Algae. Flow? Phos React? Poly Filter?

[TNTFISHY]

I have a two month old curing tank with a couple of fish in it. I'm not feeding the tank much. I AM using tap water for top off and salt mixing. It's a 57 gallon with a 20 gallon sump. Vertex IN 100, eheim 1250, Koralia 4 and 3 as circulation. I'm getting moderate to heavy brown algae and hair, most noticable on the substrate.
What should I do? I prefer not to do all the below.$$$$$$$
1) add flow?
2) RO filter?
3) Phosban?
4) Poly Filter Pads-Do they work? Can you reuse them?

Thank you all in advance.

[thebanker]

You're faced with a few headwinds here.

1. Tap water - causes brown algae. It contains silicates which diatoms use to build their cell casings. It can also cause other algae, because of what is dissolved in it.
2. New tank - it's going to have algae blooms, you sort of have to "wait it out

Adding flow may not do much. You already are running a Koralia 3 and 4 plus the eheim. The skimmer is good, but it's only going to take out protein waste, and once that breaks down into nitrate ions, it's uselss.

Phosban will help remove silicates and drop your phosphates - so YES to that. The reactor is like 40 bucks, the pump to drive it is probably 15 or 20, and the media will be another 10 or 20 bucks to start. Also I would try to get better water, like buy it from an LFS or take your chances with a "grocery store" R/O. It's probably better than the tap water, and cheaper than buying an RO machine. You could buy a TDS meter for 15 or 20 bucks and use that to hunt down a purer water source.

I haven't experimented much with Poly filters, but i don't think they will help alleviate your problem too much. Maybe only a little.

[kaskiles]

I agree with the bank,
RO/DI and GFO (phosban).

[BioFish]

I agree with everything except the part about buying the water being cheaper. In the short run yes, but its a pretty short run. I was spending $5 minimum on water, sometimes 10. After 2 years I bought a 75 gpd rodi ($120 I believe) from buckeye field supply and kick myself for not doing it a lot sooner. Plus the water is going to be sooo much cleaner. Even LFS's are guilty of not changing their filters on time.

[TNTFISHY]

Thanks for the input. Stupid question: Is an "aquarium" RODI totally different from RODI types at Home Depot?

[bertoni]

The resulting water is the same, but the RO/DI units I've seen at Home Depot seem to use proprietary DI cartridges, and will cost a lot over time. The filters from most or all of the online vendors (of good repute) use standard cartridges, which are far cheaper to replace. I'm not sure about the RO membranes in the HD units, either. They might be very small and expensive, too.

[TNTFISHY]

I'm starting with TLF 150, and Phosban. Thank you all.