White Algae

[pok3mas7er]

To start i will say that the system has been up for 6 months and I have built up the calcium level and am getting good coraline algae growth on the sand bed. I just recently added some algae to the tank for the dwarf seahorse to hitch on. Since then it has been slowly turning white. I read that i should start adding iron, so i ran and picked some up that day. It's been about 2 weeks of dosing the tank and the algae is still slowly whithering away. The calcium level i believe was around 400ppm. I haven't had the iron level checked since dosing it. I could get that checked, but I have read that I should see significant improvement after dosing the tank with iron and I haven't. Is there something else that could be going on? The lights I have are the 10 watt 50/50 flourescent bulbs that plug into an incandescent socket. There are 3 above the tank. The tank is a divided 10 gallon and the display area is approximately 3-5 gallons. Lights too strong maybe? I don't know, someone help please while they are still living.

[graveyardworm]

Have you checked nitrates and phosphates? I would hold off with the iron additions until you can test for it. Three 10 watt bulbs 50/50 probably very low PAR you could try switching one or two bulbs out for something whiter.

[pok3mas7er]

I haven't checked the phosphates but the nitrates are good. When i recently had the calcium checked i also had that checked. I also think i described the lights wrong. These are the bulbs I am using. One of the tubes is blue actinic, and the other is 10,000k the way i look at that is 2 different lights running off the same power because the bulbs sold as the 50/50's are not such a bright white, but these are pretty white for the 10,000k part. They are actually more white than the full 55w 10,000k power compacts i have on my 50 gallon tank.

http://www.petco.com/Shop/Product.aspx?R=4376&PC=productlist&Nav=216&N=24%20123%2030%205579&sku=906140&familyID=11440&

I will look into the phosphates though tomorrow when i go pick up more RO water. Thnx for your help. If the phosphates are fine though are there any other suggestions?

[graveyardworm]

I had two of those in a 10 gal tank, they were fairly blue. However I did have okay macro (caulerpa) growth with those bulbs, something 10k or less would be better. You say nitrates are good, what does that mean? Can you post #'s? What kind of algae? If you have alot of coraline growth it could be competing with your new algae for nutrients.

[pok3mas7er]

i'll have to write it down when i go get the phosphates checked because i tend to forget things easily if i don't take my medicine for ADD. (side note - kind of stupid that they make you have to remember to take a pill.....................to remember things) I'll make sure I get the number though. So I may have stretched the LOT of coraline algae, the live sand that I started with, which had no purple coloring at all to it is starting to get a little purple, so on a sand bed approx 6" x 4" x 1.5" deep 10% of the visible sand is purple. There are no rocks in the tank and the only thing I really have in the display area is fake plants

The live plants i'm trying to grow are feather caulerpa and the other i believe is a sargassum. I got them from a friend and thought I was ok to keep them, apparently i was wrong

[pok3mas7er]

K, the iron numbers are .75, the phosphates are low. If i remember correctly it was .15 or .015, either way that was low. Calcium is still around 375-380ppm. The nitrates i forgot to check but i find those hard to be bad due to the seahorses water quality needs. Maybe they are too low though and the macro isn't getting nutrients. I did pick up some Natural Gold to help raise the phosphates since the dwarf seahorse really only eats live foods. I think i'm also going to look into a new light from the same company that made the mini compacts i have. It is pink and supposedly has more of the red spectrum that should help the plant growth that I can put over the refugium, or lack there of due to the whitening of the macro