DerrickH Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 So I moved to Round Rock from Killeen and moved my tank on a weekend. My live rock was showing some signs of purple showing up here and there before I moved the tank. Now every thing is lime green. The green is like etched to the rock and from what Ive read all over the net maybe its green coraline? Either way, Ive looked at many setups and never seen this take place, always straight to purple from white/grey. My actinics are getting old but my 10,000k's are only a couple months old. Im wondering if I need to replace the actinics. Params are good. I dont have anything to check the calcium but I have dosed some liquid Ca for my birdsnet. Not sure if I need to but figured it couldnt hurt and dont dose very often, maybe once a week about a tablespoon. ammonia 0 nitrates 0 nitrites 0 temp 77-78 SG 1.026 phosphates .05 PH 8.1 Ak 2.8 meq Below is the tank before the move, and a few days afterwards. I also had a cyano outbreak and a small bit of aiptasia but both are history now...I think Could weak or spectrum shift on my actinics cause this or am I stressing over nothing?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted May 11, 2011 Share Posted May 11, 2011 I'm thinking that you're having an outbreak, i've never seen coraline grow that quickly. It definitely looks like you have diatoms on the rock in the last picture, so I'm guessing algae. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbnj Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 That exact thing happended to the first reef tank I set-up (btw, also here in Round Rock). Being a novice, I used tap water from my refrigerator filter. I got the neon green, coralline-looking algae. It eventually goes away, but it takes time. .....wow, my frogspawn has gotten huge since then! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 12, 2011 Author Share Posted May 12, 2011 Im using a 4 stage spectrapure RO/DI unit since day one. Im thinking there is something in the water here in RR....Grrr. In killeen the water was no where near as hard but the pressure was far better there. I can pull a rock out, and scrub it with an old tooth brush and this green will not come off, its like the rock itself has turned green. Also, there is some of the larger granules of my sand that have turned green. I dont mind it so much, just want to make sure there isnt something weird going on that I need to get under control. On that last rock, there was some cyano on both sides of that pic. Thats gone now, just green green everywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindflux Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Im using a 4 stage spectrapure RO/DI unit since day one. Im thinking there is something in the water here in RR....Grrr. In killeen the water was no where near as hard but the pressure was far better there. I can pull a rock out, and scrub it with an old tooth brush and this green will not come off, its like the rock itself has turned green. Also, there is some of the larger granules of my sand that have turned green. I dont mind it so much, just want to make sure there isnt something weird going on that I need to get under control. On that last rock, there was some cyano on both sides of that pic. Thats gone now, just green green everywhere. RR water has Chloramines in it in a LOT of places. You might need to either add something like Seachem Prime to neutralize the chloramines or get a chloramine filter for your RODI unit. I'm not sure this would be causing your symptoms.. but I'd think it wouldn't be doing anything beneficial for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Definitely looks like a tap water tank. That sucks that it went this quickly without using tap. Silicates are a huge algae cause in FW tanks, possible they can do it is SW too, maybe? What brand of test kit are you using? Are the 2 clowns and the damsel the only fish in the tank? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wa1tx Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Do you have a TDS meter on your RO/DI or have a handheld to test your water? If not I have a handheld you can use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 12, 2011 Author Share Posted May 12, 2011 Yes my RO unit has a TDS meter, usually shows around 120 coming through the membrane and 001 coming out of resin chamber. Water pressure at the unit is around 40psi or so. This is the unit I have. Spectrapure Unit As for filtering the chlormine out I have no clue if it does this or not. Would appear it doesn't since there is no reference to it in the product notes. Livestock: Sixline 2 clowns 2 damsels skunk cleaner firefish goby mandarin goby brittle star serpent star condi RBTA 40 BL hermits 2 porcelain Cr 3 emerald Cr some random snails softies ect.. Im going to be setting up a larger bow front in my apt soon and really want to get this thing on track so I can transfer all my rock and such over. Some purple coraline is starting to show up here and there but the green is getting darker every day, was lime green now its turning hunter green in some areas. Its not slimy and doesn't come off when brushed in a tub of water (old tank water). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 12, 2011 Author Share Posted May 12, 2011 (edited) Any of you other gurus want to chime in? I also forgot to mention, its only on the area of rocks that get a lot of light on them, the backsides and undersides of the rock is still white. Edited May 12, 2011 by DerrickH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindflux Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Any of you other gurus want to chime in? Definitely don't lump me in this category. I'm just here observing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesL Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Looks like algae to me (not coraline kind). I would suspect the move stirred up nutrients that cause an algae bloom. If you want to test if it is coraline, exposed a small part of one of the lime green rocks to air for a while, then put back in the tank. See if it turns bright orange (my coraline does that when air exposed). