I promise I’m against human hesitation in all this, not the plant
Algae belongs on a reef, it’s selected for numero uno so when it shows up in everyone’s tank I’ve learned to quit thinking of it as a problem. Yes there are balances that keep it in check, that’s the endless debate that is prevention, I couldn’t lay a claim to fame there
But the reset, we can and it’s consistent. It’s the undoing of human hesitation
Algae generations hiking in and out, expressing and then waning as normal, it’s a cosmetic thing we don’t like and at times it’s a choking of our investment thing we don’t like, but in the end we are either going to farm this stuff and take chances or we’re not.
The reason I don’t like to factor causatives other than detritus and lack of surface area manual control is because it allows people to hesitate. Handle causatives and options in the clean condition is all I care about, and cause that clean condition using our order of ops so we don’t nuke stuff.
I won’t be asking for phosphate and nitrate here. To measure those is to hesitate, unless it’s in a clean condition tank and one is experimenting with suppressive balances which I’m for. Large tankers better have a hold on that or they’ll be rip cleaning every Tuesday...to manage nitrate and phosphate balances atop the typical cloudy sandbed with cloud rocks is an exercise in futility. The clean condition reef will sustain your imparted measures to the water column much better.
My own reef requires zero, zero hand guiding year after year on the rocks because all my rocks are either coralline or some form of flesh. I use no clean up crew whatsoever. I need no preventative since I occasionally flush out the waste from the sandbed
In my opinion this is the result of mean gardening but with a vision- once I trust that early action, not inaction and hesitation, will keep me algae free then I’m free to sock in so many lps frags that they shade the other areas awaiting coralline. I’ll abut the frags right next to each other, and literally begin excluding zones algae could come back and take over.
Then coralline plates in and around the frags, more preventative in place
The whole area eventually self accretes with -good stuff- which actively and enzymatically prevents common algae from anchoring —easy to pull off in a pico but it’s the modeling that upscales just the same to someone who can afford to pack in a big tank. Of course I’m changing all the water weekly or bi weekly, this is akin to you guys’ gfo and biopellet and ats use to attain param balance. I’m just resetting mine back manually...same ends, so agreed water care is a factor but it’s like eighth in line of importance in my opinion.
My personal favorite preventatives are manual gardening of all open ground at the start, hard work like when dandelions took hold the first part of the growing season. Stickers too, if you let them. Manual manual + chemical cheat kill (peroxide) as manual only scrubbing we can see will have direct growback. Use whatever someone’s acceptable plant killer is along with manual removal in a deliberate manner (peroxide, boil water, magnesium pasted with baking soda applied as a patch to sit on a bad spot, whatev) these extra cheats help to kill anchors, holdfast areas vs scraping alone. The cheat chem and manual control is how I expect to start any reef. Next up along with ground control is planting what I want for new frags, but a lot of them not few.
Hard to grow algae on spot X if a giant well fed favia is overlapping the spot, taking up light, laying it’s flesh in place as I help to keep spots open. I’m feeding heavy, growing corals to accomplish this I’m not sparsely feeding in order to grow less algae, cuz this is hands on opposites thread. Feeding heavy doesn’t cause algae, I export waste not store it. Algae can’t grow, not allowed. Feeding puts corals into growth mode, which is algae exclusion mode
I stack my rocks in an accessible manner. This comes from prior work threads: I don’t want to make my tank algae free, I’ll have to undo a complicated rock stack (you’d choose to lose your whole investment over a certain shape of rocks?! Tell me algae invasion isn’t psychological lol)
Pack in grazers if you can as things start to mature, to help in growback prevention, not as removers because our hands are the removers and we act when we see a target (not everyone takes it that serious, we’re operating from a tank saving way of thinking boot camp so we do care here that much)
Blue light vs white
My kessil a160 on 10k will put green micro dot algae on my glass and eventually some would find a cranny on a rock. But on full blue, nada. I don’t know why that is, blue is algae suppressive and white ain’t
As mentioned above, the algae itself is self feeding. **everyone** with an algae invasion test rock can shake it about in a tank and watch that casting come off, actually removing algae IS a form of prevention as live rock can express/eject it’s castings (by the animals within, live rock produces detritus daily Ash knows and has photographed for us) when it’s retentive plants are cleared
And then at the very end it’s the N and P ratios, that’s how I handle it in my opinion. Nice chat for sure and wow on the pics you guys are putting up
