Continued from page 1We now start the question and answer part of this chat.
Question: If I brought my pH down to 7.8, slowly, would this kill filamentous hair algae?
With this short introduction over, I am ready to take your questions. Please note that when my answer is over with, I add my initials "AT" to the end of the line. This lets you know that my answer is over with to that particular question.
I am ready to take your questions. Thank you for being here. It is a pleasure for me too. Thank you to #reefs for reinviting me to "chat" so soon after my talk on lighting a few weeks ago. I appreciate the confidence and trust. AT
Question: if i brought my pH down to 7.8 slowly, would this kill filamentous hair algae?
No not necessarily because when you change parameters slowly the algae adapt and most of them remain and do not die off. They may not be visible as the obvious ones may have died, but many spores remain in the water, ready to give rise to new growth as soon as conditions become propitious again. The key is not to deal with the effect (the algae), but with the cause that makes algae grow (the phosphates and/or the silicates that are present in your water and constitute the nutrients needed by algae to grow)
Lower these nutrient levels so algae have none to feed on and grow back in your tank. This may require testing to determine their levels and then taking appropriate measures to lower both the phosphate and silicate levels.
Water changes and the use of compounds that remove them from the water are the generally recommended methods to accomplish this.
Depending on how high their levels are, several treatments with such compounds may be necessary. One or two treatments may not do it in all cases. Of course, you can monitor by testing, the levels of nutrients that are still in your aquarium and from that determine whether further treatments are needed.
In many cases, if algae growth is really getting out of hand, it is not uncommon to have to perform 5 or 6 consecutive treatments, at short intervals to deal with the levels of phosphate and silicate.
the other problem I see with changing parameters in the tank is that stress may be created and that can affect the animals in the tank and lead to problems of another kind that are hard to deal with especially in reef tanks. My suggestion therefore is to look at the nutrient levels and do what is necessary to lower those, so the algae that are there already start to die off and that none new algae grows. Remember that, in addition to water changes and the use of phosphate and silicate removing compounds, siphoning out any algae that die off or show signs of dying, is good way to speed the process up.
Indeed, all the algae you siphon out cannot decompose and, therefore, cannot add more nutrients to the water. If this were to happen the algae that die, provide more nutrients and these nutrients are used by new batches of algae for growth. Siphoning out what can be siphoned out is, therefore an excellent manner to speed undesirable algae eradication up. AT
Question: I want to know if there is a way to accelerate coralline growth in the reef tank? My coralline is growing very slowly, but my SPS corals is growing very fast!
Often coralline algae require some of the same elements in the water as some of the corals that do well in your case the SPS ones. Calcium is of course the most obvious ones of these types of elements, but others are needed as well. Perhaps what you may want to do is to increase the calcium levels and also the strontium levels and then use a complete additive at recommended dosages to speed up the growth.
Alkalinity plays an important role here too and you need to ensure that your alkalinity is not only at the recommended levels, but that its make up is skewed too far towards bicarbonates.
It has also been postulated that magnesium levels need to be monitored and maintained at NSW levels of 1300 to 1350 ppm. You may need a magnesium supplement to accomplish this. Alternatively, there are buffers on the market now that offer two part solutions that contain everything that is needed to maintain a proper alkalinity and magnesium levels.
I have rarely seen potassium levels go out of balance so that should not be a concern.
Water changes help a great deal here as well as they are a way to replenish missing ones, or diminished concentration of certain needed chemicals and elements. Use a high quality salt for your tank, and try to establish through testing that it is high in calcium and magnesium.
This sort of leads me to stress how important it is to test your water, especially in the beginning. Once you get a good handle on what you need to add to your tank on a regular basis, you may be able to test less frequently but in the beginning you certainly need to test every few days and establish what kind of elements that are important, diminish and to what degree. This in turn allows you to determine what and how much of it you need to add to balance the water quality parameters out. AT
Temperature may also be something to look at as you may need to increase it somewhat as well. The present recommendations are generally to keep tank temperatures at 79 to 80 degrees F. Note that some authors recommend higher ones than that. Ron Shimek is one of those and you may be familiar with his writings. Whether we want to really go that high (85 F or more) is still being debated by many. Results appear to vary depending on what type of corals you maintain. In my opinion this is an area where more research is still needed.
So to recapitulate: there are many variables involved and it is not easy to diagnose without having a set of tank parameters why your coralline algae are not growing as rapidly as you would like them to. Use the guidelines given earlier and test and then adjust what needs to be adjusted is the best advice I can give you.
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