Tank upgrade and algae

Dave Reef · Apr 18, 2023

I have a 20 gallon long almost 3 year old tank. Almost always had green hair algae. Has not taken over but I am always fighting it. Chaeto, Algecide, hydrogen peroxide, Microbactor 7, Razor, pulling it. I have tried them all. I keep my nitrates at about1 and my phosphate at about 0.02 by carbon dosing - NOPOX. That at least makes it easy to pull. Here I am filling up a 70 gallon tank with 20 gallon sump. I would like to move all my rocks and coral over but will I be fighting this algae for the rest of my life? If I don't transfer, will I get algae any way? In the new tank I will run an algae scrubber and I will get a tang and a rabbit fish. Will that take care of it? I would hate to get rid of my corals and rock. What should I do?

blaxsun · Apr 18, 2023

There are lots of ways to deal with algae. Without seeing the extent of your "infestation" it's hard to advise a suitable course of action,

MarineandReef Jaron · Apr 18, 2023

Agree with Blaxsun.

It is very hard to recommend without seeing how bad the infestation is. I will say that one of my personal struggles with nanos is that there are not a lot of grazers that fit well in a nano. My favorite is probably small urchins. If you have no grazers I would recommend adding a small urchin in addition to manual removal and maintaining good water parameters.