Algae Help Please!! Noob here

[Zlb519]

Ok guys and gals,

I am new to this whole salt water tank thing. I have had my tank up for a about a year now. As you can see i have a HUGE algae problem. I have tried the lights out I have tried all kinds of different carbon filters. I change my water every week. it is a 50g bow-front and I have a Fluval 305. the light i have running for a max of 6 hours a day. i also only feed my fish 1 time a day. I just recently bought a reef octopus bh-1000 skimmer and its been working well for a much as i can tell... but I can not seem to get rid of this algae. I have tried to clean some of the rock and it seems to work but i dont want to keep cleaning all the rocks for the fact is i have a mandarin in there. And i did get lucky with him because he love to eat my marine cuisine frozen food. all my water levels are right where they should be. I also use the RO/Di 4 stage filter.


would it be ok to take a rock or 2 out at a time when i do my water changes and just scrub them down to kill the algae? but my other probem is that its starting to cover the sand as well... UGH HELP PLEASE!!!

 

[LOVETHISHOBBY]

What's your phosphate testing out at?

 

[Mrfresh]

Check ur phos and nit levels

Have u thought about adding some snails?

 

[Mrfresh]

You should also think about rinsing your frozen food they use a lot of additives to freeze the food.

Cleaning ur rocks by hand is a temp fix until you find out what's causing it its going to keep happening

The reason u get it on the sand is lack of water movement and excess nutrients. It is just sits there it will rot and that will bring the bacteria and then the algae.
Try and tune the skimmer to pull out a little bit more of a running looking skimming....