Lots of good advice here, you just need to put it all together.
Scrubbing your rock is a good way to get rid of the algae you have in your tank right now, but will not solve the problem long term. There will always be a little bit of algae in your system, and with the elevated nutrient levels in our systems, they will come back quickly.
The only contributor to algae in the tank is the food (ie: nutrients) we put into our tanks. No organism can completely digest what it eats so we end up with stuff like nitrates and phosphates in the water. This in turn feeds the algae.
Something you need to get used to is that you will have algae growing in your tank no matter what. The nutrients we have in out tanks, even with water changes are hundreds of times what they are on coral reefs, even in higher nutrient areas of the ocean. There have been open ocean experiments done showing that algaes will bloom at nutrient levels much lower than any hobbyist test kit can test for.
Algae makes up some 70 percent of the biomass of coral reefs. The thing is, that it is continually grazed by a huge population of herbivours from snails to large fish.
So, the issue is, how are you going to control the algaes in your tank? As others have mentioned, nasarious are carrion eaters so they are no help. It is a good idea to have a decent population of proper algae grazing snails such as astreas or turbos.
A lot of people also use macro algaes to compete with their more ugly bretheren. It will take a while for macro algaes to dominate.
Diedema urchins will eat pretty much any algae, but get large very quickly.
Find youself some good grazing snails, keep doing water changes and add some macro algae and you should get things under control. Do keep in mind that it will take a while. Long term changes in a tank always take a while.
Good luck.
Fred
P.S. you still need to harvest your macro algaes to export nutrients.
Scrubbing your rock is a good way to get rid of the algae you have in your tank right now, but will not solve the problem long term. There will always be a little bit of algae in your system, and with the elevated nutrient levels in our systems, they will come back quickly.
The only contributor to algae in the tank is the food (ie: nutrients) we put into our tanks. No organism can completely digest what it eats so we end up with stuff like nitrates and phosphates in the water. This in turn feeds the algae.
Something you need to get used to is that you will have algae growing in your tank no matter what. The nutrients we have in out tanks, even with water changes are hundreds of times what they are on coral reefs, even in higher nutrient areas of the ocean. There have been open ocean experiments done showing that algaes will bloom at nutrient levels much lower than any hobbyist test kit can test for.
Algae makes up some 70 percent of the biomass of coral reefs. The thing is, that it is continually grazed by a huge population of herbivours from snails to large fish.
So, the issue is, how are you going to control the algaes in your tank? As others have mentioned, nasarious are carrion eaters so they are no help. It is a good idea to have a decent population of proper algae grazing snails such as astreas or turbos.
A lot of people also use macro algaes to compete with their more ugly bretheren. It will take a while for macro algaes to dominate.
Diedema urchins will eat pretty much any algae, but get large very quickly.
Find youself some good grazing snails, keep doing water changes and add some macro algae and you should get things under control. Do keep in mind that it will take a while. Long term changes in a tank always take a while.
Good luck.
Fred
P.S. you still need to harvest your macro algaes to export nutrients.
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