepared the next time someone offers me something..
Thank You for all the replies, keep them coming.

 

[bang guy]

It have been my experience that when hair algae grows only on certain rocks and it appears there is good tank maintenance and water nutrients are low that the source of nutrition usually comes from the rocks themselves. This can happen when good, high quality live rock has been exposed to high ammonia levels (>1.0ppm). If this is what is happening in your case then there is no way to starve the algae since it is acquiring everything it needs directly from the rock.
The cure is to replace the live rock or harvest the algae often until the nutrient source is depleted.

 

[mony97]

Well I suppose that is good and bad news, because the rock it is growing on is the first piece of LR I purchased for my tank and was really the only rock in there during the initial cycle soooo... that very well may be the issue, answering the question of how it is growing, but also means it may be next to impossible to get rid of with out replacing the rock..

 

[bang guy]

Seems I made a lucky guess. It takes about a year, give or take, before the algae runs out of fuel. The more light the faster it will grow and the faster it grows the sooner it will run out of food.
Long Spined Urchins Love this stuff.

 

[speg]

What type of lighting are you running on that FOWLR? How long are the lights on? What sort of clean up crew do you have in there?
What are the 5 fish?

 

[mony97]

The lighting is a 10k 96watt daylight bulb, matched with a 96watt atinic bulb, no MH or T5's.. I run the atinic's for 12 and the daytimes for 10 hours a day (a bit much maybe?).
My CUC consists of 7 Nassarius, 5 Trochus, and 4 Cerith snails, and 1 fighting conch.
And the 5 fish are:
2 Ocellaris
1 Twospot hogfish
1 Potters Angel
1 small Desjardini Tang
I am also running a good skimmer that is rated for up to a 100g tank. but do not have a fuge right now

 

[beaslbob]

Originally Posted by mony97
http:///forum/post/3267869
Ooops I should have mentioned my set up. I have a 65g FOWLR that has been up and running for 6 months. I currently have 5 fish and everything is just fine out side of the hair algae. I do 10g water changes weekly which seems to have a great effect on my coralline algae growth, but has not done to much for my problem.
My nitrates have been at a stable 0 for quite some time now, and feed sparingly so phosphates should be low (I do need a test kit for this though!), I did switch the lighting about two months ago, and is about the time the hair algae started to pop up, so maybe I could run the lights less?
All in all though as an overall statement for my tank is there any must have products for a FOWLR set up? I cant really think of any myself and would like to be prepared the next time someone offers me something..
Thank You for all the replies, keep them coming.
If your nitrates have been 0 for some time, it is very common for cyano to show up. Because the cyano can get its nitrogen from the nitrogen gas vrs nitrates.
I believe there are some forms a green hair type algae that are actually a form of cyano. But not sure.
So one thing to do is to kill the lights so the offenting algae dies off. This not only kills off the algae but also returns nitrates to the system to feed the desirable algaes like macros or corraline. Then adjust lighting so the offending algae stary away.
just a thought
Worth at most .02

 

[speg]

Well if you don't have anything that really demands light (other than the algae you're feeding) then why don't you cut the on time down by a few hours? Let your clean up crew catch up with the algae.

 

[mony97]

I just did a 15g water change (5g more than usual) and am going to kill the lights for a few days and see how it goes, thank you for all the input everyone