Low Nutrient Brown "fuzzy" Algae

[Husker]

I have this brown furry/fuzzy looking algae that keeps coming back on my rocks. It is wispy and filamentous. I did have a big algae spike before I got my GFO (up to 2ppm). But now I have 0.0 nitrates (Red Sea Pro) and 0.00 phosphates (Hanna Checker). I am running GFO in a reactor and my skimmer is rated 3.75x my tank volume. In addition, I have seen some of my SPS lose a little color due to what I think is low nutrients. However, most of them still look pretty good and are growing well with good PE. I haven't had many fish in the tank, but I am slowly adding more. I just added a yellow eyed kole tang which has been picking at the algae a bit, but he hasn't put a major dent in it. The snails take it down, but they can't seem to keep up. It seems like the algae outcompetes my SPS and my GFO for phosphates?

Here are my parameters:

Nitrate: 0.0
Phosphate: 0.00
Calcium: 420ppm
Alkalinity: 9 dKH
pH: 8.2
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 78 deg F

I am getting more acro frags in a couple weeks, so I would like to knock down the algae as much as possible before then. Is doing 3-4 days without light a good way to give the tang/snails a chance to knock it down? Any other suggestions or am I missing the boat?

 

[Husker]

Here is a picture to show the kind of stuff I am talking about:

 

[jwshiver]

I found this old thread looking for answers to this same problem. I am currently 4 days in treating my tank with Fluconazole. Did you ever resolve this?

 

[Husker]

I did. But I didn't really do anything. I added a bunch of snails and a kole tang, stopped checking phosphates, and let stuff disappear over a couple of weeks.

 

[jsker]

I think what you have is mulm and here is a thread discussing mulm link

here is a search for mulm link

 

[jsker]

Your nutrient test will be off since you have nutrient absorbing growth.

Po4's should be around .02 to .03 and nitrates should be 3 to 5 ppm for a ULNS and for a higher nutrients system Po4's should be about .02 to .04 and nitrates can run as high as 20ppm:)