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R/O ..... TDS and hair algae.

Y

ynotme4886

I've been battling a bout of hair algae for the last 2 months give or take.

I check my water 3x per week and as per other thread things seem fine on that front.

So today I went to pick up some r/o from my somewhat LFS. But beforehand stopped at the other LFS down the street from them and bought a TDS meter.

Had my jugs filled and made the half hr ride home.... checked the water right in the jug after I got home and the TDS meter read 11 ppm. At first I thought it might be the jug being dirty but went down the line and checked each jug and got the exact same reading. When a jug gets completely empty I shake it out thoroughly and put the lid back on it. Once a month I soak them with water and white vinegar to rinse them out.

So now I have 25 gallons of r/o with a tds reading of 11 and if I remember right r/o is only usable when the ppm are less than 2.

So my questions are as follows.

Can the TDS in my r/o be causing my hair algae outbreak?

What, besides dumping out the new r/o and not using it can I do to possibly use this r/o....is it salvageable and if so how do I go about doing it

How do you store your r/o so it doesnt go bad.... any special way to keep it.
I have no place to set up my own unit and burn off about 2-3 gal a day in evaporation so running back and forth to the store is not something I want to add to my daily routine.

Thanks for the help

Derrick
 
C

calaxa

RO is typically in that range. 11 is on the high side but not that bad. You are thinking of RODI which should read 0-2. I do not think the RO water is the cause of your hair algae problem. Once hair algae is present it is a pain to get rid of. I am finally seeing the end of mine as all my fish are in QT and I am no longer feeding the tank. The new hermits I bought are eating it away slowly but surely. Now if only my cyano would go away. Your water params are fine because the hair algae is absorbing all the nitrates and phosphates. What is the feeding regimen of the tank? What is the flow like in the areas of hair algae growth? Is the salt you are using introducing silica?

As for the storage of RO water, any FDA approved container will be sufficent.
 
J

JRodrig692

In regards to the Ro water, the TDS should be near 0 and their filters may be spent.

Hair algae is something that we all have fought at sometime in our life. There is always a source, you just need to find it.

How old is the tank?
What does your feeding look like and how many times a day?
How old is the rock?


Can the TDS in my r/o be causing my hair algae outbreak? Yes, but there are greater issues

What, besides dumping out the new r/o and not using it can I do to possibly use this r/o....is it salvageable and if so how do I go about doing it. Water the flowers with it.

How do you store your r/o so it doesnt go bad.... any special way to keep it. RO will not go bad, being you will use it within the next 2 weeks or so. Most people make up like 55 gallons of the stuff and use it for topoff or salt mixture. I have a 20 gallon fish tank that I use for topoff and fill that up every three days or so. 5 gallon water jugs work great. Anything will do as long as it has not been used for chemicals or oils or something like that.

I have no place to set up my own unit and burn off about 2-3 gal a day in evaporation so running back and forth to the store is not something I want to add to my daily routine. Many people use a Tap Water Purifer unit that connects to the faucet and you can make water right in the kitchen with it. All depends on how bad your incoming water is.
 
C

calaxa

JRod,

You are confusing RO water with RODI. To get 0 TDS reading from RO, the water passing through would have had to have an initial TDS of <100 as RO filters roughly 98-99% of all impurities. In biological labs, we forgo using RO and just go straight to DI. Resin is cheap so why waste the water. The lab can easily regenerate used resin. At home, well resin is not so cheap and industrial grade muriatic acid or HCl and NaOH aren't the most friendly things to handle so we want to get it as pure as possible to let the DI not work as hard to filter down an additional 99% of impurities.

I have checked this several times at home. I have 1 RO only system that gives readings 7-11 (temperature dependant). My RODI will give 0-2. My tap was under 200 but forgot what it was exactly. My fridge gives 172 and brita gives 158. In case you're wondering, the fridge gives the best tasting water. Pure water tastes pretty bad.
 
J

JRodrig692

Yes, your right, my mistake. So used to people talking RODI that the fingers worked faster than the brain.

