Moving Rocks with Algae to New Tank

[Brofessor]

I started a new tank up 2 weeks and in about 4 more I'm planning on moving everything from the old tank to the new, bigger one.

I want to move all of the rocks because my coral seem quite attached to them, literally. The problem is that most of these rocks are absolutely lousy with algae. It started off as green hair algae now it's some kind of blue-green algae that I can best describe as 'fern-like'. I've been trying to combat it for over a month with 50% water changes, dosing Red Sea's nitrate lowering stuff, picking it off by hand, nothing's worked. I even borrowed a lawnmower blenny from a friend only to find out that he preferred stealing mysis from my shrimp and coral instead of being a lawnmower. I'm ready to just forsake this old tank and keep to a strict feeding regiment in the new tank so it doesn't happen again.

So, would transferring these rocks to the new tank kill off the algae because the nitrates in the new tank are near zero, or will it just spread hair algae to the new tank?

 

[taricha]

pics of this blue-green fern-like algae? Without knowing what it is, I wouldn't automatically bet that keeping it in lower nutrient tank would make it disappear. maybe, maybe not.

 

[Dan_P]

There is a good chance that you will inoculate the new system with most or all of everything on the old rock. In addition, the organisms that are destined to die could fuel nuisance organism growth on the rock. In a sense you will be curing or seasoning the rock in the new system. Eventually, you will need to deal with the algae issue. How did you plan to manage the new system differently to minimize runaway algae growth?