What a great morning when the lights came on my 55gal tank was not brown with algae. I thought I would post what I did to get ahead of the issue and maybe it could help some one else.
The problem started on the 15th of September. The tank had a copper color film that covered everything. The basic water chemistry was looking good.
Ammonia = 0
Nitrate = 0
Nitrite = 0
Ph =8.4
SG = 1.024
Lighting was runing 10 to 12 hours a day.
Began to extend the testing and pickup a phosphate kit, calcuim kit and found the phosphates at 1.0 ppm. Calcium was 300 ppm. I started every 3 day doing a 10% water change. The first 2 water changes did not effect the Phosphate issue. Then set the Skimmer to a very wet foam setting and continued WC. I introduced 15 Snails and 6 red leg hermit crabs. They were doing a good job but was unable to keep with the algae production. Next step was removing all the LR to an SW tub and with the aid of a 1000 gph pump and soft brush cleaned all the LR. Cleaned the sand, glass, powerheads, skimmer, and anything else that was in the tank. Then completed a 20% water change. Testing still showed a .5 ppm of phosphate. Then removed and replace the carbon filter and increased the calcium to 420 the phosphates dropped to 0. Lighting was adjusted to an 8 hour day and this morning the tank looks great with no noticable new growth of algae. So if there is no suprises the tank is back online to becoming a true reef tank.
Thanks to all those that helped me get this far.
The problem started on the 15th of September. The tank had a copper color film that covered everything. The basic water chemistry was looking good.
Ammonia = 0
Nitrate = 0
Nitrite = 0
Ph =8.4
SG = 1.024
Lighting was runing 10 to 12 hours a day.
Began to extend the testing and pickup a phosphate kit, calcuim kit and found the phosphates at 1.0 ppm. Calcium was 300 ppm. I started every 3 day doing a 10% water change. The first 2 water changes did not effect the Phosphate issue. Then set the Skimmer to a very wet foam setting and continued WC. I introduced 15 Snails and 6 red leg hermit crabs. They were doing a good job but was unable to keep with the algae production. Next step was removing all the LR to an SW tub and with the aid of a 1000 gph pump and soft brush cleaned all the LR. Cleaned the sand, glass, powerheads, skimmer, and anything else that was in the tank. Then completed a 20% water change. Testing still showed a .5 ppm of phosphate. Then removed and replace the carbon filter and increased the calcium to 420 the phosphates dropped to 0. Lighting was adjusted to an 8 hour day and this morning the tank looks great with no noticable new growth of algae. So if there is no suprises the tank is back online to becoming a true reef tank.
Thanks to all those that helped me get this far.
