Algae growing with browning SPS, high phosphates?
Do you run a refugium? If I have read correctly, if you run a refuge light opposite of your DT lights, it will help to stabilize the PH at night.
I run a 29 gal nano and had some knarly hair algae starting to grow on the back wall at one point so I changed out my chemi pure elite and with-in a week it was all gone. I added the fuge basket and some cheato. For the first 3 weeks I would have to cut it in half and around the start of the 4th week till now (about 8+ weeks into it) I have undetectable nitrate levels and Im harvesting cheato every 2-3 weeks now. Recently replaced the chemipure elite bag since I started to notice the algae coming back. It had grown all over one of my powerheads and severely reduced the flow. I replaced it and the chemipure and its looking alot better after about a week. Hair algae seems to have gone away and the spot of cyano I had on a rock is gone.
Before I did all this, I couldnt keep any SPS, they all STN or whatever, browned out and died.
Ive got a montipora cap that is exploding in size now and some other acro that is starting to bounce back and grow. I had left it in there as an indicator to see if my water quality was getting better or not. It started to sprout and is now coloring back up nicely.
Oh yeah, I havent done a water change in almost 6 weeks. Im kinda scared my mag/cal/KH levels have droped as I havent been dosing anything. Keeping a reef with a newborn and 2 year old is kinda hard lol. BUT, all LPS coral (torches, hammer, frogspawn) are all doing great and keep on growing and sprouting new heads. I have some palys (not sure what kind) but they are great indicators of my tanks water quality. I guess, if you can learn to read what your corals like you can tell when something is off when they are ****ed.
If you have algae growing, I would say you have too much phosphates and/or nitrates.
Good luck!
