psimitry
08/04/2006, 02:02 AM
So about a year and a half ago I started in this hobby. I was fortunate to have (after dealing with some red slime and some hair algae that just loved to grow on the same rock and nowhere else), an immaculately clean tank.
In february, I upgraded to my 50G tank that I'm currently in and soon after upgraded to my current lighting setup (soon to follow). Everything seemed to be going well, tank was still sterile (almost too sterile IMHO), and life was good. I tend to be pretty anal about my water changes so I was doing about 10% changes every week on tuesday.
At the end of may, I added an RDSB setup in order to reduce the nitrates that were in system (they were never very high, but I wanted to keep it that way). A 5 gallon bucket system was added and about 55 lb of playsand was used (silica/aragonite mix). Shortly after it was added, I went on vacation for about a week. When I got back, the algae (some extremely light, almost whitish brown variety) did this in my tank:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/nuke2.jpg
Now granted, my autofeeder was feeding flake food twice a day, but NOTHING enough to generate this amount of nutrients. I can only guess that there was enough nutrients and silicate in the playsand from the newly added RDSB that it set off the explosion.
Oddly enough, a lot of the corals in my tank seemed to absolutely adore this stuff. It would build up, obscuring the tank within 2-3 days and when I'd scrape it, my corals would look INSANELY happy the next day.
Anyway, eventually the light brown stuff went away, replaced by a bigger menace: the dark brown algae. This stuff managed to grow on pretty much any porous/rough surface. As such, any spot of coralline algae on equipment/rocks was covered by this stuff and killed due to lack of light getting to it (I have nearly no coralline in my tank at the moment). This is the stuff that showed:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/returntube.jpg
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/powerhead1.jpg
Shortly after all this happened, the green hair algae started to move in and setup shop. In the following image, what used to be a lovely looking piece of dead brain coral attached to a piece of my live rock is now a field of grass:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/hairalgae2.jpg
Shortly after THAT, a nasty strain of red hair algae (read: not slime) moved in nearby:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/hairalgae1.jpg
In the meantime, while all this nice new macro algae has been moving in, all around the tank some new menace seems to be popping up all over my rocks. This is some sort of worm I believe, as it doesn't grow like algae. What it most definitely IS, is ugly. It's the circled stuff that kinda looks like grass in the following image:
http://paintedover.com/uploads/show.php?loc=0629&f=unknowngrass.jpg
It is surrounding a ton of what I call tube worms which are in the next image and are also EVERYWHERE where there just used to be a few:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/tubeworms.jpg
Then there's the oddities that aren't really of that much concern to me, but I haven't seen them before so I thought I'd take pics and ask.
The first is of a sponge that seems to be getting awful cozy with my hammer coral. In this image, you can see two tubes that it has stuck through the hammer's plumage and it has grown around the skeleton of the hammer (in addition to a ton of those tube worms at the base). Bear in mind that this pic was taken two hours after lights off so the hammer is deflated. I'm worried I'm going to have to frag off a piece of the hammer because the sponge is about to suffocate the rest:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/spongeonhammer.jpg
I also noticed what LOOKS like a random spawn of a frogspawn. I have a frogspawn elsewhere in tank, but something about this thing set off a red flag with me and I thought I'd ask about it:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/unknownthingy.jpg
Finally, there's these things. I have no idea what the heck they are, where they came from or what to do about them. I'm hoping someone can give me some advice:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/unknowntubuoles.jpg
End of happy fun images. Begin info about tank.
Current tank params are:
Temp: 79.5 (two hours since lights off)
pH: 8.1
ALK: 2.5 meq/L
Calc: 385
Ammonia: Undetectable
Nitrate: Undetectable
Phosphate: .25 ppm (w/ 100ml of ROWAphos in the sump)
Feedings: Once every other day with a small amount of ocean nutrition's prime reef flake. On off days, I feed a small amount of cyclopeeze and mysis combo.
Current tank inhabitants:
2 false perc clown fish (had 'em since the beginning)
1 firefish goby (maybe - haven't seen it in a couple of days)
1 skunk cleaner shrimp
1 fire (a.k.a. blood) shrimp
1 Coral Banded Shrimp
2 Peppermint shrimp (I know it's a lot of shrimp for a 50G but they seem to all get along)
10 blue leg hermits
20 (give or take) Nassarius Vibex snails
5 Nassarius polygonatus snails
15 astrea snails
1 queen conch
Assorted info:
The hermits have only been in tank for about a week. I bought them when I couldn't take it anymore. I actually went hermit crab free about 5 months ago.
I have 2 skimmers running on the tank - a AquaC remora in the tank itself and a Coralife Superskimmer 65 running in the sump. I change my GAC about every 3 weeks (marineland diamond pellet).
Currently running 4x 54W T5HO lighting (1x 6000K, 1x 11000K, one actinic and one 7100K).
Am thinking about a lawnmower blenny but have heard they can be really aggressive in the tank. Don't really want to disturb the happy fun times that appear to be my tank (everything in my tank really does seem to get along well).
