Annoying Algae Problem

Bifferwine said:
Do you have enough snails?
Click to expand...

I did, but I think I lost a couple turbos recently. And they never paid much attention to the powerheads and wouldn't even be able to get to the water return outlets.

Also, here's pics of my water surface and overflow... nice, huh? :grumble:

613667410_S7xUq-O.jpg


613667398_tCcY5-O.jpg
 
you will be amazed at how much you can pull out with your hands. get those powerdheads out and clean em.

the problem is when the algea gets that bad i think it can just catch food in the water columb. i think my hair algae is on the verge of gaining consciousness.
 
Anything seem to be working for you, James?

So I just finished swapping out about 11 gallons of water, cleaned off all my powerheads in vinegar, and I put some carbon into my reactor and got that going.

Now I'm going to head out to some stores and see if I can find some peppermint shrimp, maybe a few snails and possibly a small tang or foxface or something.
 
I'll tell what I had to do to get rid of Dinos.
I had to leave my lights completely off for nearly 3 weeks and do massive water changes.
But your isnt as bad as what mine was.My entire tank looked like those pics you postedEven the sand bed.
I'd siphon them out,do a water change,then come back 2 hours later,and it would look just as bad if not worse then before I siphoned em.
BTW
By massive water changes,I'm talking 50 to 75%.
 
well i dont have them bad it is just on the powerheads and the overflow. i will clean the tank and it is back in a week or less. i quit changing my water and feeding conpletely for about 5 months to see if it would burn itself out with no nutrients being added to the tank.
 
My lights are out. Will probably leave them off for 2-3 days. Maybe back on for a day and then off for a couple more days. See if that starts to help.

I also just returned with the following:

1. One big turbo snail.
2. Four Astrea Snails
3. Four Peppermint Shrimp (I've got some aiptasia)
4. Six small hermits
5. 1 One Spot Foxface
6. Two Emerald Crabs
 
well i am going to do a huge water change i just have to heat the water. i may change 60 gallons but have not decided yet.
 
Have you tried a uv on this stuff? I thankfully have never had this problem but I do run a uv at night. Mainly for ick prevention its part of my canister filter so I turn it on at lights out. Just a thought I know alot of people swear by uv's for killing off free floating algae.
 
A UV might help with Dino's.

Huge water changes didn't help my Dino's.Did just the opposite,made them worse.
Some types thrive in pristine water conditions,feeding on the calcium and carbonate.
What seemed to really help,was cutting the lights off and running keeping the PH at 8.5 along with siphoning them out on a daily bases.
Those things actually had me to pulling all my corals,fish,and inverts out and dumpping in a gallon of bleach.
 
So here's something interesting I noticed last night.
With my power heads all cleaned off, I can now better see how quickly this stuff grows. I got home yeseterday and they were already starting to get covered in a light dull green dusty mass. I started unplugging and replugging in the powerheads and when I did this the force would suck some of this algae in to the powerhead and it would get blown out into the water. If I had to describe its appearance I would say it was like watching somebody blow the dust bunnies off a feather duster. Yeah, pretty much EXACTLY like that. So now after just one full day after having cleaned off everything, if I did this on/off thing with one or two of my powerheads, my tank now had algae dust bunnies all over the place!

So now I'm wondering if all these powerheads are doing more harm than good. All i can see is algae growing on them and then being spread through my water. So i removed all but the Tunze, which is still giving my tank 24x it's volume in flow, not including the main water pump. Before I had 5 powerheads, all collecting thick algae as well as the two water return lines. Now I'm down to just one powerhead and I raised the water return lines so they are just above the surface of the water. So only one "algae magnet" remains in the tank.
 
well, the problem is that the power heads are not causing the algea, they are just collecting it. So you will still get algea growth with out the power heads.

Brian
 

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