I had a real bad outbreak of Red Wirery Algae. At first I thought wow pretty cool good looking Algae. Of course I left it and it spread like wildfire.
After I researched it, I found many people have had to take their tanks down; because, they couldn't get it under control. Others swear by Large Mexican Turbos and only authentic Mexican Turbos from the gulf are the ones that will eat it. Mine didn't seem to touch the Red Wirey Algae, but they've really kept any hair algae, red bubble, brown turf, and diatoms on the glass in check; so it wasn't a complete failure.
I tried an urchin but he kept knocking corals over and putting small pieces of algae on his back, while only seeming to rasp at the coraline algae. I decided to pull the Urchin due too the bulldozing.
I just said the hell with it and I decided to aggresively pull the Red Algae out by hand whenever it started to create dense mats, Very hard to get out little patches, but; when it has a little size you can work off large chunks.
The problem with this many people said is that when you remove it, little pieces drift all over the tank causing the algae to spread. However; since the algae was pretty much on every rock in my tank, I really didn't think it'd make any difference anyways.
Then on the philosophy of forcing algaes to compete for nutrients I added a small hang on back refugium with the green spaggeti type alge chaeto. The Chaeto grew like crazy at first meaning I had too many nutrients, even though a couple of test kits consistently read near zero phosphates, and nitrates.
Moral of the story is, don't trust test kits; instead trust clean water (I now change 10% a week), Only use RO/DI for make up water, soak frozen foods in cold ro water, improving skimming, (larger pump) add competition (chaeto) and be persistant. At least thats how I beat the RED WIRE ALGAE.
The thing is not only have I controlled this Red Wire Algae, I've also got a cleaner tank, with corals that have colored up and have starting growing real fast, even too fast for me. Fish that seem happier. And an overall healthier looking tank.
So good luck it can be beat. Cheers.