Bottom line: HELP!!
In february, I upgraded to my 50G tank that I'm currently in and soon after upgraded to my current lighting setup (soon to follow). Everything seemed to be going well, tank was still sterile (almost too sterile IMHO), and life was good. I tend to be pretty anal about my water changes so I was doing about 10% changes every week on tuesday.
At the end of may, I added an RDSB setup in order to reduce the nitrates that were in system (they were never very high, but I wanted to keep it that way). A 5 gallon bucket system was added and about 55 lb of playsand was used (silica/aragonite mix). Shortly after it was added, I went on vacation for about a week. When I got back, the algae (some extremely light, almost whitish brown variety) did this in my tank:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/nuke2.jpg
Now granted, my autofeeder was feeding flake food twice a day, but NOTHING enough to generate this amount of nutrients. I can only guess that there was enough nutrients and silicate in the playsand from the newly added RDSB that it set off the explosion.
Oddly enough, a lot of the corals in my tank seemed to absolutely adore this stuff. It would build up, obscuring the tank within 2-3 days and when I'd scrape it, my corals would look INSANELY happy the next day.
Anyway, eventually the light brown stuff went away, replaced by a bigger menace: the dark brown algae. This stuff managed to grow on pretty much any porous/rough surface. As such, any spot of coralline algae on equipment/rocks was covered by this stuff and killed due to lack of light getting to it (I have nearly no coralline in my tank at the moment). This is the stuff that showed:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/returntube.jpg
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/powerhead1.jpg
Shortly after all this happened, the green hair algae started to move in and setup shop. In the following image, what used to be a lovely looking piece of dead brain coral attached to a piece of my live rock is now a field of grass:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/hairalgae2.jpg
Shortly after THAT, a nasty strain of red hair algae (read: not slime) moved in nearby:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/hairalgae1.jpg
In the meantime, while all this nice new macro algae has been moving in, all around the tank some new menace seems to be popping up all over my rocks. This is some sort of worm I believe, as it doesn't grow like algae. What it most definitely IS, is ugly. It's the circled stuff that kinda looks like grass in the following image:
http://paintedover.com/uploads/show.php?loc=0629&f=unknowngrass.jpg
It is surrounding a ton of what I call tube worms which are in the next image and are also EVERYWHERE where there just used to be a few:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/tubeworms.jpg
Then there's the oddities that aren't really of that much concern to me, but I haven't seen them before so I thought I'd take pics and ask.
The first is of a sponge that seems to be getting awful cozy with my hammer coral. In this image, you can see two tubes that it has stuck through the hammer's plumage and it has grown around the skeleton of the hammer (in addition to a ton of those tube worms at the base). Bear in mind that this pic was taken two hours after lights off so the hammer is deflated. I'm worried I'm going to have to frag off a piece of the hammer because the sponge is about to suffocate the rest:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/spongeonhammer.jpg
I also noticed what LOOKS like a random spawn of a frogspawn. I have a frogspawn elsewhere in tank, but something about this thing set off a red flag with me and I thought I'd ask about it:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/unknownthingy.jpg
Finally, there's these things. I have no idea what the heck they are, where they came from or what to do about them. I'm hoping someone can give me some advice:
http://img0629.paintedover.com/uploads/0629/unknowntubuoles.jpg
End of happy fun images. Begin info about tank.
Current tank params are:
Temp: 79.5 (two hours since lights off)
pH: 8.1
ALK: 2.5 meq/L
Calc: 385
Ammonia: Undetectable
Nitrate: Undetectable
Phosphate: .25 ppm (w/ 100ml of ROWAphos in the sump)
Feedings: Once every other day with a small amount of ocean nutrition's prime reef flake. On off days, I feed a small amount of cyclopeeze and mysis combo.
Current tank inhabitants:
2 false perc clown fish (had 'em since the beginning)
1 firefish goby (maybe - haven't seen it in a couple of days)
1 skunk cleaner shrimp
1 fire (a.k.a. blood) shrimp
1 Coral Banded Shrimp
2 Peppermint shrimp (I know it's a lot of shrimp for a 50G but they seem to all get along)
10 blue leg hermits
20 (give or take) Nassarius Vibex snails
5 Nassarius polygonatus snails
15 astrea snails
1 queen conch
Assorted info:
The hermits have only been in tank for about a week. I bought them when I couldn't take it anymore. I actually went hermit crab free about 5 months ago.
I have 2 skimmers running on the tank - a AquaC remora in the tank itself and a Coralife Superskimmer 65 running in the sump. I change my GAC about every 3 weeks (marineland diamond pellet).
Currently running 4x 54W T5HO lighting (1x 6000K, 1x 11000K, one actinic and one 7100K).
Am thinking about a lawnmower blenny but have heard they can be really aggressive in the tank. Don't really want to disturb the happy fun times that appear to be my tank (everything in my tank really does seem to get along well).
Bottom line: HELP!!