I have a major algae or cyno problem

[kenyacat]

I have had red cyno. There was also a lot of brown mixed in. I used chemi clean and the red disappeared but not the brown. This was a week ago.

Within this one week, the brown has grown out of control. Has stringy areas in it as well. Not sure if it is cyno or diatoms. Not sure what to do now either.

I do not overfeed. I soak my frozen food in RO water and drain. Should I be flushing it more? My lights (130 watt PC in 29gallon biocube) are on around 9 hours and the actinic on about 11 hours. I cannot reduce my lights as I have a Sebae anemone in there.

I also put in last week when I did the major water change (12 gallon) a bag of chemi pure elite and a bag of purigen.

I have tried everything I can think of but the problem will just not go away.

Any ideas?

[graveyardworm]

How long has the tank been set up?
How much LR/sand?
Have you checked the TDS of your RO water?
How old are the filters in the RO?
Do you also have a DI filter?
What kind of filtration for the tank?

[kenyacat]

Tank is 10 months old
12 lbs live rock and 17 lbs base rock
I bag of LS, but not sure how much it was. Also have a bag of regular white/cream tank sand
I buy RO water from Walmart. Do not have a TDS meter or DI filter.
Filtration is wet/dry. Have a Sea clone 100 protein skimmer.

[graveyardworm]

I would definately be suspect of the water coming from the walmart RO machine. There should be a sticker on it which atleast tells when it was last serviced. Seaclones are notoriously poor skimmers. How much skimmate are you getting weekly, and is it dark and thick or green and watery?

White cream tank sand? Is it aragonite sand or something else? Is it a product made for a saltwater aquarium?

[rocket88]

if you check its almost tap water from wal-mart. made me go out and buy ro-di when i found out.

[kenyacat]

I do not actually see the RO machine. I guy it by the gallon. They do not actually do it at the store. That is my only option for water around here other than buying my own unit.

I usually get about 1/4 cup of skimmate. It is usually a green and I would think watery. A thick, dark green coating forms on the plastic of the cup and uptake tube.

The sand? I have no idea. It is not specifically for saltwater but I did ask him when I bought it and he said it was fine. That is why I just put in the chemi pure elite, in case there was silicone in it.

[kenyacat]

Oh, the water is bottled by Mayer Bros, Inc in NY.

[graveyardworm]

Is the bottled water listed as RO water on the label? If not then it may have impurities which are fine for you to drink and even give the water a pleasant taste, but are not good for your tank.

Chemi clean wont do anything for a sand bed which contains silicates, silicate sand is okay though and it is unlikely that silicates will leach from the sand and cause problems.

Sounds like the skimmer is working about as well as a seaclone does. There are modifications you'll find here on RC to help boost its performance.

I would suggest investing in an RO/DI unit. One of the cheaper improvemnets you can make for the health of your tank, and reduce the likelyhood of impurities causing nuisance algae problems.

[graveyardworm]

Went to the Mayer Bos website and I can find no where that they offer RO bottled water. So there's no telling whats in it that could be bad for your tank copper comes to mind.

[Caragol]

Have you looked into dinoflagellates? Might be that.

[kenyacat]

The label does say it is filtered by RO. Before we started buying it, I contacted the company who bottled it to make sure they didn't add anything after the filter process. They said they did not.

What is dinoflagellates? That's a new one for me.

[graveyardworm]

The company does alot of regular water testing, would it be possible to get a copy of what they are finding in their water?

Dinoflaggelates are a huge group of micro algae, there are some which can be problematic for aquarists in the form of a brown slime which smothers everything. I think most aquarists are forced to deal with at one time or another. Problem is their appaearance in an aquarium is very similar to other microalgae, and there may even be more than one microalgae present in the same sample. The only way to verify what Micro algae you have is to look at their structures under a microscope. Controls for them is basically the same as others.

[foodstamp]

are u using bioball's in your wet dry?
from what i was told u dont want them and insted replace with liverock rubble 2-3" pieces... most lfs will sell u a big ol bag from there liverock holding tank for very cheap.

u might all so wanna check into some sort of phosphate control...

[kenyacat]

We are using bio balls. Also in the process of removing them for live rock rubble. However, to do this safely, it is a very slow process. We are probably not even half way done.