Why is my rocks turning purple with bubbles?
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Why ??
- Thread starter hankhill31
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It’s probably Cyanobacteria. It is usually caused by excess nutrients / parameters out of balance. You can use Chemiclean which works really well Without hardly any side effects as long as you follow the directions.
That's Cyano, the plague of us all at some point or another.
So I'm over feeding ???
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That's most likely part of it but cyano has a lot of things that can set it off. It will tend to cover the areas of the lowest flow. Without knowing the parameters of your tank it will be hard for us to help you diagnose it.
I'm having the same problem, I know that it became a problem when I put new lights over the tank. I am decreasing my light time, cutting back to 2/3rds of my feeding and increasing my water changes and ramping up my flow. I know this helped in the past. Holley
Also if you can suck some of it out when you do a water change it helps.
Also if you can suck some of it out when you do a water change it helps.
I've got that in some rocks and walls on a holding container where I have my livestock for now, at the beginning I tought it was the material from that tank, after continuing doing 10% WC and replacing carbon and GFO in the canister filter, manually scrubbing some rocks, keeping up with Ph, raising the flow in the MP10 and adding a few snails (this last might not attack directly the cyano, but they tackle any other forms of algae and food waste) it seems that I taking it under control, my approach is to remove the livestock from there asap and can handle those issues with better results. Hope my experience helps you.
A 0. N02 .0 NO3 IN BETWEEN 2-5 PPM ph 8.2 po4 below .10
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It's the PO4... that's all it takes.
Most titration tests are marginal at best for testing PO4. I'd be willing to bet your over 0.10. I'd recommend a Hanna ULR PO4 checker to get a better idea of what's really in there.
It takes a lot of water changes to bring it down, so better to address it by how your feeding. But in the end we all deal with it at some point or another. I usually have it pop up twice a year and I'm finding the less pellet and/or dry food I feed the further apart the instances happen. This is a bigger problem with newer systems. From what I've read and seen personally, is the more biomass of coral there is in a system the less nutrients become an issue as the coral uptake goes up with that mass. To the point that people have to dose NO3 and sometimes PO4 to even get it to register on tests, and that's with much heavier feedings.
With water changes, if your at 0.15 and do a 15% change it will only lower the PO4 by .0225. From there is only gets worse. 15% of 0.1275 is a drop of 0.019125... but with a smaller sized system it's easier to change a larger volume at one time. It comes off any surface pretty easy. So suck up what you can during changes then do a round of Chemiclean and that will knock the rest out. After 48hrs of adding it you need to do a large change, 20-25% and that will help too. Then just watch how and what you feed.
Most titration tests are marginal at best for testing PO4. I'd be willing to bet your over 0.10. I'd recommend a Hanna ULR PO4 checker to get a better idea of what's really in there.
It takes a lot of water changes to bring it down, so better to address it by how your feeding. But in the end we all deal with it at some point or another. I usually have it pop up twice a year and I'm finding the less pellet and/or dry food I feed the further apart the instances happen. This is a bigger problem with newer systems. From what I've read and seen personally, is the more biomass of coral there is in a system the less nutrients become an issue as the coral uptake goes up with that mass. To the point that people have to dose NO3 and sometimes PO4 to even get it to register on tests, and that's with much heavier feedings.
With water changes, if your at 0.15 and do a 15% change it will only lower the PO4 by .0225. From there is only gets worse. 15% of 0.1275 is a drop of 0.019125... but with a smaller sized system it's easier to change a larger volume at one time. It comes off any surface pretty easy. So suck up what you can during changes then do a round of Chemiclean and that will knock the rest out. After 48hrs of adding it you need to do a large change, 20-25% and that will help too. Then just watch how and what you feed.
My system is 220 with 75 gallon sump im starting water changes today changing 32 gallon brute every 3 days I'll see where that's takes me
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Where are you located? I have a 220 with a 120 sump and a 60 frag. Total water volume is approx 325.
I just watched the video, pretty good and really reiterates what a lot of people are saying on many of the other sites out there. NO3 & PO4 are not bad... as long as you don't have any other issues. GHA, Cyano, Diatoms, along with a host of other things. Under the current way many of us have done things we will still need to keep those nutrient levels down to help mitigate nuance algae and bacteria's like Cyano. As we add the cuc and fish that have specific jobs we can experiment with letting those go up a bit, until we run into a problem. It's a learning curve that we all must go through and I think most of us start too slow with corals. We have a box of water and rock with more and more fish without the coral to go with it. Then all these problems start popping up and we start scrambling trying to fix the next thing that plagues our tanks. Before you know it we're playing whackamole.
