new here!

[Diver1]

my tanks well established
but recently i have
a tough and stringy green algae over taking my rocks!
and i cant seem to get rid of it
and im testing to show 0 phosphates
any suggestions?
Thanks

 

[impur]

What do you use to topoff? Just because your phosphates show a reading of 0 doesn't mean there are no phosphates. Many times the phosphates are used up at the source (algae problem) and is not present in the water column, so it will not show up on any test kits. Have you changed anything recently? When was the last time you changed your bulbs? What are your other readings? Nitrates lead to algae as well

 

[Yano]

Do you have a skimmer? How big is the tank?

 

[Navarre]

Try drawing some water off from the water near the algea with a syringe.
You may find that the phosphates in this area is far higher.

 

[Diver1]

Do you have a skimmer? How big is the tank?

55gal

hang on red sea prizm skimmer

 

[Diver1]

What do you use to topoff? Just because your phosphates show a reading of 0 doesn't mean there are no phosphates. Many times the phosphates are used up at the source (algae problem) and is not present in the water column, so it will not show up on any test kits. Have you changed anything recently? When was the last time you changed your bulbs? What are your other readings? Nitrates lead to algae as well

nutra sea water to top off or r/o
new lights just replaced the whole set up
last month.

ammo 0
nitrate 10
nitrite 0
ph always between 8.0 and 8.2

 

[Navarre]

Nutra sea water? I have never heard of this ( it might be a US brand name and im from the UK) or do you mean Natural seawater?

You should never use natural sea water for top ups. When salt water evaporates its only the water that evaporates. The salt stays in the tank. So basically if you never replaced any water at all, your tanks SG would get higher and higher as the water became less and the salt became more concentrated. The only way to stop this is to top up with fresh water, (RO preferably). This will bring hte SG back to normal. If you add seawater for each topup then you are adding more and more salt to the system and eventually your sg will be far too high and cause stress.

 

[impur]

How long has the tank been up and running? How often do you do WCs? 10 ppm nitrates is creeping up there and may or may not be a cause.

 

[Diver1]

Nutra sea water? I have never heard of this ( it might be a US brand name and im from the UK) or do you mean Natural seawater?

You should never use natural sea water for top ups. When salt water evaporates its only the water that evaporates. The salt stays in the tank. So basically if you never replaced any water at all, your tanks SG would get higher and higher as the water became less and the salt became more concentrated. The only way to stop this is to top up with fresh water, (RO preferably). This will bring hte SG back to normal. If you add seawater for each topup then you are adding more and more salt to the system and eventually your sg will be far too high and cause stress.

nutra sea water is a new product sold in most fish stores here in the us
its engineered with live bactira they say you can fill a new tank with it and dont need to cycle . (yea right) plus some vitamins.
but most of the time its r/o
water changes monthly
i will knock down the nitrate and see what happens

 

[Navarre]

OK ok cool sorry. Not heard of that over here in the UK and thought it might be a typo )