chuckdallas
05/10/2011, 06:26 AM
Hello everyone. Let me say thanks for all of the help up front. Well, for those of you that have seen (and/or cursed) my username and the constant posting with phosphate problems in the last month, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! I think I won a small battle, if not the war on phosphates. I finally got my Hanna 736 Phosphorus Meter to read "4", which is about the tolerance of the meter, so it could be 0-8, which is 0-0.024 in phosphates.
For those reading this for the first time, I have Sun Polyps and a couple of meatier LPS'es that need extra attention, so I was feeding the corals twice a day. Now, it's 2-3 times a week. I took all of the Rowaphos GFO bags out of the Reactor and am just using Warner Marine ECO-Bak pellets and the new Rowaphos bags sit next to the return pump. It took 3 weeks for the pellets to build up the benficial bacteria, so now things seem to be in sync.
New questions: I have about 3 handfuls of chaeto in the fuge in a 10 gallon aquarium that is about 10 inches tall. Some of the algae sits on the bottom and and some rests on the top of the water in the fuge. Where the chaeto sits on top of the water (about 2-3 inches from the 2 X 5100 K bulbs), I'm getting some reddish-brown buildup. It looks more like slime than new/different algae. Also, the edges of the fuge aquarium are developing a thin layer of brown algae, similar in form to the algae that grows on the inside of the DT that has to be scraped off. I get VERY little algae on the insode of the DT.
1 - Can I leave the brown algae in the fuge (since I don't want it in the DT)?
2 - What's the brown "slime-like" junk on the top of the fuge water? Is that new algae forming or a byproduct the chaeto produces? Do I scoop it out or leave it alone? I don't have too much flow through the fuge, so it doesn't swirl or move around. My first guess is leave it alone until it starts blocking the light to the chaeto underneath the water line.
For those reading this for the first time, I have Sun Polyps and a couple of meatier LPS'es that need extra attention, so I was feeding the corals twice a day. Now, it's 2-3 times a week. I took all of the Rowaphos GFO bags out of the Reactor and am just using Warner Marine ECO-Bak pellets and the new Rowaphos bags sit next to the return pump. It took 3 weeks for the pellets to build up the benficial bacteria, so now things seem to be in sync.
New questions: I have about 3 handfuls of chaeto in the fuge in a 10 gallon aquarium that is about 10 inches tall. Some of the algae sits on the bottom and and some rests on the top of the water in the fuge. Where the chaeto sits on top of the water (about 2-3 inches from the 2 X 5100 K bulbs), I'm getting some reddish-brown buildup. It looks more like slime than new/different algae. Also, the edges of the fuge aquarium are developing a thin layer of brown algae, similar in form to the algae that grows on the inside of the DT that has to be scraped off. I get VERY little algae on the insode of the DT.
1 - Can I leave the brown algae in the fuge (since I don't want it in the DT)?
2 - What's the brown "slime-like" junk on the top of the fuge water? Is that new algae forming or a byproduct the chaeto produces? Do I scoop it out or leave it alone? I don't have too much flow through the fuge, so it doesn't swirl or move around. My first guess is leave it alone until it starts blocking the light to the chaeto underneath the water line.