never ending battle with my nano

[Ross]

I have a 12g nanocube, took out the stock pump and replace w/ maxi jet 900, made the casetee skimmer, made dual nozzles for alternate flow, added the stock maxi jet pump in the tank for flow, runnign 150w halide (just switched from 64w pc). The tank has been setup for about 3 months or so, it has prolly 10lbs lr. I have eggcrate lifted on pieces of pvc that the rock is sitting on, so crap doesnt build up under the rock. I do water changes about 2 times a week with RO water. My problem is stupid diatoms and brown algae growing. the tank holds 2 clownfish which i feed every other day, and a couple astreas and some bluelegs and scarlet hermits. I do not know how to get rid of this algae! any ideas at all? I've had it full of macro and it really hasnt helped much. Also my zoos and GSP dont open as much as they should. any ideas welcome.

[don-n-sa]

Maybe its the lighting upgrade...when I went from PC's to T-5's I fought the same thing for a couple of weeks...all good now

[Ross]

Its had the algae even with the pc's.

[hobogato]

try to run an iron based phospate scrubber like phosban. i was having issues with diatoms and cyano, and it is much better since i added the phosphat/carbon reactor.

[Dozer]

I don't really understand the substrate. Is there any live sand, or just the rock on top of the eggcrate (barebottom)? If no livesand are you vacuuming it constantly? Also, are you running any type of skimmer? If not, how often are you changing out water? Lastly, any room for a sump/refugium type of thing maybe underneath in a cabinet or something? A rubbermaid container or 10 gal. tank underneath or above would work. (bigger would be even bigger, but I don't know what kind of space you have).

Maybe some of that will help, just thought I'd throw out some thoughts.

edit- just noticed a couple things I asked you had said, sorry, didn't read carefully. Is the skimmer working pretty good? Assuming it is, my hunch would be the huge increase in lighting. Have you tried cutting back on the light period and seeing if it helps? Oops sorry, one more thing. It's not shocking that a 3 month old tank would battle algae, it might just need to settle in still.

[Ross]

The skimmer isnt actually a protein skimmer. The people in the nano world call it a skimmer, it just gets water off the top. I cant setup a sump of any kind, the nanocube has all the filtration built into the back. Substrate is barebottom, with the rock on the eggcrate. I vaccum it every 3 or 4 days as i do a water change. The lighting isnt the problem, i was having algae problems before i had the mh (with the pc'c).

[GaryP]

Your problem is excess silicates and phosphates. The iron based phosphate scrubber that hobogato suggested should do the trick. it will remove both.

Light doesn't cause algae problems, nutrients do. I know I have never said that, so I thought I'd throw it in again. :)

[don-n-sa]

Light doesn't cause algae problems, nutrients do. I know I have never said that, so I thought I'd throw it in again. :)

I know that I have heard that before and I somewhat agree, however when I went from 540 watts of PC's to 864 watts of T-5's I had an algae bloom...that was the ONLY thing that I changed. When I was researching about T-5's on RC I was told it would happen and it did...so :P :P :P :P :P :P :P


:D

[hobogato]

yes, but it didn't last long right? his has been going on since before the lights, maybe the light switch just prolonged the last little bit of his tank's cycling??

[don-n-sa]

Ross said that the algae was there before the light upgrade...so he aready shot that theory. :)

I was just responding to Gary's comment about my commment... :D

OK, Gary how about this question??? If light has NOTHING to do with algae, why is it so hard to grow without it?? And why is it that if you don't change your bulbs on whatever lights that you have do you start to get nuisence algae???

:)

[Ross]

Well obviously algae is photosynthetic, it cant grow without light, but it also requires silicates and phosphates in the water to grow. Take away either one and you greatly reduce the amount of algae, or in your case donny, greatly increasing the lighting increased the algae. For the bulbs question, i think its because as bulbs get older the spectrum changes and they get more yellow. I guess that spectrum of light is better for the algae and grows it more. i dunno im just rambling but i think thats the basic idea.

[don-n-sa]

Ross...you are exactly right....I was just waiting for Gary to respond. ;)