help with fuge

[sanababit]

hello guys, i have a small problem, i have been running a fuge for about a couple of months now, and i have noticed two things, my nitrates are still high, they are at 10 ppm and my cheato has not grown any since i introduced it into my fuge, i have tried using a 24 hour light cycle on fugr and still no growth, here are some pictures.

this is my fuge when i installed it


this is my fuge now with the light im using, its a 27 watt white and blue light





ive noticed two that my cheato is covered with red algae along with the bottom of fuge



well any suggestions are welcomed, thanks

sana

[demonsp]

My fuge went through the same thing at forst. Red slime. Mine went away on its own. Looks like the flow is a little weak. Need atleast 100 gal an hour. I use a daylight bulb from home depot it needs to say daylight on it and i leave on 24/7 also with great growth.

[sanababit]

theres a lot of flow, but in the middle part i dont have a lot of movement, do you thing i need a power head in there?, if i put a ph in there wont the algae become loose and go into main display tank??, what wattage do you need to get growth out of cheato??, is the red algae not letting cheato grow???

sana

[demonsp]

Well i cant see any return pump and hard to tell theres any flow. And yes wait untill red slime goes away before adding any high flow. If you have good flow then powerhead not needed.

I use the energy daylight bulb , 75 whatts at 15 whatt useage.
Leaveing the lights off may help with algea . Remove what you can by skimmer with strainer or turkeybaster and this will also help. I think main problem is flow. And if you used tap water in this tank with low flow it will cause a red slime outbreak.
Of course im guessing cause i dont know all the readings ,flow ,return pump size ect.

[sanababit]

oh ok, ammonia 0, trite 0, trate 10, ph 8.4, alk 7, ca 420, temp 78, salinity 1.025, i got a mag 5 pump with a head of 3 feet, flow at that height is 380 gph, there is flow in the middle, i will get a daylight energy saving bulb that uses 15w but has an intensity of 75w, see if that helps, im just concerned because i cant get any growth, all i want is to lower my trates a bit and get a better pod population, which i have right now, hope this helps

sana

[demonsp]

The light will help and will work. I put i small HOB filter in fuge first few weeks to help with flow and filtering.

Red slime thrive on phosphates so if you can check this it would help. Reducing light time for awile also may help.

Also dont need so much LR in fuge . Just a piece or two is best but dont change untill red algea is gone.

Tap water used ?

I put my skimmer in the fuge to reduce bubbles in the main tank.
Do you have a skimmer ?

[sanababit]

oops sorry, i use r o water, i checked and no phosphates, i do have a skimmer and its running all the time, i will install it in the fuge because i have it in main tank and when i feed the tank it stops producing bubbles, why would a lot of live rock hurt cheato growth???, i have a canister filter wich im going to sell in the near future and i have a hang on bak filter which i will install when i sell the canister filter, thanks for your help

sana

[demonsp]

Ok then just change the light and remove as much of the red algea as you can and the rest will dissapear. I still think flow looks low but besides that theres nothing else i can think of. Fuges go through a change and this looks like the end of the change. give it a few weeks and im sure it will clear up.

[sanababit]

thanks, will get light going, i will get as much algae out as i can, question, i read that its better to let the algae overrun the fuge so that the main diplay is remains algae free because algae in fuge is consuming nitrates that will never reach algae in main tank, well just a tought

sana

[igotthatFIREman]

i got redslime in my fuge a while back and i thought i had enough flow and i thought it was the bulb that i was using. later i redid the fuge and used the same light but have alot more flow and i have no red algae and the chaeto grows pretty quickly. i use a homedepot bulb. hope that helps...

[bpulmano]

I was experiencing the same problem.. I was using a similar PC bulb, but I recently changed to a 6500K bulb I found at Lowes.. Well see how that goes..