Okay, this is a very, very stupid question, but I just need clarification.
That bleached white look in a fish only marine system isn't healthy right? The reason I ask is that at the store, I have major BGA problems due to the high nitrate production of the system biowheels and the fact the light is on 14-18hrs a day. I have to scrub and manually remove algae twice a week so you can see into the tanks. If I don't clean, brown slime and BGA grows everywhere and produces neat little O2 bubbles on everything. It takes about two days for an entire system to be obscured by the stuff.
My cleaning usually involves wiping down the glass, stirring up the gravel, rubbing the plastic plants semi-clean, and sweeping a brine shrimp net through the water collumn to get out suspended macroparticles. Once the tanks have settled back out, I change the prefilter media to a fresh pad for finer filtration. The water quality is fine and crystal, it's just the algae don't look pretty.
But I leave the coral sketetal remains in the tank, and they've grown a nice culture of purple stuff on them (except in the tang tanks and where my black molly breeding colony is). I know this is seeding the rest of the tanks for algae outbreaks, but it is really a whole lot of exhausting work to rip down each tank and bleach the stupid things every week. I'd rather do a twice a week quick clean.
Besides, I think that bit of algae is helping to keep the nitrates down just a little bit to compensate for the biowheels. My manager, on the other hand, is quite fustrated that I'm spending my time always cleaning the tanks (no matter how much I reason with him that the 2x cleaning = the same time as a strip and bleach cleaning). I've used Jungle Labs "No More Algae" tabs in these tanks before because I was forced to do a product test with them, and they worked great, it was just that they contained copper and I would prefer not to use them. They kill inverts (which is now why I can't carry any), and I also fear a customer would be dumb enough to pour our system water into their invert tank and thus kill their tank with our copper laden water. Not to mention whatever physiological posioning the fish may get.
I know a reef tank is suppose to look "dirty" but customers expect to see stark white bleached looking saltwater tanks.
Are there any other methods of keeping the tanks "bleached" looking without chemicals? Is the algea in the tanks harmful? I know eutrification is bad, but if I keep up with my 2x a week cleaning, eutrification shouldn't happen right?
Oh, to complicate issues, the company won't pay for new UV bulbs (they're 2 years old and completely ineffective now) because the "No More Algae" was suppose to replace the UV.
~~Colesea
That bleached white look in a fish only marine system isn't healthy right? The reason I ask is that at the store, I have major BGA problems due to the high nitrate production of the system biowheels and the fact the light is on 14-18hrs a day. I have to scrub and manually remove algae twice a week so you can see into the tanks. If I don't clean, brown slime and BGA grows everywhere and produces neat little O2 bubbles on everything. It takes about two days for an entire system to be obscured by the stuff.
My cleaning usually involves wiping down the glass, stirring up the gravel, rubbing the plastic plants semi-clean, and sweeping a brine shrimp net through the water collumn to get out suspended macroparticles. Once the tanks have settled back out, I change the prefilter media to a fresh pad for finer filtration. The water quality is fine and crystal, it's just the algae don't look pretty.
But I leave the coral sketetal remains in the tank, and they've grown a nice culture of purple stuff on them (except in the tang tanks and where my black molly breeding colony is). I know this is seeding the rest of the tanks for algae outbreaks, but it is really a whole lot of exhausting work to rip down each tank and bleach the stupid things every week. I'd rather do a twice a week quick clean.
Besides, I think that bit of algae is helping to keep the nitrates down just a little bit to compensate for the biowheels. My manager, on the other hand, is quite fustrated that I'm spending my time always cleaning the tanks (no matter how much I reason with him that the 2x cleaning = the same time as a strip and bleach cleaning). I've used Jungle Labs "No More Algae" tabs in these tanks before because I was forced to do a product test with them, and they worked great, it was just that they contained copper and I would prefer not to use them. They kill inverts (which is now why I can't carry any), and I also fear a customer would be dumb enough to pour our system water into their invert tank and thus kill their tank with our copper laden water. Not to mention whatever physiological posioning the fish may get.
I know a reef tank is suppose to look "dirty" but customers expect to see stark white bleached looking saltwater tanks.
Are there any other methods of keeping the tanks "bleached" looking without chemicals? Is the algea in the tanks harmful? I know eutrification is bad, but if I keep up with my 2x a week cleaning, eutrification shouldn't happen right?
Oh, to complicate issues, the company won't pay for new UV bulbs (they're 2 years old and completely ineffective now) because the "No More Algae" was suppose to replace the UV.
~~Colesea