Tore down my 180 last night

[artie1209]

Now that you have eliminated the algae you have to consider the source. Calcium based rock binds with phosphate. When soaking your rock in RO water consider doing a test or running a phosphate sponge and a polyfilter. Also replace your bulbs if a year old. Maybe consider a refugium with algae inside. add a DI unit to your RO. How old is the unit the membrane has a finite life cycle. Maybe consider a larger skimmer. I am sure you have considered all of the above but maybe you missed one or it can help someone else following the thread.

 

[kogle]

Originally Posted by artie1209
http:///forum/post/2634029
Now that you have eliminated the algae you have to consider the source. Calcium based rock binds with phosphate. When soaking your rock in RO water consider doing a test or running a phosphate sponge and a polyfilter. Also replace your bulbs if a year old. Maybe consider a refugium with algae inside. add a DI unit to your RO. How old is the unit the membrane has a finite life cycle. Maybe consider a larger skimmer. I am sure you have considered all of the above but maybe you missed one or it can help someone else following the thread.
Did not test the rock for phosphates while it was soaking in RO but I do run a po4 reactor, had a fuge before but never really thought the lights over it were up to par so I upgraded my PC's to VHO's, PC's will go over the fuge. Probably overkill on the lighting now but it's ok...
upgraded my old GE RO unit to a Air Water and Ice Reefkeeper III 5 stage RO/DI 100 GPD. TDS is at 0 right now. I don't know if I'll upgrade my skimmer becasue it always worked pretty well. It's an ASM G2. if I upgraded I'd go with something from Precision Marine.
So far so good with everything except the leaky bulkhead. I'm going to fix that tonight as well as add the egg crate to the top of my over flow boxes and make strainers for the durso's just in case something were to get into the overflow box.
Hopefully I can get some pictures...

 

[tizzo]

Originally Posted by Brandan
http:///forum/post/2581353
I am not against anything you have done. Algae like that is almost impossible to get ride of naturally. . . I don't think many of you really looked at those pictures closely. You can't even see the sand. . . Sometimes you have to do extreme things to fix problems. The Bleach is not bad. . . Has anyone heard of dechlorinator? Chlorine and Bleach are very similar chemically speaking, and dechlorinator does the same on bleach as it does on Chlorine. If done correctly, you do not have to worry about Bleach leaching back into the water after the tank is setup again. Best of luck, hope everything goes as planed.
awe dadgummit you beat me to it!

I had to bleach every bit of my QT after a fish had flukes. Skimmer went nuts!! Never knew. I used Prime as a dechlorinater. I didn't know baking soda did it! Where were you 2 months ago with that info! LOL
KOgle, you changed your avatar! I almost didn't recognize you!
Keep us posted!

 

[tropills]

Originally Posted by KOgle
http:///forum/post/2634339
Did not test the rock for phosphates while it was soaking in RO but I do run a po4 reactor, had a fuge before but never really thought the lights over it were up to par so I upgraded my PC's to VHO's, PC's will go over the fuge. Probably overkill on the lighting now but it's ok...
upgraded my old GE RO unit to a Air Water and Ice Reefkeeper III 5 stage RO/DI 100 GPD. TDS is at 0 right now. I don't know if I'll upgrade my skimmer becasue it always worked pretty well. It's an ASM G2. if I upgraded I'd go with something from Precision Marine.
So far so good with everything except the leaky bulkhead. I'm going to fix that tonight as well as add the egg crate to the top of my over flow boxes and make strainers for the durso's just in case something were to get into the overflow box.
Hopefully I can get some pictures...
your skimmer is perfect, the main reason for hair algae is caused by , over feeding , to warm of tank water IMO, or high nitrates, phosphates, algae need something to feed off, it just doesnt grow for something to do, it needs a source of food .now that you have 0 TDS and good clean rock your phosphates should be 0 or at least close to that, keep the feeding lite, remember these fish are a cold blooded species they really don't need a lot of food to be full, you can go a week without feeding if you want and they won't suffer. the biggest culprit is over feeding, please don't do it. LOL I fought a battle with it myself, not a sever as yours but still. I stopped feeding everyday and went to 2 times a week and keep up good water changes and within a month all was great and still is over 2 years later.
I really like this re-build your doing I'm sure it will be greater than it was ever before

 

[kogle]

Originally Posted by Tizzo
http:///forum/post/2634954
awe dadgummit you beat me to it!

