Tank Reboot due to algae

[m.kristoff]

when i read that there was an algae issue, i expected the picture to show an algae issue. your algae issue is mild comparative to what i had at around a 9-12 month timeframe.

the issue that you have, is nitrates and phosphates, as you know. perhaps your rocks are leeching it, but you can imagine how much it would have to leech for that to be a viable explanation. i just dont buy it. the amount of algae is mild for that to be the explanation. your algae scrubber is plenty to keep up with what it is leeching, if that was what it was doing, but the issue that you have is that algae is established in the display, and the key is to get it out of the display so that the only place it grows is in a refugium or scrubber.

i battled GHA for months, and finally kicked it without crazy things being done. my biggest contributor to beating it, was likely that i pulled the rock out and scrubbed it. i had to do this multiple times over the course of months, but eventually i won. every time i scrubbed the rock, it was ultimately removing the substance holding the N/P and removed it from the tank. i obviously dosed carbon, added cleanup crew, and started a refugium. out of all the things i did, i suspect that the top 3 contributors of fixing it was carbon dosing, refugium, and scrubbing rock. since you have a scrubber, youre already got part of that going, but to keep it out of the display, you have to remove it from the display until your scrubber takes all or more of what the display would normally grow.

now that ive gone over the obvious info that you probably knew already, for fluconazole, it may be a waste. it wont hurt, but i used it when my algae issue was bryopsis. it got rid of the briopsis, but it kicked my GHA into overdrive, probably because the bryopsis die off fueled my GHA. the big issue you will run into, when you have algae die off is that it fuels more growth becaause the n/p that it was holding, is released as food to algae in the tank. this is why you want to manually remove as much as you can by hand

Actually the photos don't really show much there really is. I considered pulling my rock but it is all cemented together!

As I said in my 1st post that the rock was all dry rock. I did buy a few pieces and the rest are from unknown tanks.

There are times when my PO4 test 0 and then it will shoot up. At face value you can say that is because the algae are taking it up. Problem is, I have Algae in the main display, and I can grow algae in my scrubber like crazy and I also have it in my frag tank that is attached. I have been controlling my Nutrients to help battle this. I'm only feeding once per day and even skip days. My bio load is very light. There is a unknow source of nutrients coming from somewhere. only thing left is the rock.

The way I see it is that is if someone gave me this rock, first thing I would do is give it an acid bath. and then cure it. I believe that this is the correct way for long term success. I do have coral but not a ton so a reboot is doable. Im still trying to figure out how to go about it