Sk8r
06/07/2011, 07:15 AM
Especially in a new tank.
The most frequently asked is about algaes and cyanobacterial sheets, and various red slime removers. Bad idea with a new tank. First, your sandbed is 'baby,' and while these antibiotic fixes are pretty selective and don't totally blitz your bacteria, (much), and even if you follow instructions perfectly, they do throw a big bioload of dead bacteria into your system. If your skimmer isn't up to the job, you can damage or even crash a tank. You can lose your copepods, you can disrupt your delicate no-see-um critters, and I strongly advise against any such. Just turn your lights out 3 days a month for reefs or fish onlies, while running your skimmer at top efficiency, and you'll see it go. If it comes back, do it again next month.
Don't dose nutrients you don't have a test for. There is no magic potion to turn your tank into Tank of the Month. The three you may want to dose and track are calcium, magnesium, and reef buffer. Your salt mix has some. If you have stony corals, you will need more. FIsh-onlies get by on water changes and buffer.
New critters to eat a plague become a plague. If there were any secret critter that could solve your algae problem, don't you think we'd say, "Oh, easy! Of course! Get a Graceful Fragilistica, and he'll clear it all up!" and everybody in the universe would get one and have no problem? The fact is---there ain't no quick fix. No snail, no urchin, no sea hare eats all your algae. Nor should. If you don't clean up the phosphate that's in the algae, you get more algae the minute the critter poos what he ate back into the water. No crab eats bubble algae in quantities great enough: 1-2 bubbles max---but even emerald crabs will take a nip at your fish. Urchins knock your rockwork over, and can't reach the crevices. Snails just leave trails through your green film algae. They help, but don't fix. Hermit Crabs are among the best: they do clean up spare food very nicely---but still poo the chemicals back into your system. Your SKIMMER is what takes the spare amino acids out. A GFO or fuge will remove spare phosphates. Your SANDBED removes broken down waste by the nitrite>ammonia>nitrate>nitrogen gas cycle, which is the most efficient of all: waste becomes gas and floats away to the surface as a bubble. Bioballs and filter cannisters can't do that last bit, the gas, which is why they can raise your nitrate too high for healthy water for corals, and why fish-only people have to change filters often, and why reef people don't have filters at all.
Hope that helps explain. Believe me, if there were magic fixes for problems, the whole community would be all over it. The only real magic is sandbeds, well-maintained sandbeds of the proper depth and maintenance done by a nassarius and (for 50 gallon up) fighting conches and multiple nassarius. Of all critters, for a tank 30 g and up, that is the only one I recommend: it cleans sandbeds safely and thoroughly, and keeps them in good running order without your having to EVER disturb them (a generally very bad idea).
The most frequently asked is about algaes and cyanobacterial sheets, and various red slime removers. Bad idea with a new tank. First, your sandbed is 'baby,' and while these antibiotic fixes are pretty selective and don't totally blitz your bacteria, (much), and even if you follow instructions perfectly, they do throw a big bioload of dead bacteria into your system. If your skimmer isn't up to the job, you can damage or even crash a tank. You can lose your copepods, you can disrupt your delicate no-see-um critters, and I strongly advise against any such. Just turn your lights out 3 days a month for reefs or fish onlies, while running your skimmer at top efficiency, and you'll see it go. If it comes back, do it again next month.
Don't dose nutrients you don't have a test for. There is no magic potion to turn your tank into Tank of the Month. The three you may want to dose and track are calcium, magnesium, and reef buffer. Your salt mix has some. If you have stony corals, you will need more. FIsh-onlies get by on water changes and buffer.
New critters to eat a plague become a plague. If there were any secret critter that could solve your algae problem, don't you think we'd say, "Oh, easy! Of course! Get a Graceful Fragilistica, and he'll clear it all up!" and everybody in the universe would get one and have no problem? The fact is---there ain't no quick fix. No snail, no urchin, no sea hare eats all your algae. Nor should. If you don't clean up the phosphate that's in the algae, you get more algae the minute the critter poos what he ate back into the water. No crab eats bubble algae in quantities great enough: 1-2 bubbles max---but even emerald crabs will take a nip at your fish. Urchins knock your rockwork over, and can't reach the crevices. Snails just leave trails through your green film algae. They help, but don't fix. Hermit Crabs are among the best: they do clean up spare food very nicely---but still poo the chemicals back into your system. Your SKIMMER is what takes the spare amino acids out. A GFO or fuge will remove spare phosphates. Your SANDBED removes broken down waste by the nitrite>ammonia>nitrate>nitrogen gas cycle, which is the most efficient of all: waste becomes gas and floats away to the surface as a bubble. Bioballs and filter cannisters can't do that last bit, the gas, which is why they can raise your nitrate too high for healthy water for corals, and why fish-only people have to change filters often, and why reef people don't have filters at all.
Hope that helps explain. Believe me, if there were magic fixes for problems, the whole community would be all over it. The only real magic is sandbeds, well-maintained sandbeds of the proper depth and maintenance done by a nassarius and (for 50 gallon up) fighting conches and multiple nassarius. Of all critters, for a tank 30 g and up, that is the only one I recommend: it cleans sandbeds safely and thoroughly, and keeps them in good running order without your having to EVER disturb them (a generally very bad idea).