Yes, for water to have good taste, need some of those impurities, hence the different tastes of the bottled waters.
 
Y

ynotme4886

Here are my feeding routines

There are no fish in the tank....just clean up crew who get fed 2x a week (very lightly fed) and the corals get fed about the same.... A bit of snow ( bottle says 4 capfuls for my size tank but I only use 2 capfuls) and some cyclopeze ( I break a small piece off...defrost and drain then mix with a bit of tank water and use a baster to feed .

My rock is about 2 yrs old and the tank has been set up for almost a year. I run my lights about 8hrs a day and the bulbs are less than 6 months old)

Any ideas??
 
C

calaxa

Derrick,

First off, what does your cleanup comprise of? How many of each?

You're gonna have to stop feeding the cleanup crew. You might want to just target feed the corals (or stop feeding them until this is controlled). What corals are they that you need to feed them? The CUC is not gonna eat that nasty seaweed if you keep giving them nice buffetts.

Increase the flow to the problem areas. I recall you saying your pH was a bit low. Can try to increase it but I think you are playing with water params too much if I remember all your threads. You are going to have to let it equilibriate. Don't get fixated on targetting 450-475 ppm CA for example. If it's 380+, it should be fine (unless your whole tank is SPS/clams/snails/etc.) You have T5 lights if I remember. Try running the full lights less (maybe 6 hours instead of 8) but leave actinics. See if that helps
 
Y

ynotme4886

"First off, what does your cleanup comprise of? How many of each?"

I have maybe 10 or so turbo snails...1 sea cucumber 5 emerald crabs somewhere in there....see them whenever they rear their heads and Nass snails in the sand....how many Nass snails are in there,I have no clue....would say around 20 but have seen their little offspring cruising around on my glass early in the morning. Guess they decided to reproduce. Plus with the lack of fish the tank is over run with pods and some bristle worms.

As for the water params....am mostly leaving it alone. Gonna slowly raise the mag a bit but overall am just going to keep to my normal water change schedule.

I run 2 150w halides with 15k bulbs 8 hrs a day and the actinics go on an hr before and shut off an hr after the halides (pair of 65w power compact actinics in fixture)

As for hard corals I have branching hammer and frogspawn and monti caps plus three small frags on my frag shelf but cant recall their names without my notes at home

Yes I do have a clam :D Its a grade A purple w/black crocea clam.... at least thats what they called it when I got it.

Most of my tank is full of zoo's and palys with a kenya tree and a colt coral plus a few shrooms and a fairly large toadstool.

Here is a quick pic before I added a few more zoo's etc etc. This was before the hair algae got out of control.
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Now one of my powerheads looks like it needs a shave and my sand looks like crap.
My tank has a turnover rate of 25-30x per hr.
 
C

calaxa

Nass snails have planktonic larvae. Those should be ceriths that are breeding. None of the corals you listed "need" supplemental feeding. The fact that you are being overrun by pods and bristles in a fishless environment shows there is too much food being added. The population should have stabilized, not boomed. The snails you have will not eat hair algae. If you prune it back manually, they may go for it, but only after the other goodies are gone. The emerald crabs sound like they found better things to eat elsewhere.

The clam and whatever unidenified frags you have are the only things that might need feeding until you get this under control. The clam needs it only if it is small (less than 3"). Otherwise it should be good enough with just lights. The unidentified frags....find out what they are.

My suggestion at this point would be to manually trim (pull, tweeze, etc.) the hair algae. Get more CUC, particular mexican red hermits if you don't mind having them. Stop all feeding and see how things go.
 
C

Candi

Everyone else is offering great help with the algae so I just wanted to add that for a RODI you don't need to have it hooked up all the time, I bought a faucet adapter for mine... I keep the unit under the sink in the kitchen and just pull it out when I make water once a week... Walmart has water jugs in the sports/camping area. I have the filters direct unit from ebay that a few people here have, 0 TDS :)
 
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