Algae getting out of control...few questions

M

mike0082

so< i have some algae...i believe its a solid mix of green hair, brown hair, and diatoms....I dont have pics currently.

Its on a majority of my rocks....my turbo snails don't seem to want to eat it...and my hermit crabs are hardly making a dent.

My question is, should I run by "white lights" (coral plus and purple plus) for only 6 hours a day, while running the blues longer?

And would removing the rock and placing it into some RODI water (or saltwater) and giving them a good scrub help at all? or will I just harm the system overall?

I plan on doing a 20% water change (and more frequent changes - I will admit, I have been slacking lataely)

I do have a skimmer running, and Chemipure elite baggie in the overflow. This algae is persistent...any tips?!
 
It's part of your new tank cycle,

Keep the light on and manually harvest, there are a lot of nutrients in your water than need to be removed from your system. Protein skimming, a refugium, and elbow grease are the only real methods. Clean up Crew's only turn it into nutrients to be skimmed. Should take a few months to get the whole thing stable.
Scrubbing rocks is a good idea. Adding some good algae is great. What skimmer do you have?

How many fish/corals do you have?
 
i have a reef octopus, rated to 135gallon tank (mine is a 90g)

I have 2 clowns, 1 striped blenny....4 turbos, 15 hermits, and 3 nasarius and 1 bubble tip anemone

I've been dosing with purple tech to get the coralline algae to grow (i do see the good stuff in amongst the bad stuff)
 
Hold up on any more purchases, with the anemone do significant water changes as you water quality just can't be stable in a new tank most anemone's in tanks as old as your just don't make it. There are success stories so don't be discouraged but do your water changes at least 20G a week for a few months then you can drop to 10% weekly. Just keep waiting for the algae to clean up.
 
Scrubbing and buying more snails and hermits are the only things that have consistently worked for me. The CUC cannot make a dent in long hair algae until you cut it/scrub it down to the rock. Then they don't get overwhelmed by the amount and can attempt to keep it under control.
 
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