Here is one for ya'

[Barry]

I have a 108 gallon fish onlt tank with one Yellow Tang, One French Angel, one Percula Clownfish, one biga$$ ElDamsel who is the bully of the tank. I have been fighting green hair algae forever and a day.
I have a remora and a PM Hot1 skimming, I feed onece per day, being careful not to overfeed. I have 160 watts of regular florecent lighting, on for six hours a day. I use only RO water for top off. I have about an inch of crushed coral on the bottom that the damsel is constantly dicturbing. I tested for phospahte, and have come back with a reading of zero. It is a seachem test kit.
I cannot seem to keep turbo snails, or hermit crabs, due to the damsel constantly disturbing things in the tank. I am tired of dealing with this problem

WHAT SHOULD I DO ????

Barry

 

[SeaView]

If you have hair algae then you have excess nutrients in the tank. What are your nitrate readings. Some test kits can not measeure phosphate correctly so a 0 reading can be misleading.

A few questions and idea - How frequently do you do water changes - This can help reduce the nutrients. Do you use activated carbon. This can help too.

I don't know what type of biological filtration you have unless you've got a wet/dry filter. Live rock could help improve the nutrient uptake in the syustem.

The crushed coral bed can become a nutrient trap. All the uneaten food and waste building up and screwing up your system - A deep live sand bed may be more effective at reducing your nutrients and illiminating the algae.

Good luck,
Steve

 

[Rich-n-poor]

Crushed Coral Bad....Sand Good

_________________
Anxiety Forum

 

[DJ88]

I would take alook at your nitrate readings before Phospahtes. If you are unable to keep snails of hermits alive there is something in the water killing them. Do you clean the CC? I mean Syphon the wastes out that collect in it? Being that you only have 1 inch this should be a fairly easy task.

As a side note your test kit will only measure the phospahtes in the water column. It won't take into account the phosphates contained within your Crushed coral or plant matter.

What do you have in the way of biological filtration? live rock etc. How often do you clean the crushed coral or detrius? What kind of circulation do you have? Waht are your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings?

I don't know that you skimmer will work well eough for a tank of that size. I have seen and ran several HOT-1's and I'd say max tank a skimmer of that style can go on is 75. I had one on a 90 with a tang and a cowfish and it barely kept up. That was with the tang eating all the algae that grew.

IME

 

[monkeyboy]

Why so much light? You only need 1 or 2 NO's over it to give the fish good color. Less light will help.

I wouldn't doubt that he is getting a PO4 reading of 0, with a ton of algae, even a little phosphate gets sucked into new algae growth fairly rapidly, it's all in the algae!

[ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: monkeyboy ]</p>