Green hair algae and brown slime algae growing over the top of my polyp

[lowride66]

I have a 29gallon tank and it only has my brown button polyps in it. My polyps are already bleached and I am trying to get them to come back to life again. I am fighting the green hair algae that keeps growing in between them and the brown slime aglae that grows on top of them. I have been useings a eye dropper to blow water over the tops of them to get the brown slime off but its a never ending battle. I tryed useing a power head to help keep the brown slime off also but its making the green hair grow more. I have cleaned my tank 2 times in the last two weeks and have done 2 water changes also. I think I made things worse by doing that because the hair aglae has spread more and the brown is growing every where. I have a non-live rock in my tank that the polyps sit on and it is covered in green hair algae, so I turned it over and now brown slime and some green slime is growing. I have also, cut back on my lighting times from 8hrs to only about 4 to six but my light is only a 20w fl. How do I get the algae off of my polyp? Or should I leave the aglae on the polyp? I have tryed two snails in the tank but they both died. How do I get the algae gone or at least some of it? Thanks Nikki

After water changes
Salt - 1.024
ph- 8.2
Nitrates - 0
Nitrites - 0
Alkalinity - 240


Befor water changes
Salt- - 1.023
ph- 8.0
Nirates - .20
Nitrites - 0
alkalinity - Didn't have the test at the time.

[lowride66]

ammiona was 0 before and after.

[lowride66]

anyone?

[Rivah Rat]

Are you using tap water for your waterchanges? if so it could be that. Could be the lighting as well. I see you have a 20 watt flourescent. Is it just a standard flourescent light ?

[StinkyNappy]

is ur tank new???

[lowride66]

My tank has been set up for 6 and half months now. I do use tap water and it is city water. I use tap water conditioner as well as ammonia remover and I let the water sit over night before I use it.

[lowride66]

My light on the tank is a coral glow flourescent.

[reefworm]

here are some recommendations based on my 29gal. experience:

water: get an RO/DI filter to process all your water. If $$ is a problem initially, buy it from your LFS. Likely there are still nutrients in the water after your treatment that are supporting the algae and cyano populations.

lighting: I'd suggest the 4X55watt power compact setup for 29gal tanks. 2 daylight tubes and 2 blue actinics. If heat becomes a problem set up 1-2 4" fans to blow across the surface of the water.

hope this helps.

-rw

[sahin]

First of you need to stop using tap water and use RO water. I would invest in a twin pod RO unit at least. I am sure there are good deals around. You also need to buy an alk test and a phosphate test kit.

I had the same problem with the slime algae growing on the button polyps and corals. I used to have a 24G tank and I didnt have a phosphate or alk kit, neither did I have an RO unit, but I did used to buy LFS water (which I finaly found out had phosphates and plenty of nitrates...).

Anyway, I now have a new tank. I got hair algae and the brown/reddish slime algae during the initial stages of the tank. BUT; this time round, I bought an RO unit and the two mentioned kits.

I get ZERO phosphates in the water from the RO unit.

There were phosphates in tanks water, so using lots of water changes and Rowaphos to remove phosphates all nuisance algae are now gone.

I see you have slight nitrites before water changes, IMO this means that either your tank is overstocked for its filtration capacity or you have something dying in the tank.

I also started to dose kalk to help precipitate out phosphates. I also increased the alk level.

I had problems with my smaller tank at around the 9 month period. Basically I wasnt doing enough water changes (and water was crap anyway) and nutrients basicaly built up.

I am sure if you follow the above you can get rid of both types of algae.

[nts9]

I'd suggest... raising the salinity to full strength SW; 1.025
Snails will benefit.
New test kits... what kind are you using?
I'd suspect that you actually do have nitrates in the tank, but the tests arent detecting them
Tap water has a lot of nitrates, phosphates, flouride and other DOC's in general
The exception being well water, the deeper the better
Has the tank or rocks ever been medicated with copper?

I'd start dong water changes with real salt if an option
Once a week is best

You could always try adding carbon but that only masks the true root of the problem

[lowride66]

The only thing I have in my tank is the polyps. Both of the snails I put in there died a week later and I think that is why my nitrates went up. The tank has never been medicated with copper. I have done two water changes in the last two weeks and when I did that the brown aglae started to grow even more. I even picked some of the hair algae off of the non-live rock and polyps and it grow back even more on the substart. I have a Wardley Master professional water test lab, everything is gone in it but the ph and nitrite. I just bought a Red Sea ammonia test kit and a Mardel 5 in 1 test strips for the ph, hardness, alkalinity, nitrite and nitrate but it does not measure the hardness for saltwater. My polyps are bleached and everything that I have read has said to reduce the light for a while, so I'm not to worried about the light. I have a hang-on-filter and it has carbon init. Should I leave the algae on the polyps or remove it? How do I remove it from my polyps?

