experience with lanthanum chloride

[CoralBeauties]

I have been absent from the reef scene for quite some time due to a slow demise of my tank.  I thought that I would share my experience with riding my tank of dreaded green hair algae.  My tank was a thriving 180 gallon tank in which my sps corals were quickly outgrowing my tank.  I first started to have random stn of several of my corals.  From there I was seeing some slime algae taking over in my sump.  From there it went to green hair algae.  As the algae got worst my corals were slowly dying.  Had lazylivin out to do a battery of tests to no avail.  I tried removing all of my sand in the tank and sump, adding higher levels of kalk to raise my ph, tried phosban, which seemed to make the corals worst, tried biopellets with nothing helping.  By this time pretty much all of my sps corals were dead.  I read of dosing lanthanum chloride on reef central and decided to give a try.  After about 2 weeks of adding it once a day I noticed the green hair algae wasnt really a bright green anymore.  I pulled the rocks and gave them all a real good scrubbing.  It has been about a month or so now and I am seeing very light regrowth of the algae.  I have 3 little nubs of corals left that are starting to get some green color back.  I have to admit adding chemicals to my tank was kindof drastic but so far it has been the holy grail of turning my tank around.  I am going to continue with this dosing till I see almost a complete demise of all green hair algae.  From there I will try and work out a maintenance dose program.  Once I see good coloration and growth of the little sps corals I will start to repopulate the tank with new frags.
Jeff

[lazylivin]

I am glad you stuck with it and hope you continue to see things turning around. Your tank was amazing and I know it will be again some day. For those that haven't seen Jeff's system here is a link to it. http://www.ohioreef.com/Pages/TOTQ/2011-Q2/default.html

Jeff are you doing the drip in sock method of dosing or do you siphon the precipitation out after it settles?

[Bucknutz]

That is an amazing tank...can't wait to see you get it going again.

[chromiumlux]

Glad to hear you found a solution Jeff. Is it possible your rock is leaching the nutrients?

[CoralBeauties]

I would have thought that my rock could have been an issue but my tank did so well for several years with no issues.  The rock might be loaded with phos. now and I believe that with the continued use of the lanthanum it will eventually absorb all of the phos and clean up the system.
  Thanks for the kind words of my tank.  Unfortunately  I am pretty much back to square one with the tank.  I guess it is a good chance to pick out different corals then what I had.  I am dosing my lanthanum by dripping it into my overflow by using an iv drip bag.  Once in the overflow my water goes into my skimmer.  From there I have the skimmer output going through a 10 micron filter sock.  Between both and skimmer and the filter sock I should be getting all the precipitate out.
Jeff

[Travis8896]

When I first joined this club I got looking at some of the old post and I remember seeing that thread and the only thing I could think of was I hope someday my tank can look like that, then I went to my mom and showed her the pictures and I said hopefully mine can be like this one. That is the honest truth and I think I stumbled across that thread my second day of being in the club.

[The WuSue]

Glad to hear that you found a cure. Here's to rebuilding!

[CoralBeauties]

Travis
thanks for the kind words.  You wouldnt want to see it now, It makes me sick to look at the old pics and see what the tank looks like now.  It is pretty much bare of coral but the rock work is at least clean of hair algae.  I hope things continue improving.  I think I am starting to see some purple coming back on the piece of tricolor that I still have.
  Jeff

[chromiumlux]

Here is an artical on this method.

http://coralmagazine-us.com/content/foiling-phosphate

[Travis8896]

Your welcome and I hope it all goes good from here on out

[Wall_Tank]

I was looking at derKroon flow dividers.   I saw they sold a lanthanum reactor......they also had a dosing calculator.   The reactor is just a 2 chamber device.   A reaction chamber and a second chamber to filter out the precipitate.   Nothing fancy, but a interesting concept.

http://www.derkroon.com/store/products/lanthanum-reactor

http://www.derkroon.com/store/products/lanthanum-reactor/lacl3-calculator