Napolean used to not open his mail for 3 weeks. It always amazed his secretary how many of those URGENT issues had resolved themselves in that time period.
Salt tanks are a lot like that. Most of the "issues" you will encounter are just not that serious. You will see algae blooms! If you are lucky, it will limit itself to GHA and a little cyano. If not so lucky you deal with dinos, cyano, Bryopsis, and more.
Nothing happens fast in this hobby, all those "bad algae's" take time to grow, it never happens overnight. So if you know what to look for, you can react in time. Sadly knowing what to look for comes from experience and experience comes from doing it and working thru the mistakes!
None of these are reasons to panic, there are treatments for all these things, mostly just time and livestock to balance the system in a lot of cases but I'll give you a little ammo to fight with here.
For green algae that you don't want, Reef flux is tops. It eradicates Bryopsis and pretty much all forms of green algae and macro algae. It will kill Chaeto and Caulerpa. I do not recommend this treatment UNLESS you are sure you have Bryopsis. I like seeing GHA in my tank, my Tangs love to eat it.
For cyano Chemi-clean works really good, BUT it does NOT fix the Phos imbalance that causes cyano slime. Adding some GFO after Chemi-clean treatment has some positive indications for good results in managing your Phos. levels.
If you get Dinoflagellate's there are threads here that walk you thru the various methods of getting them under control.
If you have a lot of color (algae) in your sand bed chances are your goby will get more than enough nutrients out of sifting that color (algae). If not then you need to supplement his diet. The cleaner shrimp will scavenge what he needs out of the food you add to the tank in addition to all the "cleaning" he does.
If you do adjust your lights, turn off the White/Yellow channels. Those 2 spectrums promote most algae growth, although some does grow under the blue and UV spectrum but that is the algae you want usually, Coraline Algae.
The advice given here is from my own experience. Your experiences may differ from mine, I am working with a 300g display and a 125g sump running about 50% full. My toxin build up in my water column is very slow just due to the sheer volume of water I have in circulation.
I suggest you do regular water testing. Nitrates and Phos mainly for the first few months then once your tank is established and stable you can start watching things like CA and Mag as well etc. Starting out the water changes you should be doing will replenish any nutrients that might get used out of your water but you will get to a point where water changes are not that necessary. I went from 20% weekly to about 10% every 2 weeks currently. My system is about 8 months old.
Good Luck with your adventure and happy reefing!
www.reefcleaners.org
