- Today's problem?
The ugly stage or new stage of my tank is relentless.
These are the top 10 things to get you past this.
- Starting with number one and that is an ounce of patience.
It may be the only cure.
This happens to everybody,
the ugly brown, we call it the inevitable.
So if you can just power through it,
be patient to get to the other side,
this will not be your problem.
- We have actually done some experiments
in the back where we cycled a bunch of tanks
and there's miracle cures. (laughing)
But one of those miracle cures
actually happens to be just wait it out.
- Yeah. - That can be really hard.
The tank looks terrible and it's in your living room
and everybody's yelling at you,
about how ugly this thing looks,
and every time you see it,
there's a little bit of shame,
but often if you just wait a month or two,
the whole thing will clear itself up.
And then because it did it naturally,
it probably won't come back.
- Number two, you could just turn the lights off
because a lot of these brown, ugly,
nasty looking things are photosynthetic.
Meaning that with your lights on, is fueling the problem.
Turning them off, even turning them down
could probably help.
Turning them off would help.
It depends on what your tank goals are.
- Yeah, and this is like,
especially if you have no corals in there
and you're having a bunch of ugly stages,
you can actually just kind of reboot this
by turning the lights off and watch it all go away.
And also keep in mind
of like how bright the lights really are,
especially if you don't have a bar meter
because if you just them up, if you have LPS levels,
you might be as low as 50, 75 par in many cases
and the high end of the SPS range is at, you know, 300,
which is six times that,
at six times a photosynthetic energy
and it grows all kinds of paths.
So if you're just gonna have an LPS tank
you might not actually a problem
with the photosynthetic energy.
But no, man, when you're just pounding it with light
then you might grow some undesirables,
maybe the patience is the best key.
- Number three, you could use the built in acclimation modes
that are in most LEDs these days.
Using those modes increases
and slowly brings me to more intense light,
rather just packing it all in there at once
and just hitting them at 100%,
using those acclimation modes
over like a month or two months
to get you to your goal
can actually help for the non photosynthetic,
or the better, or the good things biome
that you want in your tank to actually take over
before the photosynthetic ones do.
- In fact, I have found if you're not gonna use
at least that acclimation mode,
trying to tune it to a pocket of LPS first,
see how the tank does there,
and then finding your way to the SPS,
rather than just bam, hitting it with all that light,
has a higher percentage trajectory.
Number four, if it's algae, is your problem,
get some tangs, man. (laughing)
The tang gang, that's all they do
all day long every day, is eat algae.
There's different types of mouths out there.
So your yellow tang, purple tang, all those things,
you know, they eat different things
than the bristle tooth tangs, like your white-tailed.
So, you know, you can actually mix and match
and they'll go after different types
of longer, or filamentous, or the beginnings of algae.
And so tangs, man, if you didn't hear anything else today
and algae is your problem, tangs are your solution.
Even if they don't fit into your current tank right now
cause you think it's too small, get tiny little ones
and then just be okay with moving them
to a new home when they're done.
Number five, in that same vein of thought,
if sand being dirty, or brown, or ugly is your problem,
then get something that solves for the sand.
So your sand sifting Goby star,
sand sifting starfish, the Nassarius snail,
something that keeps that sand bed churning.
You're probably gonna have to do some manual,
also, cleaning of the sand.
We do have this same problem solvers
for sand and dirty sand, so check that out.
But if sand's your problem, and dirty sand's your problem,
there are solutions out there,
animals that can fix it for you.
Number six, if it's cyano or that red slime
that's tanking over your tank,
don't be afraid of Chemiclean or of a red slime remover.
I use those things all the time.
They are a great solution and too,
like an inevitable problem a lot of people have.
In fact, I would say,
this is like the easiest possible solution
to get rid of your headache of slimes.
- Number seven, if you're slime problem
doesn't get removed by Chemiclean or red slime removers,
if it has bubbles, if it's kind of brown and snotty looking,
it may be dinos in the, in which case we have
a five minute guide to help you solve for those.
But dinos are probably your issue if,
especially if that Chemiclean or red slime remover's
not taking care of the problem,
in which case we have a bunch of solutions
to help you solve that.
- Yeah, one of the biggest signs of the dinos
is this guy didn't work.
As well as if I turn the lights off
almost all of it goes away inside of 24 hours.
Well, and the moment I turn it back on,
it just takes over the tank, probably dinos.
A bigger problem, check out the five minute guide.
- Number eight, you still haven't solved
that ugly, nasty, brown stage.
It's time to try something else like bacterial solutions.
Now if used consistently, these could probably work.
If you're trying to like pour it in the tank one time
and see everything disappear,
you might end up disappointed,
but using things like Microbacter Clean on a regular basis,
or Waste-away, could eventually take that problem
and just eradicate it over time.
- Actually on Dr. Tim's website,
there's a little card that says,
here's your problem, here's the solution.
So, if you are expecting that miracle overnight solution
added in and it disappears,
kind of like the Chemiclean and stuff works,
that doesn't work that way.
You actually have to follow the instructions
and be okay with the fact
that you're not going to see instantaneous results,
but you are going to find the end of the rainbow.
Number nine, at least check your nutrients.
You know, there's no magic thing
cause each one of these pests in your tank
that could be causing the ugly stage
thrive in a different environment.
Some of them are theorized to thrive
in a zero, zero, zero nitrate,
zero phosphate environment where
they out compete the other things that require those things.
But also, you know, the opposite end of that
of 100 and 100 is a terrible idea as well.
So at least, you know, check the nutrients,
check phosphate, nitrate, where it's going,
and it can be part of making sure you're not feeding
the solutions or creating, you know,
abnormal environments where certain things thrive.
- Number 10, you can consider pods to help you out,
specifically when there is a food source.
So, you know, I've got some brown
kind of been hanging out in the tank,
throw some pods in there.
What you don't realize is, you know,
these are tiny little vacuum cleaning machines
that often clean up some of that brown stuff.
Maybe you don't notice it right off the bat,
or apparently, but if hair algae or brown
suddenly starts disappearing and dissipating
after you added some pods in,
these little vacuum cleaners are probably doing their job.
- Yeah, for me this a miss.
Meaning, I know that eventually the tank is gonna get pods.
It's gonna come on, you know, some coral
or it's like almost impossible to keep pods outta the tank.
They'll populate to whatever the food source is eventually,
but it's actually in the beginning.
What we're talking about today,
where they're the most valuable,
is they're microfauna scouring the surfaces
looking for stuff to eat.
And I've seen tanks who were overrun with algae
and the pods actually just wipe it right out.
Algae doesn't go away magically on their own.
It's like rooted algae is either eaten by tangs
or dies off and flows away.
It doesn't just slowly disappear like that.
So pods, you know, a predator of algae,
especially the kind that you can't see,
so you never even know you had the problem.
All right, if you want the actual steps,
(laughing)
how to actually beat all of these things,
we have a five minute guide
on virtually all of the pests that we talked about today
and how to get them out of the tank.
They're in the playlist right here
and you can see the actual steps
to make this not your problem.