JABlacher

Must be smarter than the pictures.....

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/851/img0326hm.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/580/img0327ma.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/155/img0329pk.jpg/

It's kind of hard to tell what kind of algae this might be from the pictures... but it appears to be a simple green algae. A heft sized cleanup crew can take care of this. What do you currently have for snails and hermits?

Give some more tank info.

What size tank?
What mechanical filtering (filter sock/floss) and how is it used (in a sump, media rack)?
What chemical filtering (carbon, gfo... I know you're running biopellets) and how is it used (reactor, how much flow through it)?
What biological filtering (how many pounds of live rock, are you using macro algae)?
What skimmer are you using?
What do you have for water flow through the tank?
What's your stock list (fish & corals)?
What's your feeding schedule, how much and how often?

jlemoine2:

Cleanup crew has been a bit on the light side but I just added 4 - tuxedo urchins to help out a bit and could probably use a bit more help to attack whats on the rock and sides of the tank.

matt_longview:

150 Gallon tank
No filter socks
Carbon and biopellets in a reef octopus reactor with enough flow to tumble pellets.
15 gallon refugium with chaeto and no idea on rock lbs.
Reeflo snapper pump and (2) vortech mp 40's for flow
medium fish bioload and mainly sps corals
feed once a day very light feeding

nice i wanted the vortech mp40s but they like 450 each i had to get 40$ power heads lol lucky you...

So for you tank do u have a skimmer?

Yes I have a skimmer. Appropriately sized reef octopus.

After testing my mixed salt water today I recorded .07ppm of phosphate, yet my RO water tested 0. Thinking my rubbermaid trashcan might possibly be leaching phosphates into the water causing me to add a fresh dozing of phosphate to my tank every time I do a water change. Next step is to test a small batch of salt water mixed outside of he trashcan to either rule it out or determine that's the cause.

Let us know what you find out. I know there are certain grades of plastic... maybe we can figure out which grades will leak and which won't.

Have you tested phosphate in the tank yet?

In addition to figuring out the phosphate issue, you'll want to get a much bigger cleanup crew. For that size of an established tank, you'll want around 300 critters in there. That sounds like a lot, but really is not. About half of those would be dwarf ceriths (they are tiny, but are great cleaners). Then perhaps 30-40 of the 300 would be hermit crabs, then the remainder would be various other larger snails, such as nerites and larger ceriths (florida ceriths). I like to use www.reefcleaners.org, but there are other good places you can order from online. You might be able to shave off some of the larger snails since you already have 4 urchins.

I'm curious to see how your experiment goes with the phosphates in the saltwater bin.

havent heard of plastic leaching phos but there is some that can fuel diatoms when new cant remember what it is that it give off atm