jnguyen4007 January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 I pulled out my back couple of weeks ago and I been spending as much time as I could in bed to recuperate. The pain finally went away last night so I decided to go check on my tank. To my dismay, several of my corals that I bought with YBeNormal had bleached and the tank is covered with green hair algae again. I took a quick look a the skimmer cup and saw that it was roughly half full. I knew that couldn't be right considering that I had not emptied it out in over 3 weeks. If I had to guess, it looks like my skimmer had failed and it caused a dramatic downturn on the rest of my 30 gal tank. It looks like my task after work today is to remove as much of that green hair algae by hand, replace the protein skimmer, and do a water change. It just break my heart seeing the corals that I love died like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vaironman January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 James, Sorry to hear your lost dude. I recently lost a fast growing red table acro that I grew out from a small frag of Rik and love that one. Know how you feel. Come over, I'll make a Cali blue tort frag and a neon green frag grew out from Dandy7200, for you when your tank is ready again. Just LMK. KLee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaryL January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 sorry for your loss, does the skimmer need just a good cleaning? hope your back is feeling better too. thats like insult to injury Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
extreme_tooth_decay January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 Sorry to hear it man. Seems like the norm noways for some reason :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quazi January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 I doubt that you need to replace your skimmer. I bet cleaning/tuning will do the trick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Lazar January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 I doubt that you need to replace your skimmer. I bet cleaning/tuning will do the trick. Sorry the tank is giving you trouble. It's common for salt to build up inside the air intake on a skimmer's venturi. I have to drill mine out a couple times a year. Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnguyen4007 January 5, 2009 Author Share January 5, 2009 James, Sorry to hear your lost dude. I recently lost a fast growing red table acro that I grew out from a small frag of Rik and love that one. Know how you feel. Come over, I'll make a Cali blue tort frag and a neon green frag grew out from Dandy7200, for you when your tank is ready again. Just LMK. KLee Thanks KLee. I might have to take you up on that offer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanCallan January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 I hate to push a product but you might want to call Sean at AquaCo and talk to him about Prodibio. Him and I had a long discussion about it and he is one of the more informed people in the area. I had an algae out break and 2 weeks after running the system the last little bits that are left are dying off. NH3, PO4, NO2, and NO3 are all 0pmm in my tank now. It's easy to dose too, only once a week and bi-weekly for most of the stuff. It may help you get things back under control. Just a suggestion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnguyen4007 January 5, 2009 Author Share January 5, 2009 sorry for your loss, does the skimmer need just a good cleaning? hope your back is feeling better too. thats like insult to injury I'm not sure yet. It might be just that considering that I recently replaced the original pump with another one. Tunze nano pump is not cheap considering its small size. Anyway, I bought a used Euroreef rs-80?? skimmer from one of the wamas members a couple of months back. I'll set that up today and hopefully it won't be too difficult in getting it to work. Budget is tight and when something like this happen, it makes it that much more difficult to enjoy the hobby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnguyen4007 January 5, 2009 Author Share January 5, 2009 I hate to push a product but you might want to call Sean at AquaCo and talk to him about Prodibio. Him and I had a long discussion about it and he is one of the more informed people in the area. I had an algae out break and 2 weeks after running the system the last little bits that are left are dying off. NH3, PO4, NO2, and NO3 are all 0pmm in my tank now. It's easy to dose too, only once a week and bi-weekly for most of the stuff. It may help you get things back under control. Just a suggestion. I've been using prodibio products for the past 3 months and so far, I can't tell if it's working or not or if something else is going on in my tank that I am unaware of. I'll do my water change, put in another euroreef rs-80 skimmer, set up the phosban reactor, clean and replace the kalwasser in the kalk reactor, and yank out as much as I could of the green hair algae, and monitor that for the next couple of weeks along with monitoring the water parameter and see how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanCallan January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 I've been using prodibio products for the past 3 months and so far, I can't tell if it's working or not or if something else is going on in my tank that I am unaware of. I'll do my water change, put in another euroreef rs-80 skimmer, set up the phosban reactor, clean and replace the kalwasser in the kalk reactor, and yank out as much as I could of the green hair algae, and monitor that for the next couple of weeks