2 month old 90gal FOWLR

conger

it actually worked out pretty decent, I had the tank set up for about 8 months in Florida before relocating for a job. I decided to simply tear the tank down (giving all my fish and inverts back to the LFS) and re-start from scratch out west. This was my first venture into saltwater, and while I did a decent job the first time, I learned a LOT in those 8 months, and was able to take everything I had learned into account from the get-go when I restarted the tank here. No cyano this time! Lol. But I'm still in the throes of the initial algae outbreaks associated with any new tank, and would prefer that the green go away before I bother posting pics... I wouldn't want to break anyone's monitor with my ugly green monster

Kellsindell

aww... BOOO! i posted with my green machine. you do too!

conger

Haha, alright then, ask and you shall receive :)

I posted a thread a while back, when the algae was first setting in, asking for any advice on what I could do to mitigate the algae... never got any replies though

http://www.fishforum.com/saltwater-a...n-algae-19375/

You can find it here, along with a few pics and a nice, long-winded description of the tank

I ended up turning my lights off for three days at one point, to try and do some damage to the algae while not endangering the fish. It helped a bit, but by now I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that it's a phase that I'll just have to wait out. I'm keeping my water good quality (I think), so it's not a problem of excess nutrients in the water.

Keep in mind, it's a FOWLR, so I don't have all the pretty corals to show off either!

Kellsindell

Pretty corals? what are you talking about .

That is some serious green algae break out... it's a wierd formation though, one i've seen only a handful of times... i'll see if i can dig up anything for you.

conger

Thanks. Also, the snails don't seem to touch it... I mean they still graze on the rocks and all, but it doesn't remove the algae. I just got 10 astrea snails the other day, we'll see if they do anything as well, but I'm not crossing my fingers. On the overflow wall, it looks more spotty in the pictures than it is... I can some coralline growing on that wall before I moved, and of course during the moved it died, and stained the plastic white. Now with green algae growing, it looks like green spots (but there's just as much algae in the black areas of the wall as well).

Since I posted that question thread, the algae has SLOWLY began to receed. It's still there, and it's still ugly, but its not like it was at first... plus, I'm starting to see the first few dots of coralline appear around the tank, so hopefully in a few months that will have taken hold pretty well and will be out-competing the other algae for nutrients.

I tested my water this past weekend, and these are the updated parameters:

sg - 1.024
pH - 8.3
Ammonia/Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 5 ppm
Alkalinity - 12 dKH
Calcium - 440
Magnesium - 1340

May as well re-invigorate this tank thread! I'll post more pictures soon.

conger

Alright, I took a couple of updated pics here, the green is still there but not as bad (plus, I'm using a digital camera instead of my camera phone, and the pic quality is much better).

I'm having a small resurgance of diatoms on the sand, but it isn't touching the rocks. I went through a phase of diatoms already, which came and went, but now its coming back a little. Darn new tanks!

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Kellsindell

Yeah, something we all go through initailly. Glad to see it is looking better though. Is your tang eating the algae at all? Nice rock formation though.

BTW... Merry Christmas!

Kellsindell

after thought... how big(small) is that tang? it looks tiny in your tank. The goby is bigger then it

conger

haha, the tang is tiny... I just got him, and he's a really small juvenile. He'll get much bigger obviously . In fact, the 4-stripe is even bigger than him right now! For the first day or so, the 4-stripe was picking on him a little bit, but that stopped quickly, and now the tang will charge at the 4-stripe from time to time. No biting though, just a little bit of machismo.

dallops_of_polyps

you need a lawnmower or two in there.