Little Help with FOWLR

[yeff24]

was looking close today and noticed these little guys sprouting up everywhere any ideas?..also the rocks seem to be getting like fuzzy is this due to lack of flow? My clean up crew was eliminated by my huma so I know Im lacking some clean up http://oi54.*******.com/2q8xely.jpg

[Recty]

They look like some type of hydroid, not really a bad thing especially since you dont have corals. I had those before in my reef and they were a pain in the neck, they came in on a hermit crab shell which I thought was cool and then they spread to my rocks and stung more more sensitive corals.

Anyway, I wouldnt worry about them if I were you. But maybe get some more flow and filter your water better and your fuzzy rock problem will hopefully go away.

[yeff24]

Ya I have been working on the filtration...I am kind of in a bad situation money wise so I cant do ws much as I would like...I have a Fluval FX5 any reccomendations for media?...how aggressive are the Undys with clean up crews? was thinkink about adding some hermits to help clean things a bit

[namxas]

Yeppers...colonial hydroids. If the tank is FO, they will likely simply die out from lack of food, unless you feed lots of small food items to the tank.

[yeff24]

Just bought some nls pellets so ill be switching away from the flake foods maybe tthat might help...I'm kind of stuck with money right now so I'm stuck with my canister filter....is the carbon my best choice right now? Or any other media that might serve a better function?

[Recty]

Biological filtration will help keep algae down as well, you dont have to just use carbon. Use some kind of ceramic rings if you can. If I'm not mistaken, the FX5 has a huge amount of mechanical filtration (foam) that pulls debris out of the water. Make sure you keep that clean, then have the other compartments full of some type of media like ceramic rings to grow good bacterial colonies on and you shouldnt have much trouble.

I'm not saying dont run any carbon, but it would be better to get your tank balanced out biologically so you dont have to keep replacing carbon every month.

Maybe try redirecting the output of your FX5 towards a rock that seems to have the fuzz on it, and in a week or two look at it and see if the algae seems diminished or if it's still going strong. That at least will tell you if more flow will help the problem or not.