changing out live rock question

ctreefer · #1 01/19/2007, 09:55 PM

I've got a 29 gallon nano sps and I'm battling an invasive algae I've had for a couple years and it won't go away. I've tried rock cooking to no avail. My system runs very nutrient poor as my sps don't like to color up and remain faded. I run a phosban reactor and am BB so I see no detritus and I blow off rocks weekly. Algae on the glass only needs to be cleaned every couple of weeks. Every time I try and boost my fish feeding the caulerpa starts to pick up speed while my chaeto pretty much stays the same so I've decided to just pull out the rock and swap with some base rock I have in waiting and take all my sps and transfer to new rock. If I do this, will there still be spores in my water column that can repopulate the rock?

LBCBJ · #2 01/19/2007, 10:12 PM

ctreefer, we seem to have been suffering from the same problem. I've been running an 18g SPS nano skimmed by a Deltec MCE600 and Phosban reactor and very little microalgea growth, yet after about 6 months of running, macroalgea was simply uncontrollable. So after heavy comptemplation I decided to totally dismantle the tank, replacing all the rock, sand, and the entire water volume with the most lifeless rock I could find. A week later, the tank looks amazing, but only time will tell if macro pops up again. By reducing the amount of rock, sand, and increasing flow, it shouldn't be a problem again.

argo · #3 01/19/2007, 10:12 PM

If there's not much of a bio-load then swapping all of the rock will probably work (I would still be hesitant to do it all at once - not your plan though). I would try and seed that base rock with a few choice live rock pieces in a separate tank (separate water, etc). Once seeded, swap out all of the rock and run a small UV for a few days

ctreefer · #4 01/19/2007, 10:48 PM

Agreed, I'll try and seed the rock before I add it. I'll place it in the sump of my FOWLR tank which is still a young and clean system.

My hardest part is going to be breaking off the colonies from the rock and saying bye bye to the encrusted sps that had been around the base. That's gonna hurt.