Maintaining nutrients while recovering from algae bloom

razorskiss

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So nutrient levels in my tank have been fairly steady (around 10 NO3 0.1 PO4 based on salifert) but I had set up a slow acclimation ramp with my Kessil A360x a month back. A green film and hair algae bloom snuck up on me between routine cleanings and really took over the tank. Around this time I invested in the USB par meter from apogee and realized the tank was probably way over-lit and dialed the lights back to a more reasonable range. That combined with cleanings, mechanical filtration and skimming, brought the algae under control (it's no longer growing back quickly, coralline is steadily spreading on rockwork) but I'm concerned that nutrients might be a bit low in the tank. My euphyllia, stylos and goni extend much less now, but still somewhat and NO3 lies around 2-5 depending on how much I feed and PO4 are around 0.1 still. My question is whether I should hold steady until the algae cleans up and maybe the polyp extension will bounce back on its own as everything readjusts to lower light and recovers from having irritating stringy algae everywhere, or if there's anything other action I should take while the film algae and last bits of the hair algae die off / get eaten up by CUC?
 

MnFish1

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So nutrient levels in my tank have been fairly steady (around 10 NO3 0.1 PO4 based on salifert) but I had set up a slow acclimation ramp with my Kessil A360x a month back. A green film and hair algae bloom snuck up on me between routine cleanings and really took over the tank. Around this time I invested in the USB par meter from apogee and realized the tank was probably way over-lit and dialed the lights back to a more reasonable range. That combined with cleanings, mechanical filtration and skimming, brought the algae under control (it's no longer growing back quickly, coralline is steadily spreading on rockwork) but I'm concerned that nutrients might be a bit low in the tank. My euphyllia, stylos and goni extend much less now, but still somewhat and NO3 lies around 2-5 depending on how much I feed and PO4 are around 0.1 still. My question is whether I should hold steady until the algae cleans up and maybe the polyp extension will bounce back on its own as everything readjusts to lower light and recovers from having irritating stringy algae everywhere, or if there's anything other action I should take while the film algae and last bits of the hair algae die off / get eaten up by CUC?
I do not think the nutrients are low. My guess is the changes relate to the other changes you've made - and I wouldn't dose any thing, etc etc. Just watch. Curious though, what were the PAR readings. My soft corals are at a PAR (at one part of the day) >500
 
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razorskiss

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Mine were also hitting >500, I backed off not because of the coral but because of the algae bloom. I figured that they should be plenty happy in the 100-250 range and that maybe that would help me ride out whatever was fueling the algae growth. Luckily the algae has stopped spreading, now I'm just dealing with super long stringy hair algae peeling off of tufts on the lower rockwork and fouling up stuff. I'm thinking of staying at these levels for a good while and, if it seems like maybe a little higher PAR could help with coloration etc. slowly ramping it back up after the coralline is more established (currently covers less than 10% surface overall)
 

MrGisonni

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I fought dinos then hair algae after low nutrients and hight light in my mixed reef. I lowered the intensity, backed off the red a bit shortened my photoperiod and got a bunch of turbo snails. I also added a small piece of caulerpa prolifera and gracilaria algae to my display. Only the macros remain. My tank wants the nitrates between 20 and 30 ppm. It is what it is. I dose neonitro when my clams suck up the nitrates to keep things stable
 
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