Do you have at least half of the substrate covered with growing plants? A heavily planted tank, if the plants are growing well, should be immune to the spikes of ammonia that can cause algae blooms. Of course, keeping the CO2 level the same day after day is important too, as is good water circulation.

For anyone interested, after a 48 hour blackout and DE filtration with the Magnum 350 my 180g water is almost completely clear! I am not celebrating yet since I don't know what caused the green water bloom but after reading some older posts on this site I suspect it was caused when I performed some tank maintenance (disturbed the substrate etc.) then cleaned the filter pads without changing the water.

Coming out of the blackout yesterday evening my parameters are:
Nitrate 5
Phosphate 0 (I'm bringing this up slowly)
PH 6.9 when CO2 is on, 7.8 when it's off
Amonia 0
KH 5

During the 2nd 24 hours of the blackout I fed R/O water into the tank (I have a flow through system running at 3 gallons per hour)

I'll start the EI dosing again today.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Aaron,

Question: What type/size return pumps are you using? Perhaps they are insufficient for the size tank?????

I have a very similiar setup (see prev posts) and use 2 500 gph Mag drive pumps to return water from the sump back to the tank. My tank is always very clear and clears quickly even if I disturb the substrate from pruning or replanting 0..........I have close to 200 fish (albeit small) in there and pretty well planted and I have no issues.

Question: Do you have one or two returns? Even if two, you can have one large 1200-1400 gph pump and use a T barbed fitting to split the flow..........

Advice given to me here was to increase the size of my pumps AND size of my sump, both of which are underway.

I got a 40% bigger sump with twice the media size of my current one. The new sump has two trickle towers, one for each return, where the old one has one trickle column fed by both returns. To drive this, I will be bumping up to either 700 or 900 gph pumps, or maybe a 1400-1600 and split like I advised you....I am expecting the expanded media will help reduce nitrates and the more powerful pumps will produce better current and thus temp and c02 dispersion........

Question: when you say high fish load, what type/how many fish DO YOU HAVE??? Heavy feeding along with new tank syndrome can also play a part in this.....

I have also placed a filter bag of carbon in my sump periodically. Not a constant thing, but every now and then I will place a small bag for 4-6 weeks or so.

I have also been advise to install an Ocean Clear and am investigating that as well.


Please provide some more detail and some pics if possible....

As stated previously by others, the more data, the better the analysis