when I started getting into aquariums many years ago, may it be freshwater or saltwater, i always find it hard back then up until now to find real good information on how to deal with too much algae in tanks. There are just too much mouths talking about what to do and what not to do, what to add and what not to use, how much light and what kind of lights. For many starting aquarist, once they hit this wall of uncontrollable algae, some would pour out too much money to control it and some will try dangerous stuff to deal with it, some will also try what worked for others, whichever path we take, some or many people will end up shoving their dream tanks in the garage or closet and with it, all their hardwork and money spent.
Now, the best way that i feel how somebody could contribute to this thread is to not just say.. "I do 20-30% water changes every week and one morning all my algae is gone". Please give out a brief history of your tank from when you filled it up with water the first time up to when you are now with nuisance algae.
And so here begins my part...
I have knowledge through experience in dealing with algae, i used this advantage when i first started a reef tank here in the Philippines, this tank is also the biggest one i have ever set up, a 135gal mini-reef. First i did when i acquired my live rocks is to scrub it as furiously as i can to take out all the dead matter, i also rinsed it a lot with jets of fresh saltwater using a water pump. I then drilled all the holes in the rocks for my aquascape and put everything in the tank, filled it up with fresh saltwater, i use saltmix by the way, and turned on all my pumps and skimmer. twice a day for 3 days, i would turkey baster all the rocks to blow away the remaining die-offs. on the 4th day i siphoned off all the die-offs and detritus together with 50% of the water, then i poured in my substrate, about an inch to 2 inches. Then i cycled, since i was using liverocks, i was done cycling in 2 weeks, i had a nitrate reading of 25ppm. I changed 50% of the water again and my nitrate went down to 15ppm. So i added my very first livestocks....
On the first 2 months i was just battling with huge amounts of diatoms and cyanobacteria, i kept on stocking my tank, then on the third month green hair algae started to bloom together with some diatoms, at this point diatoms should have been minimal but i also changed my lights at this time so diatoms are still blooming. Now, from here on out, things really started to go crazy, first i had dinoflagellates that killed all my trochus snails, then green hair algae went on a rampage together with cyano and diatoms (ever had those horrifying bubbles all over your liverock where algae is growing? yeah! you know what i'm talking about, hehe).
What i did all those times are a lot of elbow grease and lots of fresh saltwater, hehe. I would diligently scrub all the parts of my rockwork with a toothbrush, yes! a toothbrush!, to get rid of most of the algae, then blow off all detritus on the rocks and sand, after that i would adjust my skimmer to skim out 10gal of water in 5 hours, together with it would be the algae that i scrubbed out and floating debris, then after that i pour in the 10gal i lost with fresh saltwater. i will do 30% water change twice a month.
Here is how it looked like after 5 months with still a 15-20ppm nitrate reading (phosphate was always undetectable since i always use RO water)...
was on the sand also,,,
Still very ugly and everything is almost brown, at least all the cyano is gone and the green hair algae got coverd by diatoms so i called it brown hair algae, haha.
Sorry i dont have photos of when it was really bad, these 5th month photos was taken after scrubbing and water change.
i battled with it for a month with my trusty toothbrush and lots of saltmixes. Now on my sixth month, all my hardwork paid off like always, i still have algae (thank goodness!), but no more nuisance algae. My coralline algae is covering everything like it should and nitrates are down to 10ppm. I started to stock lawnmower blennys and trochus snails to help maintain my algae. My lights are on 10hrs/day. I feed my fishies 1 pinch of pellets once a month (most of my fishes are algae eaters like tangs.)
Here it is after the war, 99% of algae is gone, just pure, unadulterated coralline crusts....
Here are my equipments and water parameters that has been almost the same from start to finish, except for the
lights.
135 gallon main tank
30 gallon sump
DIY LED lighting system
Reef Dragons RD-400 skimmer
Some wavemakers
I use Randy Holme's recipe for my CA, ALK and MG supplements.
I started out with Tropic Marine Pro Reef to cycle, then switched to Cartimar Blue bag for a month, then it has always been Instant Ocean for 4months now.
Ammonia 0ppm (after cycling)
Nitrite 0ppm (after cycling)
Nitrate 10ppm (now)
Phosphate 0ppm
Calcium 450ppm
Alkalinity 11-12dkh
Magnesium 1300+ppm
PH 8.1
Livestock is mostly SPS, lotsa LPS, some softies.
Im pretty sure i missed some points here and there so, if after reading this and you have questions, please ask it in my member tanks thread or in a private message.
I finally retired my trusty toothbrush! Happy Reefing!