[lowride66]

should I leave the algae on the polyps or romve it? How do I remove it from my polyps?

[Dog boy Dave]

Nikki,
Its hard to give advise without knowing a little more about your hardware and exactly what kind of polyps you are trying to maintain but I can give you a little bit of input based on what you and some of the others here have written so-far.
First: Forget about the RO. (yea I kow this is heresy but if you dont believe me check out my tank that is maintained with TAP water and has been since 1987) I have had some of these animals since 87 and they have been set up on 4 different city water systems in two states. http://home.earthlink.net/~davenlynda/index.html You might need RO, you might not. Not all tap water is high in Nitrates and not all is high in phosphates. Its not a given but I bet you are using the same water in both of your tanks so if it was bad tap water you would have the same problems in both tanks.
Kalkwasser driped in VERY SLOWLY will help control phosphates and nitrates will need to be addressed whether you add them or not with your tap water so forget about your tap water for now. Some good stategies to address nitrate can be found in the Reef Chemistry Forum but I would bet that nitrate is not your problem either.
An acceptable Kalkwasser drip system can be made with a gallon jug and a plastic tube that reaches down to about an inch off the bottom of the jug. Crimp the plastic and drip the kalkwasser in slowly. It should take at least an hour to add a gallon. I drip 3 gallons per day into my 180 this way. Its a good safe way to add maintain alkalinity and calcium. That should be the only additive you need for a 29 gallon with a light load. The Kalkwasser may help the algae problem.
You have two different issues that you are trying to address here though. One is the excess algae and the other is a bleached polyp. So first address the algae by affecting water. Water is simple. You need three things to get good water
You need high flow and some type of anaerobic filter area in the tank for long term organic reduction; You can get the first with power heads and for the second, I would suggest lots of porous lime based rock. The third thing you need is high alkalinity/calcium. You get this with a good two part additive routine. The simplest for a light load tank is Kalwasser. Moniter this with quality test set. I recomend the Salifert alkalinity and the Salifert Ca test ket. These are the only two test kits you need. If you can keep these two perimeters within acceptable limits your soft corals will thrive. Long term you might want to consider a method to export nitrates but that is a long term issue which we wont talk about here.
Your other issue is the bleached polyp. Was it bleached when you got it? What kind of polyp do you have? Some more info would help but 20 watts of light isnt much. If by button poylps you mean zoanthius I would suggest that they need much more light than you are giving them. It would be very hard to "bleach" any zoanthids with a flouresent light. They may however turn pale and finally white if they are in the dark and dont have enough light to maintain their algae. Is there any reason that you cant place them or some of them in your 55? Otherwise get some more light over your 29. Here is some more heresy. You can go to lowes and buy the shoplight fixtures for about 8 bucks apiece. The plant bulbs for these fixtures are another 8 bucks each. Cram as many of these over your 29 as you can and put your poylps right up close. If you have a lighting issue this is a good cheap way to address it short term. The fixtures will eventually rust but the time span is years. I use these fixtures over my sump and I have all kinds of coals thriving in my sump along with 6 mangroves. Even the bubble tip anemones are thriving down ther with these lights.
I have seen zoanthids fail to thrive when calcium-alkalinity has been allowed to drift down. This is the only other thing that they need besides lots of light and lots of water flow.
Sorry to be so wordy. Take it for what its worth. I would recomend you spend as much time on the reef chemistry forum as you can if you really hope to learn anyhing from this site. A lot of the other stuff you might read here is hear-say and idle speculation. Good luck, please dont hesitate to e-mail me if you would like answers to any specific questions.
Dave

[lowride66]

Its a colony of brown button polyps and I have had them for 3yrs. They bleached back in May and have been that way for about 6 months.

[Sever0n]

I had a really nasty problem with Cyano for a while...like total tank coverage it was disgusting. Look around for a product called Chemi-Clean. the stuff is a miracle, whipes out cyano overnight. with out any adverse effects aside from maybe filling your protien skimmer. If you find out a good way of getting rid of the Green Hair algae, fill me in please as that's now taking the place of the cyano Bacteria in my tank. good luck. Mark