Break time......

So I am thinking I am going to tear down the 125 and take a break from the hobby for awhile. I will wait till after my meeting, so if I do I will be selling most of corals. I am going to set up the 46 bow that I got from a fellow reefer from town. but most of the corals will have to go. I will sell the coral for a fair price with the condition that I get a frag back when I set it back up.

I will post more details later

Bummer! Are you going to keep the tank and equipment so you can jump back in? Are you just getting burnt out or $$$ issues? I know it's been harder and harder for me to come up with cash for salt and bulbs and everything else with my hours getting cut and me trying to pay down my debt.



Psss....

(Dibs on your leathers..)

Bummer. Sounds like you'd keep the tank though right? It looks like it was made for your house and will look kinda funny sitting there empty.

I'd probably find room for some LPSes but would rather see you stick with it.

If I can come up with an external overflow, I could hang onto some stuff for you. You are not actually getting out of the hobby if you are keeping a smaller aquarium. It's just downsizing.

Damn dude that sucks:(

I am just getting tired of looking at the HA all over in my tank. I have been in the battle for over a year and have tried all kinds of things and nothing is working. If I do tear it down I will be keeping all of the equpment. I am just very frustrated with the way the tank looks. My wife wants me to just try and get the HA cleared up before I make a bad call and tear it down.

Part of me says just get rid of everything and the other part says keep going it will get better..... I cant see the getting better part...AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Any tips would be loved!!!

Home_Depot wrote:I am just getting tired of looking at the HA all over in my tank. I have been in the battle for over a year and have tried all kinds of things and nothing is working. If I do tear it down I will be keeping all of the equpment. I am just very frustrated with the way the tank looks. My wife wants me to just try and get the HA cleared up before I make a bad call and tear it down.

Part of me says just get rid of everything and the other part says keep going it will get better..... I cant see the getting better part...AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Any tips would be loved!!!

I know how you feel dude. I have bad BA in im sick of it. Thays why im thinking of trying zevo out . How old are your lights?

I was reading "Reef Notes" about HA, when you have it, it tends to become self sustaining. In other words it starts to hold and produce the nutrients needed to produce more of it. I don't have a bad problem but it is getting worse rather than better. I had a DIY ATS in my sump, I had a terrific amount of AH in that, but I have dismantled the ATS and reduced my lighting (CP) hours. I have had them going 12 1/2 hours, I will reduce to 11 or maybe less, granted this is summer hours starting so there will be ambient light available. Anyway, I am away from my books right now, but when I get home this weekend I will try to scour my sources and do an Algae recap from Delbeek and Sprung (The Reef Aquarium)

Any chance you can do a dip of your worst rocks in boiling water? This kills the algae but retains the LR if it is a short dip.

My bulbs are all new only about 1-2 months old
going to try a coupe of new things nad see if that work

I was just trolling for books and found this one,
Algae A Problem Solver Guide by
Julian Sprung


I trust this author, I have another book ordered on this same topic so I will wait and see. This book costs 15.99 on ebay is the cheapest I have found.

Dan, I think I read somewhere that you shouldn't do zeo unless your tank has very low nutrients. Maybe I can find where I read that. If that's the case, and you have algae, it may not be worth the investment for you right now.

I think we should take this slow and break it down a bit. As a club, we should try to help each other out. I don't know any more than you guys do but it still might be worthwhile to discuss it together. We want everyone to be successful at keeping healthy critters and I hope that if I have an issue some day, someone will walk me through it before I give up. You both have too much invested to quit now. So.....let us know what's going on so others who know what they're doing can pipe in. [img]

As a TCMAS poster said in response to Dan's post about algae, when talking about nutrients, we have to consider two things. Import and Export. So, how might they be getting into the tank and is there more that can be done to get them out?

What are you guy's water params and maintenance schedules?
W/C's? I know you said you are doing them. How much? How often? What's the TDS on the new water you're using? (Dan, I saw on TCMAS they recommended you not do anymore W/C's until your readings were lower?) How much do you feed and when? I think once it's at the algae stage, it just takes a while to get things back under control. You may very well be doing the right things and just need to keep at it. Don't give up the fight!! (Dang, does that mean I just lost out on some pretty LPS?)

Besides, this is good discussion that can help someone else down the road!

I have dealt with ha in the past. I took the rock out and scrubbed it with a scrub brush. I also think if you did that and added a ats would help alot. My growth slowed down after scrubbing the rock and all went to the turf scrubber after I added that. I don't find ha other than in the overflow box now.

You could try Vodka dosing, but it takes months before you start to see results. I have had discussions about this with Li, and he has had very good results with it.

