I want to toss this in
algae is never a function of what you have in the tank that corrects it, eats it, or water params that suppress it.
Algae being there/not there is solely a function of whether we allow it to grow. You always have the option to lift out the rock its on, set it in the sink and use a kitchen knife to literally debride it off the rocks like a dentist does roughly to our teeth. the knife makes the algae go away, then there's no algae. On the former algae spot, fixed outside of the tank so we aren't messing with params corals enjoy just fine, place a few drops of peroxide on the cleaned area to bake off algae leftovers. after a couple mins, rinse it clean and put the whole rock back.
its not that param controls/clean up crews don't work, its that they
might work and that's the worst risk for a tank I can think of.
Only large/inaccessible tanks so huge they cant be manually cleaned have to take the risk of algae invasions, the rest are easily kept algae free day 1 to day 3000 with work that ranges home to home, tank to tank, variable to variable.
for sure things like light intensity, how soon you stock fish (a big deal in early algae problems is fish too soon before hand guiding the algae out a while) and other factors determine how soon and strong algae comes on, but that has nothing to do with it actually being in the tank, that's something we allow or disallow. That's a neat way to frame algae challenges in an aquarium vs not knowing how things are about to go down each time we set one up.
make your rock stacks accessible so there's no excuse to grow algae without simply killing it off, you'll never be invaded its not possible.
CUC and water params are only for
preventing algae never to remove it
so, if you see algae pop up and these items are already in place, we still have the fell swoop.
every invaded/lost tank on the internet didn't apply the fell swoop, they crossed fingers and hoped, it didn't come.
some make it occur, but only 1%. the rest are happy to take what comes along in the tank as long as they never have to work to do anything about it manually. They'll apply that theory permanently, and then after 8 yrs and 10 grand in corals they'll post in one of our algae invasion threads on how to catch up after allowing it to grow all these years.
Thought Id post the cure to you, long before you get the algae. Notice how our method doesn't allow for excuses or invasions, that's a key detail
algae invasion is a psychology, its not a biology
hope that's not confusing but you can see where Im coming from...if you are determined not to have algae, you wont, even if you never use a CUC
*as you guide/work this algae out, the coralline takes over and the rocks reject their own algae. as long as it has barren spots, algae is coming soon and it doesn't mean a thing about your params or CUC, algae belongs on a reef that's why it comes. we are either going to predict it right now and farm it on purpose and have an uglies phase that lasts X weeks/months, or we wont. Its that simple of a
choice
B
