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azfishgal

azfishgal

Active Member
What is this? (see picture below) It's as white as the picture shows and it's actually very easy to rub off. It started off as just a tiny bit and now it's starting to spread like wild fire.
My Mag is pretty high, around 1900. All other parameters are in check but some of my corals are not doing goood. Including my leather since my anemone decided to take residence right next to it.
I'm going to do three 25 gallon water changes back to back starting today, so hopefully I can fix the mag problem along with whatever else is going on in my tank. (The DT is 125 gallons, 1 year and 7 months old.)
Oh, I'm also getting lots of bubble algea. Any idea how to take care of that? (Emerald crabs are not eating it.)

 
mx#28

mx#28

Active Member
I'm thinking it might be some kind of precipitate. Why is the mag so high? What do you dose and what are your other parameters???
 
azfishgal

azfishgal

Active Member
It's not bleached coraline. When I was doing the water change it was actually easy to blow off, but it does not blow off like powder. It peals off like red slime algea.
Mag 1900
Cal 400
pH 8.2
Alk 3.0
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Amonia 0
Salinity 1.025
I'm thinking it's the high Mag that is the cause. I think I had a faulty mag test, but I was having a very hard time raising and keeping my calcium, so I tested for Mag and it was low, like 900. So it made sense why my calcium was not rising. So I started dosing mag according to the bottle directions and then I noticed my calcium started to hold, so I thought things were fine. I ran out of my Mag test and then bought another only to find this time my Mag was very high. So now I've done one 25 gallon water change with two more changes in the next two days. Hopefully by the third change my Mag will be down where it needs to be and my corals will be happy again.
Oh, I use Kent Marine Turbo Calcium and Kent Marine Super Buffer dkH.
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator
It liiks like a bacterial mat to me. Is there something dead under it that bacteria can feed on?
 
bgrae001

bgrae001

Member
As far as the algae goes when was the last time you changed out your main membrane in you RO unit? I don't mean the filters.
 
azfishgal

azfishgal

Active Member
Originally Posted by Bang Guy
http:///forum/post/2743065
It liiks like a bacterial mat to me. Is there something dead under it that bacteria can feed on?
Not that I can see. It's just rock under it. And it's spreading over several different rocks, so I don't think I would have that many dead things in my tank.
 
azfishgal

azfishgal

Active Member
Originally Posted by bgrae001
http:///forum/post/2743072
As far as the algae goes when was the last time you changed out your main membrane in you RO unit? I don't mean the filters.
I changed the membrane within the past year. How often does it need to be changed? My RO/DI unit was reading 5 TDS, so I replaced the DI cartridge and it's now reading 0. The water here is very bad though, about 800 TDS out of the tap. I do need to change the DI cartridge about every 2-3 months because of it. Would this also effect the membrane. I changed over to a Spectra Pure about a year ago.
 
azfishgal

azfishgal

Active Member
It's now starting to turn a rust color. I'm assuming it's because I messed with it. You can actually see a spot of the rest color in the second picture (upper right corner), this is the spot I touched to see if it would come off. But now that I've done a water change there are several more of those rust colored spots, so maybe the cleaner water is killing it.
We'll see what happens after the next two water changes.
 
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