I had to bleach every bit of my QT after a fish had flukes. Skimmer went nuts!! Never knew. I used Prime as a dechlorinater. I didn't know baking soda did it! Where were you 2 months ago with that info! LOL
KOgle, you changed your avatar! I almost didn't recognize you!
Keep us posted!
Sorry Tizzo wish I would have known you were having a similar crisis.

It's been a while since I've talked to you. Hope you're doing well..

I haven't been on SWF that much lately. Been frequenting another board with the same screen name. Can't really mention it but I bet if you googled my screen name it would come up...
So far so good on setting this thing back up. It's been a labor of love. Lost all of my SPS but clams are good as well as my prized bubble and cup corals. Fish seem hapy as well in QT. Hopefully they continue to do well because I've been turned on to a new (old) way to cycle a new tank that takes 4 times as long but is more stable in the long run. I guess the phrase to keep in mind is nothing good ever happens fast in a reef tank, only bad things happen fast...

How about some recent pictures of your tank Tizzo? Pretty please?

 

[kogle]

Well I had hoped to have all of my rock work in the tank by now but with the recent flooding we've had I've been busy helping friends who lost their houses.
I did manage to get started on the rock work last night and it's looking ok. Not as good as I envisioned it but it's looking a lot better than it did before the tear down. Sorry, no pictures yet. I'll try to post some tomorrow.

 

[dallassvt]

KOgle,
I recently had a very similar problem. my tank was almost completely covered in algae. i also thought it was my RO unit and after 5 months of trying everything to figure out what it was. turned out it was the SALT I had started using. RED SEA SALT, must have gotten a bad batch or something but that really messed me up. Changed back to " Marine Mix" restocked my "clean up" crew and and a couple of weeks later everything was back under control.
Just food for thought!!
Dallas

 

[kogle]

I had thought about that too so I tested some newly mixed saltwater (when I was first trying to find the source) and no phosphates or nitrates???
Oh well, everything should be sterile now. New RO/DI is reading 0 TDS so I know that's not the source.
I'm starting this tank over with all base sand and base rock. I'll seed everything with a cup of sand from a trusted source who started his tank the same way I'm setting mine back up.

 

[dallassvt]

good luck man!!
Sounds like you will have a reef again in no time!!!

Dallas

 

[kogle]

Got all of my rock work done at the end of last week, started filling the tank with the RO unit Friday night and it was still filling this morning when I left for work. It might be done tonight... This has been a long process but it's starting to pay off. The tank is really shaping up. I put 50 pounds of base sand in the fuge. Won't be adding water to it for some time but wanted to get a feel for the amount of sand I'll be needing. 50 pounds gave me a sand bed depth of 3.5 inches. I know I'm right in the middle of no mans land here. I want a deep sand bed in the fuge but if I go to 5 or 6 inches that's only going to leave me 5 or 6 inches of water in the fuge. Doesn't seem like much water...

 

[tizzo]

Originally Posted by KOgle
http:///forum/post/2635982
Sorry Tizzo wish I would have known you were having a similar crisis.

It's been a while since I've talked to you. Hope you're doing well..

ep in mind is nothing good ever happens fast in a reef tank, only bad things happen fast...

How about some recent pictures of your tank Tizzo? Pretty please?

Well, lucky for me, my QT tank was only 20 gallons.
My DT is all gone, as I had also been away for a while. I sold off every bit of my tank and moved to florida, where I am setting up my new tank.
It's barren and boring, but here's a pic of my new 150.

Right now all my fish are in QT, so it looks empty, but I have them and I have a few little frags.

Gimme one year!
Then it'll be beautiful! Then my lease will be up and I get to move and do it all over again.

 

[kogle]

Hey Tizzo you're still miles ahead of me!!!

If this thing is done filling with water tonight I'll start up the pumps, and heaters and start adding salt. I'm going to cycle the tank for 3 months without ever turning on the lights. After that I'll run it for a month with only VHO's and then I'll start the MH's back up and work on getting to my final photo period. Hopefully the tank will be mature enough at that point to fire up the fuge...
Hopefully I can avoid the algae blooms that come with a new tank doing things that way. Going to be hard for algae to grow in no light not to mention levels should be easy to maintain (cal., alk., and mg.) with no coral in there.
Some time before firing the VHO's I'm going to seed for coraline...
All a work in progress I guess. This fuge thing has got me a little concerned though as far as getting my sand bed deep enough without loosing water volume...

