Gosh darn algae

[Albeez]

Cut back on your feeding. I mean way back. Maybe stop all together, not sure what fish you got. Add some snails or a tang and be patient. A tang wont stave to death in a tank full of algae. Algae is your friend. If you didn't have active nutrient transport it wouldn't be growing. It grows fast, cycles lots of nutrients. Takes around four months to cycle algae out of dirty tank. Up to a year if its real bad or "crashed".

Two clowns, a wrasse, and a goby. I'll cut back a bit - I feed once a day currently. Will skip maybe one day a week.

I'm gonna do some more frequent water changes and up the cuc and see what happens.

 

[Albeez]

I would try the snails as well. Sea hare or slug will work great. Only issue with them is, they will go hungry once they eat all the algae. You will have to add more food to the tank just to keep them fed.

As you can see - My tank is pretty vertical. Would the sea hare or slug be able to make it up the rocks??

 

[Reefing Madness]

Oh yes, the Hare and the Slug will go climbing

 

[Crusty1]

How about adding a HOB refugium for some macro

 

[JimmyZ19]

You've got to find the source of what is causing the algae. How long do your lights run? How high are your phosphates? How high are your nitrates? If you don't have time to do water changes you'll probably want to figure out how to feed a little less. And you'll probably want to start running GFO in addition to carbon. Really though, if you can't find the time to do a weekly 3 gallon water change it should only take 10 minutes. That would be a good thing in addition to the feeding, lighting, GFO, and carbon. I don't recommend getting a fish to deal with your problem. You'll wind up feeding more most likely and not solving your problem. More fish is more bio load. You can need up your cleanup crew but this will only be beneficial to you once you've got it under control. Then their job is to eat leftovers (shouldn't be much) before they breakdown.

 

[JimmyZ19]

One more thing. If you aren't running a skimmer, you'll probably want to do 20% WC. A week.

 

[Albeez]

Ok - still grinding away with my algae problem - I think I'm going to get a hob media reactor and run GFO - I've been told that's the number one way to remove phosphates - thoughts? I was looking at Reef Octopus BioChurn 90EXT HOB Biopellet Reactor