Green hair algae has taken over. PLEASE help!

[mcarroll]

Not sure how I missed your replies!

I have significantly more flow now since I've heard this could have been a problem.

Great!

Prime is used to keep nurients intoxic until it can be filtered.

This probably isn't helping anything. You shouldn't need to do this.

I can take a sample for phosphate which I may do, altho I will proboly get a tester very soon after all this.

Any word on this result yet?

I was trying to keep nutrients as low as possible as to keep the carpet nem happy, but have since learned these guys are incredibly hardy.

As low as possible isn't very desireable for photosynthetic critters in general. Anemones seem to have a particular appetite for phosphates – probably because they are so large and adapted to surface conditions.

10 to 15 ppm nitrate

Not bad, but if that number is increasing then it implies a limit (maybe phosphates) elsewhere in the system that needs to be addressed to get things growing. (Or get them growing faster.)

 

[NS Mike D]

^^^ he's basically advising you to not chase your tail. if nothing, I've learned from countless posts by more experienced reefers that stability is vital. what this means is to choose parameters (lots of stuff on this, I do like red sea's articles on this and their recommended parameters) and focus on maintaining stable parameters. this means knowing your phosphates .

this should result in your healthy corals out competing the nuisance algae over the long term. keep in mind that a lot of nuisance algae and bacteria (cyano) can thrive in wide range of parameters whereas corals are limited.

there are tanks without nuisance algae in both low and high nutrients, so that is why I am convinced that balance (between n&p) and stability are key and not absolute numbers.

 

[Florida Sunshine]

Stop using the Prime. It is skewing your tests. Particularly the ammonia. Keep it around if you like for a QT or emergency tank set-up, but it should not be part of your regular routine.

 

[brandon429]

worlds easiest gha arrest here

I tend to agree w Chris a lot on his posts, in today's invasion old fashioned manual gardening is the fix and the preventative.

on phosphate: your sandbed has it all, the parts you can mitigate here. the rest is bioload and feeding which your tank can handle wo algae, once you choose a non farming method which is not starving algae out of your tank and then stressing corals. set water params to what corals want, algae is dealt with differently.
params are never set to what it takes to starve algae, that's old school possibly get this fixed in three more months technique. new school is:

change your entire sandbed out for new using skip cycle technique and buy enough water/mix to have most of that water ready for reset after cleaning.

while rocks are out, brush them and use peroxide to actually kill the plant. rinse off, work around corals

put back a totally cloudless setup, p04 is controlled now, and however you want to prevent regrowth constitutes the myriad prevention options.

separating removal actions from prevention actions...that's how we earn our massive store of after pics