 

[tizzo]

Haha, hey KOgle, just so you know. When I set up this 150, I let it cycle for about 2 months with no lights. But when I did turn them on, the diatoms and algae came.

I used 100% RO/DI with brand new cartridges. Heck the whole RO unit was brand new. Still that da%$ algae came.
I don't think it matters if you wait 6 minths to turn on the lights.
If you light it... they will come.
Then I put in a yellow tang and 50 astrias and now all is crystal clear.

 

[kogle]

Tizzo my theory (ought oh here it comes) is since I've nuked everything in the tank and will be starting the tank with all base rock and live rock there should be no spores in the water to grow algae but... then I get to thinking and aren't the fish wet when they go into this new pristine environment? Don't the snail shells have water in them full of spores just lurking and waiting for the right opportunity? I guess what I'm getting at is I've gone to all this trouble for what can seem like nothing...

Guess all I can do is keep that water in check and pray....

 

[tizzo]

Awe c'mon KOgle, if you put a tub of pure water on your back porch, in about 1 week it'll either be brown or green. That algae comes from nowhere. I'm not talking the macro stuff you had, just diatoms and such.
Man that stuff you had was nasty! I think I woulda done the same thing.
What are you starting your cycle with this go round?

 

[stdreb27]

Originally Posted by Brandan
http:///forum/post/2581353
I am not against anything you have done. Algae like that is almost impossible to get ride of naturally. . . I don't think many of you really looked at those pictures closely. You can't even see the sand. . . Sometimes you have to do extreme things to fix problems. The Bleach is not bad. . . Has anyone heard of dechlorinator? Chlorine and Bleach are very similar chemically speaking, and dechlorinator does the same on bleach as it does on Chlorine. If done correctly, you do not have to worry about Bleach leaching back into the water after the tank is setup again. Best of luck, hope everything goes as planed.
Bleach is just clorine, and isn't nearly as stable as we imagine it to be. Between sitting in the sun, and a declorinator, and your leaching process I wouldn't worry about it. Good luck with the algea.

 

[townsdp]

Utr experience is identical to mine. If anything, I actually tried a few more minor "fixes" for my hair algae and to no avail. No light for 2 months and massive water changes and I'm blown up again. I'm really thinkin about trying this as well. My question is I have a LOT of leathers, zoos, gsp, shrooms, etc. I am going to move them to a QT tank like I did before but they are attached to small rocks. How do clean that rock enough? My large leather(stalk is about 4 in in diameter) is attached to a 6" piece. How did you get around that?

 

[kogle]

Originally Posted by townsdp
http:///forum/post/2650874
Utr experience is identical to mine. If anything, I actually tried a few more minor "fixes" for my hair algae and to no avail. No light for 2 months and massive water changes and I'm blown up again. I'm really thinkin about trying this as well. My question is I have a LOT of leathers, zoos, gsp, shrooms, etc. I am going to move them to a QT tank like I did before but they are attached to small rocks. How do clean that rock enough? My large leather(stalk is about 4 in in diameter) is attached to a 6" piece. How did you get around that?
I don't know if you can clean those rocks good enough to get all the algae off them.
I agree on the bucket of clean water on the porch Tizzo. It's like the algae fairy is just sitting and waiting for the right time...

I'm having trouble getting my new RO/DI to fill this stinking tank... It's been filling since Friday night. The display finally filled up late last night so I took the feed hose from the RO and hooked it up to the float valve in the sump hoping to wake up this morning to a full tank. Well I only had about 2 inches of water in the sump from letting this thing run all night. It seems like anytime air gets into that feed line it makes it really hard for the RO unit to start pushing water through it again....

Hopefully all of the air is purged from the line today and I'll be back in business. I'm itching to get some salt in that water and get the heaters on. Heaters are controlled by a lighthouse controller so I can't fire that thing up until I can keep the probes submerged in the sump... it's all a big mess right now...

 

[kogle]

Well gang I FINALLY got this tank filled up. Calibrated my probes last night and fired up the Lighthouse controller. Got the water up to temp and started adding salt. I only got about 1/4 of it in but I don't want to rush it. I'll finish tonight and I'll probably run some carbon for a day or two before seeding the tank with live sand from a buddies tank.
After that all I need to do is finish wiring up my VHO's, add the vent to my canopy and install the fans.

 

[kogle]

oops meant to post a picture of the rock work. Couldn't get a reall good picture because my camera is being junky but here it is...