r00onmac
11/10/2006, 01:09 PM
So, i upgraded from my 5.5 that i had for a year to a 20L with 45 gallon sterilite sump/fuge in august... I am having the CRAZIEST algae blooms ever! at least that i have ever seen in a well kept tank. I pay more attention to this tank than i do to my fiance (believe me she notices) and i still have algae growing along the sand and rocks and glass... i need to mag-float my front glass like 2-3x a week and with the 5.5 i didnt even own one until about 9 months in... and i only bought it because i thought it would be good to have in case i needed it...
the display is 20L with LR, a SSB, a small pair of clowns, a peppermint shrimp, 1 or 2 of those nassarius obsoleta left (mistake from the beginning of my reefing days), about 10 astrea snails and 4 or so small blue legs hermits (waiting for them to die too)
the sump is 45 gal sterilite tub with caluerpa and about 60lbs of LR... my urchin pro with mag 3 skimming like a champ, and a phosban reactor running about 10 tablespoons of phosban.... my readings as of yesterday with my crappy red sea test kits were pH 8.3, .25 ppm ammonia, and 5 ppm nitrAte (the lowest its been since i started reefing a year or so ago) but i attribute most of that to the fact that i had no water movement for over a week when both my skimmer pump and my return pump broke... thus leaving me with NO mechanical filtration and lots of dead spots in the tank for over a week.. when i fixed the pumps this wednesday the skimmer pulled a cup and a half the first day and is still going strong...
all the flow in the tank is generated by my quiet one 3000 pushing about 500gph through two outlets on each side after the SCWD every 6 seconds or so... by my calculation that is 25x the display which is pretty decent flow but i sometimes still wonder if it is enough to keep detritus from falling onto the rocks and stunting the algae growth.
most days of the week i feed the clowns forumla 1 pellets and i drop them in over their host and watch them eat... once they get disinterested i stop so i am only feeding what they will eat in a minute or two... a couple days a week i feed frozen mysis and CE... and just 3 or 4 days ago i started feeding Kent Zoomax one drop per 10 gallons every 2 days...
Please offer up some suggestions...
should i just wait it out and hope that its just the new tank algae bloom? i never had one with my 5.5 but i used cured LR for that one and on this one i cycled dry rock from scratch for over a month, could it be that?
i do notice that the algae comes off easier since i added the phosban reactor a week ago, so maybe that will solve my problem in time...
ive considered running the return through one line over the top of the back of the tank out through a flare nozzle and then hooking the scwd up to a higher gph closed loop... or doing a maxi-stream mod and putting that in but i really dont like the look of powerheads in my tank...
the display is 20L with LR, a SSB, a small pair of clowns, a peppermint shrimp, 1 or 2 of those nassarius obsoleta left (mistake from the beginning of my reefing days), about 10 astrea snails and 4 or so small blue legs hermits (waiting for them to die too)
the sump is 45 gal sterilite tub with caluerpa and about 60lbs of LR... my urchin pro with mag 3 skimming like a champ, and a phosban reactor running about 10 tablespoons of phosban.... my readings as of yesterday with my crappy red sea test kits were pH 8.3, .25 ppm ammonia, and 5 ppm nitrAte (the lowest its been since i started reefing a year or so ago) but i attribute most of that to the fact that i had no water movement for over a week when both my skimmer pump and my return pump broke... thus leaving me with NO mechanical filtration and lots of dead spots in the tank for over a week.. when i fixed the pumps this wednesday the skimmer pulled a cup and a half the first day and is still going strong...
all the flow in the tank is generated by my quiet one 3000 pushing about 500gph through two outlets on each side after the SCWD every 6 seconds or so... by my calculation that is 25x the display which is pretty decent flow but i sometimes still wonder if it is enough to keep detritus from falling onto the rocks and stunting the algae growth.
most days of the week i feed the clowns forumla 1 pellets and i drop them in over their host and watch them eat... once they get disinterested i stop so i am only feeding what they will eat in a minute or two... a couple days a week i feed frozen mysis and CE... and just 3 or 4 days ago i started feeding Kent Zoomax one drop per 10 gallons every 2 days...
Please offer up some suggestions...
should i just wait it out and hope that its just the new tank algae bloom? i never had one with my 5.5 but i used cured LR for that one and on this one i cycled dry rock from scratch for over a month, could it be that?
i do notice that the algae comes off easier since i added the phosban reactor a week ago, so maybe that will solve my problem in time...
ive considered running the return through one line over the top of the back of the tank out through a flare nozzle and then hooking the scwd up to a higher gph closed loop... or doing a maxi-stream mod and putting that in but i really dont like the look of powerheads in my tank...