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 12, 2011 Author Share Posted May 12, 2011 Well the carbon filter in the RO unit should be removing all the chloramines as per Spectrapure. This RO/DI unit is fairly new and has only had maybe 200g run though it. Bought it brand new from MD. Im still thinking maybe the actinics may be causing this since only the rock with light on it is doing this. Im going to replace the actinics maybe today and try and find me a good Ca test kit and of course pull a rock out and see what happens with the colors. I need a bucket of RSCP anyways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindflux Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Just FYI when I asked BRS why not just trust the Carbon to remove Chloramines this is what they said: There is a big difference between your standard carbon and the surface activated catalytic carbon that we use. Chloramines are made up of chlorine and ammonia. The big risk here is the ammonia part, as the normal carbon blocks will remove chlorine however ammonia is not easily removed by carbon blocks, ro membranes, nor does it get filtered by DI resin. This means you can actually have 0 TDS water coming out of the tube that actually has ammonia in it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 12, 2011 Author Share Posted May 12, 2011 Wouldnt the ammonia show up when tested though? Im showing 0ppm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindflux Posted May 12, 2011 Share Posted May 12, 2011 Yes. I'd assume you'd be able to detect it if it was enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 13, 2011 Author Share Posted May 13, 2011 Total brain fart. When I set the tank up in Round Rock, my RO unit was taking forever and I had to head back to killeen quickly so I used ozarka distilled water from HEB.....15g of it....I bet this is how the mess started. I had completely forgot about that. Im going to move the tank to my apt this weekend and do a 100% water change in the process.....shell shock for sure. Cyano showed its ugly face last night again...bubbles everywhere on the rock...Im having no luck since the move, all was perfect till then. I may have to start over so who knows, might be selling some livestock.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 Would be interesting to see what the params on that water is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbnj Posted May 13, 2011 Share Posted May 13, 2011 Do I get a discount on livestock for identifying the cause correctly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 13, 2011 Author Share Posted May 13, 2011 Lol I dont have much in there and after the move probably going to have some sushi..... I put 6 little scoops of chemiclean in there last night so it will break down the cyano and going to let it run till tomorrow and then do the swap. Making water now. Going to use 2 30g ice chests for the move and will most likely leave them in there over night to monitor them. Going to try and get some of this green off of the rock in the process and sift/bleed off all the crud out of the sand. This is going to be a PITA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted May 14, 2011 Share Posted May 14, 2011 I would figure that the rocks will eventually be taken care of on their own. The sand is going to be a pain for sure though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 I wouldn't be inclined to blame the tap water. I've seen this happen in tanks I've moved that religiously used RO and I've been using dechlorinated tap water for biweekly water changes in this tank for for over three years, additionally the original acrylic tank (original owner appears to have gotten an used tank) blew a top seam 3 months ago and when the tank was replaced a 50 gal water change was done and there were no algae cycles I often see in a move or swap out. If this was my tank besides using the chemiclean (once) and increasing the frequency and/or size of the water changes I would also get 2 - 4 urchins. What I would be worried about is seeing a hair algae out break in a few weeks and in my experience urchins are the only animals that will actually scour the rocks. I wouldn't at this point be thinking about more than 20-30% water changes weekly or replacing the rocks. The move has disrupted the previous equilibrium of the tank and I would prefer the system work through the algae cycle than keep disrupting the ecosystem with huge water changes or replacing rocks that have a lot of good bacteria on them. In a 6-8 weeks if there hasn't been any improvement or there is a bad hair algae outbreak I would revisit that reasoning. Regarding the discussion about ammonia if you test a bucket of fresh saltwater made with RO/DI water you'll probably see something like 1 ppm. If you test your aquarium water an hour after doing a water change you should see a proportionate amount of ammonia, 20% water change - .2ppm ammonia. If you keep testing every hour it will gradually drop and have all been consumed in 12-24 hrs. It's important to remember ammonia is a food source for corals and their zooxanthellae algae, I don't know the conversion factors for determining how much ammonia is converted from one gram of food but I wouldn't be surprised if much larger amounts of ammonia was being generated by the fish daily than is added in a typical water change. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 17, 2011 Author Share Posted May 17, 2011 Tore everything down Sunday and moved it all to my apt. The rock is out getting sun bleached right now. Sold a large portion of the livestock already and Im thinking I may not even put this setup back together at all. Ive listed it in the FS section and this weekend Im going to be skirting out my stand for a larger tank. Will probably just keep the hardware (minus tank and stand) and use it on my 72g tank instead. The lighting should be sufficient, and if not then I'll add one MH between the 2 36" T5HO fixtures (staggered diagonally) or may just dissasemble the fixtures and use retrofit brackets and move the ballasts to the sump area or mount them on the back of the stand elevated. Either way the rock is already looking a lot better and if I have to start over so be it. Moving a saltwater tank is probably the worst thing that can be done. At least my sump, skimmer, and all the other goodies will be nice and clean when I do get my 72g up and I will have plenty of time to get it cycled and the aquascaping the way I want it. The tank I currently have has too large an overflow box in the center making rock scaping a total PITA.....For now at least all the expensive parts are purchased and now just a rework and cycle time.....:( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DerrickH Posted May 25, 2011 Author Share Posted May 25, 2011 (edited) Update.... Tanks back up and running. Kept my zoas, Kenya tree, CCC, and some of the mushrooms and GSP. Looks much better now and got everything set the way I want it for now. Pics are crappy...cell phone camera. Theres a little hair algae on a few of the frags(Timfish called this one!) so looks like im going to stick a tank in there for a few weeks or so. Anyone got a sailfin they want to let go for a fair price? Not a monster though, I know they can get big. Edited May 25, 2011 by DerrickH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.