Algae bloom or ....?

[MarlboroMan]

I hate doing the calcium one, dripping one by one to see if the color changes, then I forget what drop I was on...

Is there a machine you could dip into your tank and it will give you all the readings necessary to keep a reef? I would pay at least 100-200 bucks for one.


I have to scrape the glass daily because of the brown algae, should I not scrape the glass though? I think I'm killing millions of pod babies crawling around on the glass, and maybe decaying?

 

[sweeTang21]

i believe they make electronic testing instraments. I don't know for sure if they make one for calcium or not. I would imagine though. Ive always stuck to the drip method. It will become easier once you get an idea of were you are, and what changes occur from time to time. This way you can pretty much come close to going right to the number and mix it up and then add a drop at a time until it changes.

 

[MarlboroMan]

I stopped scraping the glass, because I saw the blenny kiss the glass.

On the right side of the tank glass, the algae is green. On the left side, it is brown. Middle glass is lightly covered in both.

 

[sweeTang21]

lol, sounds like you have a few different types of algae going on. Again its normal. The blenny needs greens in his diet so its good that he's eating it. a Snail may help as well, but cleaning it and doing water changes is a good way to keep the tank clean and the nutrients in the water down.

 

[carcrazy]

My reef tank did the same thing. You just have to wait it out as salt water tanks take a lot longer than fw to cycle/mature. Mine took about 6 months before the brown (diatoms) and the cyano bacteria disappeared completely.

 

[small_reef422]

Was your tank cloudy the whole 6 months that it was trying to establish for the algae??

I believe i too have an algae bloom, being that i just got my new 150w MH i had the lights on too long,
That was about a week ago and i cleaned it did a 20% water change. reduced lighting to 2 three hour increments and its still cloudy... though brown film has reduced growing
-about 8-9 weeks established
-RO water
-calcium 400
-Phosp 0
-Nitrate 0
-Alk 8 or so
and i added live rock, hermits and snail first and my first two fish and cleaner shrimp about a week and a half ago

Does anyone know what the cloudy-ness is from??algae?? is it safe to add any greeg star polyps???

 

[Dreaco]

Was your tank cloudy the whole 6 months that it was trying to establish for the algae??

I believe i too have an algae bloom, being that i just got my new 150w MH i had the lights on too long,
That was about a week ago and i cleaned it did a 20% water change. reduced lighting to 2 three hour increments and its still cloudy... though brown film has reduced growing
-about 8-9 weeks established
-RO water
-calcium 400
-Phosp 0
-Nitrate 0
-Alk 8 or so
and i added live rock, hermits and snail first and my first two fish and cleaner shrimp about a week and a half ago

Does anyone know what the cloudy-ness is from??algae?? is it safe to add any greeg star polyps???

you should be fine adding star polyps, I would also suggest adding a turbo and mexican turbo snail, they should help you keep the different kinds of algae in check. depending on the tank size you may need to add more, but be carefull not to add too many as some might die off and create a whole new problem.