I’ve watched all of Leon’s posts about algae for months, the direction the masses have lead: nutrients, nutrients, nutrients, testing, wait, test, buy offsets, wait and we are still here. They’ll advise to just wait longer. We would have had your tank filled with corals by now with no algae using a fully different method.
all the help offered posts involve things you can do through the water to help, that’s not helping, time to reverse course if you are ready.
you have a nano reef which gives you an inside angle to never ever having a sustained algae challenge: complete accessibility. All the fix advice you’ve been given is for 400 gallon reefs which must use water-only access for sheer practicality.
@Daniel266jz this is an important progression thread to reference in steering your maturing new reef. Hands on vs hands off
see the post history for this tank not to focus on expected new tank challenges, some are coming your way too, but to see what the masses have always been advising on each thread started.
advisors are by and large still against direct intervention as a pattern, they won’t do it, always a reason why we have to wait till later to enjoy our investments. Treat nano reef invasions oppositely from large tank invasions to save $
Leon
If you want to finally get off the stress mode, test our method for two weeks and we can track pics. Spray your anemones with saltwater when working emersed, get creative. They don’t have to be drying out, they’ll be ok several mins out of water if you wet them with saltwater while working
nitrate and phosphate has nothing to do with your issue those params are for coral tuning, stop testing for them and dose nothing that offsets nitrate and phosphate. What we do is opposite of the masses, with an opposite turnaround timeframe.
drain your water, kill the algae directly, remove the dead growths vs let them rot in the tank (current advice) and put the water back. Make mostly new water for the return setup
Dinos would be far worse, we stop po4 detailing to save you from that event. What you have is easy to kill off, it’s part of expected growths for tanks that don’t begin with all real coralline live rock, this is just catch up here vs preemptive work directly on rocks.
if your system was filled with eight years of deep sand with dark black and green patches, with accumulations in all the tank corners, I’d think you have a phosphate and nitrate issue, you don’t. by selecting to start with rock that takes a while to leach phosphate, vs all coralline live rock that doesn’t, you + increase the physical access work for your reef it’s not about offsetting that inevitable phosphate.
when you want this tank free of algae you can have it in a few hours, how ready r u
do take time to study all posts associated with this ongoing challenge, my advice couldn’t possibly be more opposite therefore we can expect fully opposite looking after pics without delay.
the right way to fix this is removing rocks for external work.
the secondary option is draining the water and working on the rock as it sits in the tank, same action on the rocks either way.