The kicker with HA is persistence... You can do lots of work on the tank with water changes, GFO, manual removal, etc. But the typical issue is when people get annoyed with it and stop doing it for awhile. I won the battle the first time around and am at the battlefront again after the move. I havd it ALMOST gone until I got laze for a month or so.

1. Pull out as much as you can manually each day
2. If you get a spot that's nearly cleaned off, use an old toothbrush to scrub it even better
3. Do weekly water changes of at least 15%. I am doing 20G changes on a 75G display every couple weeks since my RODI moves too slow
4. Rinse the food till it is clean then rinse again. Feed less often and less quantity
5. Do a 3 day lights out treatment every couple weeks.
6. Skim wet to pull out additional nutrients
7. use a filter sock on the drain and change every couple days. You'd be surprised at the crap that can be cought this way, especially when scrubbing or blowing off the rocks.

These are the things that helpped me beat the HA last time and they will help me beat it again. Mine isn't too bad but it needs to just go away.

If you do end up tearing down I would be interested in some of your corals. But make sure that's a last resort for you since it's a nice tank and you CAN beat this.

I bet if you drink the vodka your tank will start looking nicer! HA is a pain, sometimes you are doing everything right and still got it and you can do everything wrong and not have it. I know my nitrates are high in my main tank, bulbs are old, skimmer is working like crap and I overfeed like crazy and there's no algea at all. And yet you battle this every year no matter what.

I know your tank has been clear in the past, were you doing anything different then? I would start by cleaning out equipment, give everything a good scrub and vinegar bath, pumps, skimmer, etc, do as big of a water change you can, maybe clean out a chunk of your sandbed, scrub whatever rock you can reach, run some fresh carbon and leave the lights off for a couple days. When you turn them back on do another big change. Stick a powerhead behind your rockwork if you can, blow all that crap outta there.

This is a good thread and I am learning a lot, thank you everyone.

Tiffany,No I have not done anything differant except change my skimmer. I dont think that my skimmer is working right. I have about 1" in the cup and it has been well over three weeks since I dumped it. I clean my power heads whenever I see HA on it. I ordered two things to ry and help One is aleafix and the other is some liquid phos. remover. Jim uses it and likes it. I dont feed very offen in fact I have not feed my tank I bet in 3 weeks. And the A is getting worse. I dont have enough salt to do a big WC I have about 10-15 gallons of mix left. It seems like when I pull it out by hand it gets worse about a week or so later. I have a rock in there now that last week it was fine and now all you can see is HA.
It is all just very fustrating.
Going to try this new stuff and see if it helps and if not I am going to tear it down and start over some time.

Home_Depot wrote:Tiffany,No I have not done anything differant except change my skimmer. I dont think that my skimmer is working right. I have about 1" in the cup and it has been well over three weeks since I dumped it. I clean my power heads whenever I see HA on it. I ordered two things to ry and help One is aleafix and the other is some liquid phos. remover. Jim uses it and likes it. I dont feed very offen in fact I have not feed my tank I bet in 3 weeks. And the A is getting worse. I dont have enough salt to do a big WC I have about 10-15 gallons of mix left. It seems like when I pull it out by hand it gets worse about a week or so later. I have a rock in there now that last week it was fine and now all you can see is HA.
It is all just very fustrating.
Going to try this new stuff and see if it helps and if not I am going to tear it down and start over some time.

What skimmer do you have now?
I get 2-3in skimmer crap a week. and i have a low end skimmer. I think right there is the start of you troubles.

Sounds like the skimmer is a good place to start. HD, if you need more salt mix before you're able to get some, you're welcome to some of mine.

I got a SWC 160 which is basicly the same as the extremes. Not sure what could be wrong with it

I might take you up on that Cammie Phil also has some I can get from him.

Garrett did you see Jim's post over on rrvr about the fix he did on the ventury. Have you checked impeller? Are you running the mesh mod? How much water is it sitting in? Have you made sure you don't have any obstructions in the skimmer anywhere, snail made jamed somwewhere? Sorry if these seem like stupid things you have checked for already, but maybe they might spark an idea that you haven't done.

Home Depot: Should Try the new stuff like Bio Pellet from some start up company in Europe they seem to have very positive feed back from users. You can try Hiatt system with I am using and have good success keeping the algae down and currently using it to clean up my algae problem tank. Send me a message when you are in Twin Cities... I will show you how I have it setup.

blennieluvr wrote:Sounds like the skimmer is a good place to start. HD, if you need more salt mix before you're able to get some, you're welcome to some of mine.

I bet the Cal/ALK/Mag/PH is off. In order for the skimmer to work well the water PH have to be basic enough to make good bubble go attract dirt and carbon in the water. Check you water parameter....

I get at least one cup per day of brown thick liquid from my skimmer.