Ok thanks, so will do the water change and clean the filter the same time every week. My concern was cleaning the sponges etc too frequently will kill the bacteria as well.
Your current Fish tank Setups!
- Thread starter Malt_Vinegar
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Ok thanks, so will do the water change and clean the filter the same time every week. My concern was cleaning the sponges etc too frequently will kill the bacteria as well.
Caporegime
You won't kill it if you clean it in the tank water.
Hi guys
I am struggling with green hair algea.
Current set up is a 120litre tank, external Eheim 205 filter with added purigen, lights on 5pm till 9:30pm (no live plants). Stocking is BN plec, 2 mickey mouse platies, 1 platy, 2 dwarf gourami and 2 honey gourami. Fake plants and real bog wood.
I tend to feed the tank flakes each day, a pleco tablet here and three and maybe twice a week some cucumber.
What could be causing my issue?
I am struggling with green hair algea.
Current set up is a 120litre tank, external Eheim 205 filter with added purigen, lights on 5pm till 9:30pm (no live plants). Stocking is BN plec, 2 mickey mouse platies, 1 platy, 2 dwarf gourami and 2 honey gourami. Fake plants and real bog wood.
I tend to feed the tank flakes each day, a pleco tablet here and three and maybe twice a week some cucumber.
What could be causing my issue?
Sorry to hear about your tank. Your mistake was cleaning the filter with tap water. You should never do that and only change the sponges if they are literally falling apart.
You also shouldn’t change more than a third of the media at any one time if you need to replace it (the less you do the safer it is). Im still using the same sponges 6 years on.
The only things in the filter that you should change regularly is any carbon or fine floss pads but neither are necessary to even use.
Edit: just saw in your post - not a lot of light.
Algae grows when you have excesses of nutrients and light and there is nothing to put compete it.
As a general rule increasing water changes, reducing feeding (6 days a week is normally fine) will inhibit algae growth.
You can attack it with liquid c02 or armano shrimp but that doesn’t address the cause.
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Soldato
Everyone that saw what was happening said something different, brook, velvet, white spot or fin rot. The anthias died in and under the rocks so I couldn't get them all out. So ammonia and nitrite was at deadly levels. Only the purple tang made it through.
Aac take precautions and treat their fish before sale, unfortunately the yellow and purple tang came from somewhere else.
I've since learnt that the real reef rock and quick cycling potions don't really go together. The rock doesn't seed very quickly, and then if any bad bacteria takes hold you're in trouble.
I'm working with the guys at aac to get the tank back on track. First with some polylab medic. And I've been running UV since the start of the year and getting good bacteria from any corals I add. Also added 12kg DD rock. 4 months later they felt confident of adding some hardy fish to test the waters. So I now have a 6 line wrasse and Midas blenny in with the purple tang. There's been no sign of any disease since December. The next fish in will be clownfish, which is the real test with regards to brook.
Do you have any photos of the sick fish from before they died? I'd be interested to try to ID whatever it was. A purple tang being the only survivor is really surprising as they're usually amongst the first to go.
I get all my fish from AAC, top shop in the country! They run copper at therapeutic concentrations which is pretty rare IME, and regularly flush through the system with fluke solve. But with the best will in the world it's impossible to treat all fish for all potential problems at that sort of volume. I can say I've never seen ich or velvet present there which are undoubtedly the most difficult common diseases to deal with. If you had velvet or ich then the only way to be sure your tank is rid of it before restocking is to wait 12 weeks (6 for velvet) with no fish in the tank. Medic is better than nothing but will only kill the free swimming parasite stage and dosing it correctly is virtually impossible as it's basically just H2O2 which breaks down very fast in a reef tank. Fingers crossed you won't have further problems.
I reckon you'd get away with real reef + bacteria in a bottle if you've got some other form of filtration like siporax in your sump. I have some real reef pieces in my tank and it's just not comparable to the real thing. I've heard good things about TCM eco rock.
Soldato
Yes amazing shop and staff. I've looked for pictures and cant find any, will have to go back through my emails to find some.
I was willing to take out the purple tang and go fallow for 12 weeks, but at the shop they said go this way. So that is what I've done. And so far they have been right.
I have maxspect bio blocks in the sump, and was getting away with it. Until I added 1 male anthias and 10 female. That plus the increase in food it took to keep them fed was too much.
I would still go with real reef rock again, just would take it a lot slower and would seed with a piece of liverock.
Edit: The purple tang has looked healthy since day one of adding polylab medic.
11 anthias, that's a big bio-load increase considering how often they need feeding! Hopefully it was just ammonia issues rather than disease? I think I'd continue using medic for a lot longer (maybe 2-3x) the recommended time if I were you, and possibly at higher dosage. Especially if you don't have much in the way of sensitive corals and/or they seem ok. More chance of eradicating any newly hatched parasites that way. There is an interesting thread about using H2O2 on ultimate reef if you're interested as that's basically what medic is.
Soldato
Only planned on buying around 5 anthias but they were doing a deal on 10 female.
I believe I used 3x the dose rather than the recommended amount for 3x the time.
Soldato
Yeah great fish, the male Lyretail I lost was stunning.
Learnt some hard lessons in my first reef tank that's for sure, can't wait for new setup though, 3 times the water volume my dream setup
Soldato
Learnt some hard lessons in my first reef tank that's for sure, can't wait for new setup though, 3 times the water volume my dream setup
Its a constant learning experience.
I hope you're planning on getting some of the larger Tangs in this new beast.
oh yes plenty of tangs i hope, hopefully my one yellow tang is not to bothered when moved over to the new tank at the same time as the new ones don't squabble to much.
Soldato
My purple tang was on its own for nearly 4 months. It was furious when I added the 6 line wrasse.
My purple tang was on its own for nearly 4 months. It was furious when I added the 6 line wrasse.
hehe i think born2sk8 is a tang he can be very grumpy
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While I'm stuck in lockdown putting a move on hold i've been looking into potential new tanks.
looking at 5x2.5x2 or 6x3x2 potentially for freshwater. I know some people here have similar setups but most are probably salt. What general advice would you give for a tank like that. Any shortfalls I might not be seeing. I know evaporation will be annoying and co2 will be pricer but otherwise seems like a good large tank that you dont need to climb into to clean.
looking at 5x2.5x2 or 6x3x2 potentially for freshwater. I know some people here have similar setups but most are probably salt. What general advice would you give for a tank like that. Any shortfalls I might not be seeing. I know evaporation will be annoying and co2 will be pricer but otherwise seems like a good large tank that you dont need to climb into to clean.
