Been dealing with unbalanced nutrients and trying to keep nitrates up . I thought I was just dealing with a dirty tank but idk if this is diatoms if you guys can help me out
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Raise your water flow a surface movement not enough circulation
@brother5of5
17h
Diatoms usually comes if you add a new rock, or sand or something like that. I recently added medication that bottomed out my nitrate and phos too and I had a huge algae bloom. Cyano, plus some unknown brown gunk. I cranked up my flow hard throughout the tank and got nutrients back on track. And manually removed some of the gunk. It went away. Flow is key. Crank it up.
@WILMER
17h
So it’s a MP40 in a 32 gallon tank idk what’s the sweet setting for the size of the tank
@brother5of5
17h
That’s the hard part. I thought I was in my sweet spot. But after the bloom, over a few days I turned all my powerheads to 100 and nothing died except the algae. The nutrient swings hurt the corals more. But I’ve dialed flow back once the algae was gone but im still at double flow power than I was before the bloom. And things seem happy. So I think I’ve been too hesitant with flow. Just watch corals. Look for their too much flow warning signs. And crank it up.
@WILMER
17h
Thank you appreciate the info
@brother5of5
17h
Yeah man good luck! Keep up the fight! You’ll get back on top.
@WILMER
17h
Needed that, thanks
@brother5of5
17h
Well another thing im learning right now that may help you is light. My big tank is bouncing back nicely but my little tank is constantly getting over run with green hair algae. Algae wars man. My research though is that corals and nems mostly love the blue and violet spectrum of light. And algae likes reds greens and yellows. So I don’t have proof yet. But im trying a blue light treatment, combined with extra flow in my small tank. Algae can still survive on blue. But it may slow it down. I’m not cutting out all the other colors. But tuning them down some. Just another thing to think about.
@wcj_ink
10h
Can you post up your parameters?
@WILMER
10h
@WILMER
10h
My phosphates are at 0.03
@WILMER
10h
Haven’t done a water change close to a month
@wcj_ink
10h
Bot sure how old your tank is but if it’s new then you might have to wait out the ugly stage but WCs are key, even if your parameters are in check you may be lacking other trace minerals in your water that control outbreaks, I would do 3 x 10% water changes every 4 days while siphoning out as much I can from the substrate and then go back to my regular 20% weekly water changes. If that doesn’t change anything I would look into other options but in my experience scheduled water changes with a good rodi system will fix almost any problem
@WILMER
10h
So about a 3-4 year old tank, I was doing a weekly water change and then I fell off and wasn’t consistent. Then I started chasing numbers, so if I do the heavy water changes how often do I do water changes and how much for a 32 AIO.
@WILMER
10h
Because what I also noticed was I was stripping all my nitrates from my weekly water change
@wcj_ink
9h
Once you slack on wcs it’s a downhill slope and chasing numbers will drive you insane and waste money on products you don’t need. Okay so we have the same volume tank rn I just started back up into the hobby with a 32 biocube…so my water changes strip my nitrates away as well so i supplement that with a daily dose of brightwells neonitro. Im currently doing water changes every week and dose 5ml of neonitro daily, every tank is different so keep testing your nitrates daily until you reach your desired daily dosage.
@WILMER
9h
You do a 10% water change weekly?
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Could be more than diatoms
What else could it be? How can I find out
Could be dinos or cyano too. Best way is a cheap microscope if you can, or post a close