And so the slow slide of algae domination begins...

Here's the scoop

It's a 50gal display with a 40ish gal sump.
Currently running 1 cup of GFO
My params as of today were
SG - 1.025
Mg -1220 ppm
Ca - 390 ppm
kH - 10.9
No3 - .145 ppm --> it is water change day
Po4 - .06 ppm

The display inhabitants are
1 x Tennenti Tang (took as a last resort, if anyone wants him he is free!)
1 x African Flameback Angel
1 x Royal Gramma
2 x Perc clownfish (m/f)
1 x Emerald crab
? x snails

Coral wise there is a variety of SPS, LPS, and Mushrooms

Lighting for the display are
2 x 150w 10k metal halides
3 x blue plus
1 x purple plus

The sump houses
2 x Mandarin Dragonettes (m/f)
1 x Porcelain crab
1 x cucumber of an unknown variety
? x snails

corals
1 x fairly large hammer
-it was getting too large for the display and was damaging surrounding corals
3 x ORA xenia
1 x Rhodactis mushroom

Macros
-Halimeda
-Cheato
-Flame algae

Unintentionally macros - these just showed up one day
-Scroll
-Sargassum


Sump lighting
4 x T5 bulbs
Blue LED supplements

Sump FTS


Xenia, Halimeda and I believe red cyano





Mysterious Scroll Macro

Unknown bubbles on intake

Sargassum

Gelidium and green bubble


Gelidium

greech said:

Fish load is a bit high IMO. the tang especially needs to go. How much flow? Possibly consider repositioning your PHs. All that macro is nice but it catches and holds detritus easily too. The bubble algae and the turf go hand in hand. Surely they are feeding off of some nutrients (keeping your numbers low) but those two in particular don't need exceptionally dirty water to grow. You most likely introduced them via a frag or rock.

Unfortunately I don't have an easy fix. Manual removal, frequent and aggressive water changes (blowing off rocks with a pump, vac sand bed, removing rocks that you can to scrape off algae, etc). The water changes aren't so much because of water quality but more about physical removal of algae and detritus. Lose the tang at a minimum, reduce feeding to every other day (or less), Invest in 2 to 3 tuxedo urchins or pin cushion urchins.

You will gain control of it but its going to take a little work upfront.

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We have found a home for him, it's just a matter of getting him out of the tank and to the store. He is darn near impossible to catch and the store is only open friday and saturdays >.<
The story behind him is our friends tore down their 500gal reef and he was the only fish they couldn't rehome and the people who bought the tank (for their red tailed cats and showed up with a trailer that the tank didn't even fit on pulled by a station wagon :nilly: ) were on the way over so we took him with the intention of rehoming him....but can't catch him now!

flow wise in the display there is the 2 return nozzles from a 1200gph return pump and 2 Koralia 1050 Evos

greech said:

Understood but he along is contributing quite a bit to your bioload. Can you put a PH behind your rocks by chance? Might help suspend some of the detritus that is likely settled back there.

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I can try, I probably have a small one lying around

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greech said:

Wish I had an easy fix for you. The urchins should help.

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Come catch my tang and take him home lol

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Went to a non chain lfs today to see about urchins. This place is where the fish go to die and its the only of neccessity otherwise we drive an hr to a much better store. The better store is out of a guys house and is inconsistent on swtock....anyway. The terrible place had 1 tuxedo urchin that was smaller than a ping pong ball and they wanted 35$ for him. We passed that one up and are going to check out the other store this weekend.
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