along with monitoring the water parameter and see how it goes. If you don't mind me asking, which products are you using? Some of them should be used in conjunction with others. I've been seeing some great results in my tank and in others, but I have heard of individuals not seeing the same results. A number of them were not dosing correctly or weren't using the products together. Maybe we can help you get the most out of it so you don't see it as a waste To prevent an even greater disaster in an unstable environment you may want to look at smaller daily water changes so there aren't any swings. Hopefully that will prevent any coral loses. Do you know where your PO4, NO2, and NO3 are at currently? If you've discontinued used of Prodibio you may want to look into VSV (Vodka, Sugar, Vinegar) as a carbon source. Hopefully if you get boost your bacteria you'll be able to suffocate your HA. Hope you get things back on track with minimal loses. If you need a hand send me a PM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnguyen4007 January 5, 2009 Author Share January 5, 2009 If you don't mind me asking, which products are you using? Some of them should be used in conjunction with others. I've been seeing some great results in my tank and in others, but I have heard of individuals not seeing the same results. A number of them were not dosing correctly or weren't using the products together. Maybe we can help you get the most out of it so you don't see it as a waste To prevent an even greater disaster in an unstable environment you may want to look at smaller daily water changes so there aren't any swings. Hopefully that will prevent any coral loses. Do you know where your PO4, NO2, and NO3 are at currently? If you've discontinued used of Prodibio you may want to look into VSV (Vodka, Sugar, Vinegar) as a carbon source. Hopefully if you get boost your bacteria you'll be able to suffocate your HA. Hope you get things back on track with minimal loses. If you need a hand send me a PM. Thanks Sean. I sent you a PM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sugar Magnolia January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 (edited) James, I Was looking at your signature and it shows 8 fish in your 30g tank. That is a pretty hefty bioload! Overstocking = lots of detritus = high phosphates = nuisance algae. I know you have an extra 20g of water volume, but I still think the heavy bioload could be causing the HA. JMO of course. Glad to hear your back is feeling better! (My 30g has 4 fish - misbar clown, fridmani dottyback, bue neon goby and a yasha haze goby.) Edited January 5, 2009 by Sugar Magnolia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanCallan January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 Hey James, I got your PM and I responded, I'll apologize in advance for it's length. Apparently I'm not the most observant of folks because I somehow missed your signature. Something you may want to look into while you're taking care of this issue is cutting down on the amount you feed and the number of times you feed. Overfeeding can quickly lead to an uncontrollable outbreak of algae! My roommate looked after my tank for about 4 days while I was away and in that time he managed to get the tank covered in algae. I was able to manually remove some of it. I cleaned the glass and got that stuff stirred up into the water column, did my water change, cleaned my skimmer and put it back online, and dosed vodka in my water changes (at the time I was not using Prodibio). I know we all care deeply about our tanks but it's important to be cautious and take your time. Rushing things will only lead to more headaches! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 James, if your skimmate production fell off in the last month, take a good look at the air intake of your skimmer pump to see if you've got a build up that's restricting the airflow. Also, check the impeller anbd the impeller cavity on the pump for build up, as well as the impeller blades for anything that doesn't look right. What model skimmer are we talking about anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnguyen4007 January 5, 2009 Author Share January 5, 2009 James, I Was looking at your signature and it shows 8 fish in your 30g tank. That is a pretty hefty bioload! Overstocking = lots of detritus = high phosphates = nuisance algae. I know you have an extra 20g of water volume, but I still think the heavy bioload could be causing the HA. JMO of course. Glad to hear your back is feeling better! (My 30g has 4 fish - misbar clown, fridmani dottyback, bue neon goby and a yasha haze goby.) I just look at my info and it's out of date. Much has changed since I last had that information up. I have a total of 4 fish and 1 fireshrimp in my tank. No zoas, and several corals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnguyen4007 January 5, 2009 Author Share January 5, 2009 James, if your skimmate production fell off in the last month, take a good look at the air intake of your skimmer pump to see if you've got a build up that's restricting the airflow. Also, check the impeller anbd the impeller cavity on the pump for build up, as well as the impeller blades for anything that doesn't look right. What model skimmer are we talking about anyway? I have a tunze nano skimmer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanCallan January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 I have a tunze nano skimmer. Definitely clean it out. Tunze makes a good skimmer. I'm using the Tunze 9010 myself right now. Ideally I'd like to step up to a BK 160 Mini <3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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