New systems have a whole lot more than one cycle in the beginning and I know, at least for the first few years, that there are several milestones that happen while the system is establishing itself. You have the initial nitrogen cycle, then you go through the ugly phase, then other problems popup, like cyano. As you look at this guys tank you'll see a fairly large and diverse biomass. It takes time for corals to grow to those sizes unless you start with some fairly large colonies. Most people start slow because that what we've been taught to do. There's a lot of merit to taking things slowly in this hobby but I'm starting to believe there are certain things that can be done a bit faster. The fish load for a system should always be done slower so the system as a whole can build up to the ammonia output of those new fish. How slow though is a big question, months or weeks? Also most anemones should not be introduced for at least six months, others for a year or more. But coral on the other hand I think should be put in in larger quantities and sizes shortly after the nitrogen cycle. The problem is the cost and likelihood of killing several of them. But a larger coral biomass with a significant amount of flow may help newer systems push through some of these early problems quicker as they add significantly to the ability of a system to uptake those nutrients before the things we don't want to do that take a foot hold.
Whenever you see successful systems, especially newer ones, you'll see all that coral that we all want growing in our tanks. Like the BRS 160 and the recent series they're doing with WWC. I really think more emphasis needs to be focused on getting us newer hobbyists to understand the need to have more coral in our systems early on. I started out big for my 1st system and I think I really went too slowly with several aspects, coral being the biggest. I've been fairly fortunate though. No diatoms or dinos but I've have my share of GHA and Cyano, even bryopsis & Apitasia. And now my big issue is Red turf algae. I wanted a Mixed Reef and never shot for a ultra low nutrient system. Things are really doing well now, I'm getting close to the 2.5 year mark. I just need to get those last two taken care of. But the corals are doing great.
What type of system are you shooting for? SPS, LPS, mostly Softies or a Mixed Reef. And what are you using for powerheads?
New systems have a whole lot more than one cycle in the beginning and I know, at least for the first few years, that there are several milestones that happen while the system is establishing itself. You have the initial nitrogen cycle, then you go through the ugly phase, then other problems popup, like cyano. As you look at this guys tank you'll see a fairly large and diverse biomass. It takes time for corals to grow to those sizes unless you start with some fairly large colonies. Most people start slow because that what we've been taught to do. There's a lot of merit to taking things slowly in this hobby but I'm starting to believe there are certain things that can be done a bit faster. The fish load for a system should always be done slower so the system as a whole can build up to the ammonia output of those new fish. How slow though is a big question, months or weeks? Also most anemones should not be introduced for at least six months, others for a year or more. But coral on the other hand I think should be put in in larger quantities and sizes shortly after the nitrogen cycle. The problem is the cost and likelihood of killing several of them. But a larger coral biomass with a significant amount of flow may help newer systems push through some of these early problems quicker as they add significantly to the ability of a system to uptake those nutrients before the things we don't want to do that take a foot hold.
Whenever you see successful systems, especially newer ones, you'll see all that coral that we all want growing in our tanks. Like the BRS 160 and the recent series they're doing with WWC. I really think more emphasis needs to be focused on getting us newer hobbyists to understand the need to have more coral in our systems early on. I started out big for my 1st system and I think I really went too slowly with several aspects, coral being the biggest. I've been fairly fortunate though. No diatoms or dinos but I've have my share of GHA and Cyano, even bryopsis & Apitasia. And now my big issue is Red turf algae. I wanted a Mixed Reef and never shot for a ultra low nutrient system. Things are really doing well now, I'm getting close to the 2.5 year mark. I just need to get those last two taken care of. But the corals are doing great.
What type of system are you shooting for? SPS, LPS, mostly Softies or a Mixed Reef. And what are you using for powerheads?
Sounds like our systems are fairly similar. I have 3 Neptune WAV's (4000gph each) and a Jebao DCP18000 return pump (4755gph).
I don't know how you're plumbing is set up but don't under estimate the losses in output to head pressure and piping. I'm lucky to get 2000gph total return flow. So if the pump is rated for that you're probably getting less than half the 2200. If you're already calculating the losses then your're good.
What I've done for the returns is have all flow coming in from one side of the tank going from left to right. Two of the WAV's are on the back wall pointed at an upward facing angle towards the center of the tank. The third is attached to the same side as the returns and blows across the bottom back of the tank. This way most of the heavy flow is in the top half of the water column for the sps and the current is lower towards the bottom for the lps and softies.
I don't know how you're plumbing is set up but don't under estimate the losses in output to head pressure and piping. I'm lucky to get 2000gph total return flow. So if the pump is rated for that you're probably getting less than half the 2200. If you're already calculating the losses then your're good.
What I've done for the returns is have all flow coming in from one side of the tank going from left to right. Two of the WAV's are on the back wall pointed at an upward facing angle towards the center of the tank. The third is attached to the same side as the returns and blows across the bottom back of the tank. This way most of the heavy flow is in the top half of the water column for the sps and the current is lower towards the bottom for the lps and softies.
The other thing to rememeber is your tank will go through many cycles through it's life. Letting it mature is part of the process, and learning when little thing like that to do the minimum amount necessary to keep it stable is really what it's about. Never panic, it doesn't take a lot to throw your tank even more off balance. With that said, you've been getting great advice in this thread, there are such wonderfully helpful members here.
