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Advice? Leaching Rock / Cleaning

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by corey.nolta, Oct 25, 2015.

  1. corey.nolta

    244
    Waterloo
    Ratings:
    +79 / 0 / -0
    I'm thinking about taking on a project that'll probably be a process, but I'm not sure what else to do.

    Backstory- I have always fought with my nitrates and phosphates. I can never seem to keep them under 15 / .2 respectively and about every month I'm scrubbing off rocks trying to get rid of algae. I've done some reading and asked some for advice in the past and I've come to the conclusion that the problem is the rock itself. I don't overfeed (it's come to my attention recently that I probably underfeed), I do my water changes 1-2 times a month, I don't have an extreme bio load by any means (5 fish and a carpet). So I'm currently thinking it's the rock leaching?? I started my tank about 8 months ago but purchased all my rock from a member's 3 year old tank. I'm thinking maybe I didn't "rinse" it out well enough after the 3 hour drive home?? Any advice?

    So, what I'm thinking about doing is setting up a temporary tank to put my livestock in and taking out all the rock work and scrubbing off all the algae and setting up a few 5 gallon buckets of fresh sw and rinsing/blowing out the rock very well. My question is this, if I were to move forward with that, how does that affect any pods/beneficial bactieria/stars/ etc etc living in the rock?? Will I lose all of that? Would it throw my tank into a mini cycle? I'm just not sure what to do moving forward because I'm tired of dealing with algae all the time and having my shrooms and zoas looking like crap. Oddly enough my frogspawn and torch seem to love it and look great. I have also tried running a few different types of phosphate medias and they don't seem to do much.

    I don't have a traditional setup with a sump/fuge due to lack of space, but I do run a hob skimmer. (Rated for a 100 gallon)

    60 Gallon
    Ammonia - 0
    Nitrite - 0
    Nitrate - 15
    Phosphate - .2
    Calcium - 400
    Alkalinity - 8
    Ph - 8.4
    Salinity - 1.024
    165w led lighting unit x2 (~60%blues / ~30% whites) 10 hours blues and whites, 1 hour blues

    Live stock:
    Yellow tang
    Tomato clown
    Lawnmower blenny
    Red anthias x2
    Carpet nem
    Few crabs/snails
    Frags

    Any advice would be much appreciated!
     
  2. MadManMadrid Well-Known ReefKeeper

    440
    Iowa City
    Ratings:
    +158 / 4 / -0
    Well if you dont have anything to take up the excess nutrients then yea your gonna get algae thats why most people run some kind algae like cheato mangroves ect. Because those things starve out the bad algae you dont want in your system. So if you dont have that, the nutrients are be taking in by something else the alge your scrubbing off your rocks all the time.
     
  3. corey.nolta

    244
    Waterloo
    Ratings:
    +79 / 0 / -0
    I do have a decent amount of chaeto in my tank. About 2 softball size chunks worth.
     
  4. violet21chewy Well-Known ReefKeeper

    430
    Des Moines area
    Ratings:
    +46 / 0 / -0
    Research lanthanum chloride in reef central. I am actually going to this to cycle my new rock for my 65
     
  5. nickbuol Here fishy, fishy, fishy...

    718
    Marion, IA
    Ratings:
    +17 / 0 / -0
    When I got my 120 with about 150 pounds of rock, the previous guy had let the tank go to crap over about 4 years. I fought with every type of nasty algae for a LONG time. I was trying to figure out what to do as well before I discovered that it was the rock leaching things out.

    For me it came down to 2 things. 1) let the algae grow.... Yes it is ugly, but the algae is actually consuming the nasty crap leaching from the rock. Some "trimming back" is OK, but let nature do its thing. 2) Running GFO. At first this seemed to make things worse, but it was just that the crap in the rock had a super clean water source to leach out to, so things got worse for a while.

    It took a solid 1 year of just letting the algae consume stuff before I got the GFO reactor, and then about another year before all was well.

    Pain in the butt for sure, but the African savanna of flowing hair algae has been gone for a while, and I still deal with a little bit of stuff, but the GFO is managing it nicely. It was a SLOW process, but I was warned about that up front. A lot of research said to either be patient, or scrap it all and start with *new* dry rock (not someone's old rock that is now dead). That was too much money for me, so I just stuck it out.

    Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like it is horrific the full 2 years, but it really took the 1/2 punch of letting the algae do its thing AND the GFO before it really started to improve.

    FYI, as odd as it sounds, I can't hardly get any macro algae growing in the sump, even with recommended lighting, etc. Never could.
     
  6. Drewster

    223
    Cedar Rapids
    Ratings:
    +55 / 0 / -0
    You mentioned that you've tried many different treatments for phosphate removal, what were those and how long did you give them a try for?
     
  7. corey.nolta

    244
    Waterloo
    Ratings:
    +79 / 0 / -0
    I sure hope there is something that I can do that doesn't take two YEARS to get under control. It's nothing extreme, it't just unsightly and makes the tank look dirty. I hate how it looks.
    The products I have tried are; Kent phosphate sponge, seachem phosguard, and seachem purigen. As far as how long I've run them, each was a little different, but they all pretty much said don't run over x amount of days as it could leach back from the media.
    So is deep cleaning the rock not a good idea?
     
  8. Drewster

    223
    Cedar Rapids
    Ratings:
    +55 / 0 / -0
    Those recommendations from the manufacturer of the product is simply a rough timeline for changing out the media. You can keep using the product its just that it needs to be replaced. Purigen is good and it can even be refreshed and used again.
    Have you done any research on vodka dosing?
     
  9. MadManMadrid Well-Known ReefKeeper

    440
    Iowa City
    Ratings:
    +158 / 4 / -0
    When my rocks were leaching phosphate i use rowaphos i used a whole 50 buck tub from amazon and used the whole thing on my 40 breeder im sure i replaced it before it needed it but thats some good stuff.
     
  10. Bud Loves Bacon Website Team Board of Directors Leadership Team GIRS Member Vendor

    West Des Moines, IA
    Ratings:
    +1,814 / 14 / -0
    Scrubbing the rock is removing the periohyton and causes the rock to "start over" on the surface. So that's probably not helping.

    What @nickbuol@nickbuol said is really true - you have to rid the rock of nutrients, and algae is a natural mechanism

    If you don't have any encrusted coral and scrubbing the rock doesn't bother you, here are a few suggestions:

    1) nuke the rock. Do a muriatic acid bath. This will remove organics and also will dissolve any phosphate that has bonded to the rock along with calcium (it's a crystalline matrix that is formed that can be cleaved out by certain bacteria in a slow process that algae takes advantage of - theoretically). Also do a vinegar soak, and powerwash before and after

    2) cook the rock. Not actually boiling it, it's a process for allowing an expedited biological process to occur that cleans up the rock. Generally you should do this after #1 but you can do this without doing #1. Use a skimmer and gfo and carbon, etc during the process.

    Doing anything in the tank: it's just going to take longer to "burn off" the nutrients. Using aggressive filtration like gfo, lanthanum chloride, algae scrubber, denitrator, etc can work but this is just a slower process of sucking the gunk out, but it is less "destructive" to the life on the rock.

    HTH
    Bud
     

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