Algae growth, - what to do?

rojees

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Hey guys,

It’s been happening for a few months now in my 15 AIO gallon.

Tank is 4 years old. Got two clownfish in the tank. Also got GSP coral and one Goni .
Sand has been been slowly turning brown and with what seems like a hairy algae growing out of it.

My nitrates have fluctuated from 0 to 3.
Phosphates fluctuates between 0.04 to 0.2, last night it read 0.04.

I added the two corals 4-5 months ago, nitrates and phosphates were consistently 0, (Hanna checker) so I slowly dosed neo nitrate. Frequently it would still be 0, I’m guessing these are false readings and the algae consumed it.

Now the tank gets dirty quite quickly, the wave maker turns brown so I have to clean it every week when I change water. The floss I use turns brown pretty much daily now. Protein skimmer is the same.

The sand, I stir up and small portion each time, careful not to do so kmuch.

So all in all, do I just continue to do more water changes, siphon out the sand and algae, dim out lights/ turn off for few days?

I do have 3 blue leg hermit crabs and I don’t want snails.

So what else can I do? Am I completely doing that wrong thing? Should I change out the sand with new sand and suck out the crap with it? Not in one go, obviously.
 
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rojees

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May do, I can’t confirm at this stage. it does look worse on certain days, but I try to suck some during weekly water changes so can’t confirm if it comes back more with lights on.

I’m trying with lights off now.
 
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rojees

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Good point. Looks greener than I thought.
 

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I feel your pain. I don’t get what the heck is going on with my tank and algae. P04 0.1-0.2 Alk 8.9 pH 7.8 Nitrate 4 …scrubbed my rocks and did a 25% water change. 48 hours later…algae on glass and more hair algae on rocks. I have a pincushion urchin, 7 various snails, red/blue legged HC, and annd 1 emerald crab. Cleaned it well and 48hrs later my tank looks like this:
 

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