Tank scrub down-what should go?

[lynnard]

Hello fishy people! Hoping you can help....my tank is looking quite sad and I read that I can take my rocks out and scrub them to try to start somewhat fresh...just curious about some things in there...
1. Is this salt buildup on the glass? I only top up with fresh ro water.... Other cause/ cure other than scraping it all off?
2. Yucky brown bubbly stuff...not much, just enough mainly on power head...
3. These green and white candy cane like things have appeared....are they good or bad? They seem to hold a lot of bubbles.......
Everyone seems happy and healthy in there....am I crazy to scrub rocks ? There's a lot of that grassy stuff growing too, so idlike to get as mucho fit about as possible....I just pull what I can each water change.....thank you so much for all your help.....

Loving my fishes!!
Lynnard

 

[Aquarian]

1 that's not salt build up its coralline algae and you can leave it on the glass you don't look through. But you need to scrape it off the front.

2 that's algae take you power head out and clean it. Then let it run in a 50/50 mix of white vinegar and Ro water. Then rinse and put back in the tank.

3 those are a type of algae also I don't think they are bad but they do use calcium.

You have a lot of bad algae growth. What are your water perimeters?
How often do you do a water change and what is your water source?
What do you have for a CUC?

I would not scrub the rocks but I would get 3 to 6 turbo snails in there tomorrow and watch them eat everything green and brown.

 

[lynnard]

Well, I spent 13 hours yesterday scrubbing each rock and getting rid of as much of that bubbly and feathery grass as I could...scraped the sides, scrubbed all p/h,etc... Heck I even scrubbed the fur off my snails!!! Ended up doing 50% water change...it looks beautiful! My salt is 25 my temp 74.5...ph is 8.0 (low enough to add some ph up??) no ammonia, no nitrates, no nitrites.....I have at least 5 snails (4 pose in a pic!) and 2 or 3 hermits, plus 2 shrimp one red with white dots, other white with red stripes...I also saved about a hundred starfish while cleaning yesterday!!

I do water changes bout once a month, usually a third of the water in tank. I buy it at the r.o. Water store.

I don't have sand in the bottom yet...could this be a major problem??

Thank you for all your help...it's very much appreciated!

 

[Sakura2282]

Tank looks nice! :)

 

[Aquarian]

The tank looks much better now nice job. You may want to do a weekly water change instead of a monthly one. It helps keep things manageable.

 

[Aquarian]

Also. The lack of a sand bed isn't a problem. Personally I like the sand bed but there's lots of people who like the glass bottom.

 

[lynnard]

I have these green and white candy cane things. They are already covered in brown furry stuff and stringy yuck at the tips. If it's algae taking calcium should I just pull them out too? Also since all this my one fish has developed little white hairs around his eye and a few behind his eye... These are all now gone but seems his one eye has a bubble over it?? I really hope he's ok.....hard to take a photo of a moving fish's eye, but I tried. It's just a haze...will it go away?
Again thank you for the help!

 

[Sakura2282]

I hope the bubble on your fish eye goes away soon. :)