The slimes got me!

I was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers. I have a 1 yr old 170 gal system, have been keeping reef tanks on and off for 2 years. It has 12 month old Phoenix 250 14K bulbs running 8 hours per day. About 4 months ago I started a battle with slime algae. My tank is mabey 20% taken over by it most is in the sand.  I cant seem to get rid of it. I am running cheatoe in the sump, with 6 hours of light.... as i get hair algae growing everywhere in the sump when i leave it on longer. I am using a 20w CF 6500 daylight bulb from lowes. I am using Olitic sand and Utah Rock in the main tank. My corals seem to be doing great as i have only lost about 1 in a year.  I keep 2 fish in the tank a small clown and a chromis. I feed 2 to 3 times a week a minute amount.... as i dont want to add to the algae problem. I have completely stoped dosing coral vite and Reef snow. Yet the slime agae seems to be feeding off something else???? I Use a RO unit and change the filters every year.... as well the TDS meter is at 0. I have noticed that the snails i bought 6 months ago have slowly died off so perhaps that is where im getting the nutrients to feed the algae.....??? I run a PM 250 skimmer on it and its pulling a lot of gunk. I noticed too that my return pump has over turned my (4")sand bed in one area along the back of the tank. For circulation im using 3 Koralia 4s. Last water change was 4 to 5 months ago.... yikes!

Edited by Roy - January 27 2011 at 7:56pm

+1 on Chemiclean.

Thanks Mark and everyone else ill get the lights on and work on getting some pictures.

I have read several articals that say cyano feeds off the nitrogen, so checking nitrogen during a cyano outbreak could lead to a false impression of what the actual nitrogen level is.

If the Chaeto is growing that well, there must be a lot of pollution for it to eat. Longer light and more harvesting will be helpful to the system. Snails in the Refugium will let the Chaeto grow even better when they eat the competition. 

RO/DI. Ah, of course. That's why the TDS is zero.

Good option to remove the nozzle from the loc-line. LS that gets disturbed like that loses it's ability to function effectively. IMO, LS seems to be more than half of a tanks biofiltration. When some of that biofiltration capacity is removed, other things come in and start eating the excess pollution. Cyanobacteria is the most aggressive opportunistic feeder I have ever seen.

"I have read several articals that say cyano feeds off the nitrogen, so checking nitrogen during a cyano outbreak could lead to a false impression of what the actual nitrogen level is."
jmw, that is right. You have probably read about the Nitrogen Cycle. The Nitrogen that all algae like to eat is in the form of Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate. I often group all three together calling it "N compounds" and/or "pollution". This Nitrogen pollution is caused by all the formerly live stuff that has died and is decomposing. We most often think of this as uneaten food, fish poop and pee, but it is also the waste of every living organism in the tank. The older the tank gets, the more organisms live in it. Those organisms that are eating and excreting create more waste or in other words create more food for each organism down the line.
A new hobbyist with a good growth of nuisance algae will often comment "Nitrates are almost zero so I can't understand why the algae is there." We try to help them understand that the reason Nitrates are so low is because the Cyano or Hair Algae or whatever is eating it up before it can stay in the water long enough to be tested.

Good, the Alk and Ca are within range.
Okay, now I have time to respond more thoroughly to the information you provided. Thank you for answering all the questions.

In this system, I would typically use two twist PC Daylight of at least 100W each, but I don't the Refugium's size and you said the Chaeto is doubling every two months.
If the Chaeto is growing that fast, are you harvesting it to give it more room to grow?

It really would help to see a picture of the tank and sump. Without it I can't tell how many snails are needed and what else may be going on. 20 snails dead in a month is about 90% more than expected. Really need to see a pic.

Did you know that a lot of people take advantage of reef hobbyists? We give them our money for unneeded things like DI Resins and Alkalinity chemicals. We pay for snails that were too easily collected from tidal pools where they like to spend half their life out of water. I'm not saying that these things are bad, just that if we are not careful, we might spend a lot of money for things of little value.

Another example of this is the Sand Sifting Star. How long has that been in there SSStars severely damage the LS bed. There are better ways to keep the sand looking good. Right now we need to worry about how to bring the sand back to life. It needs some TLC.

Please look and tell us what is making the "little tubes made of the sand all over".

You also said "no bristle worms". That is not good. From what you have said, I can tell the LS has been destroyed. No wonder you have been battling Cyanobacteria. The LS is more than 50% of the total filtration of the tank. If this sand bed is not fixed soon, there will be more problems than Cyano and dead snails.

The best thing you could do right now is to remove the SSStar. Can you do that right now Then you need to find another reef aquarium that has been running for at least a year so that is very mature with all kinds of bugs and worms. Collect at least a quart of that sand in it's water and add it to this sand bed. This will give it a good infusion of life that will help your reef aquarium to recover.

The answer to your big question 'What is feeding the algae?' was mostly given in my last post, but the rest of the story is that because the LS has been compromised, it could not do it's job of ~50% of the tanks filtration. This created a situation where the filtration job was handed over to Cyanobacteria. Cyano is a very aggressive opportunistic feeder. It freely took the nitrogen pollutants which neither the LR nor the Skimmer have the capacity handle and it grew very nicely.

If you can let go of your currently held religious beliefs and try an experiment on my words, I believe that you will be pleasantly surprised.
Rather than detract from this post and to give it the attention it deserves, let's take this discussion to a new thread http://www.utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=46442


Edited by Mark Peterson - January 30 2011 at 12:04pm