At a cross roads

Well I started my tank beginning of last summer. All was well just did a simple fish only 38g setup. Then maybe 5 months ago I decided to go reef. Ever since then I have had crazy amounts of just green algae all over the tank. I go to school during the week and come home to a thik slime of green algae on all the glass. Its taking over my sand bed my rocks everything. I didnt really have trouble keeping the coral alive its just the algae. I have been living with dino since I almost started the reef. I almost got rid of it be keeping the lights on for only 7-8 hours a day. Any more it starts coming back. The thing is I have been using tap since I started. I treat it before just pouring it in. I am running a full fuge with cheato a skimmer and a phosphate reactor running phosban. When I test for phosphate I come very close to 0. What I really have considered doing is selling all the livestock to fund a ro/di unit. I would boil all my live rock and completely clean everything. My question is, is the RO really going to be the end all in my case? I may just sell the livestock and put everything away for a while. I really don't know what to do. What do you guys think?

Edit: and by the way I did purchase a full clean up crew and have added quite a few hermit crabs and they don't seem to help much if at all

 

Ro/DI is the first place to start. In the past i have had a SW tank and used tap water, and now using RO/Di water. Heck of a difference. Also, what CUC do you have in there?

 

any phosphate at all turns straight into algae! it is your tap... you can get an okay rodi for 150 and trust me, its def worth it

 

I had a custom cuc done by john a reefcleaners.

 

Dingo is right. If you have a sufficent CUC, then your growing algae faster than it can be cleaned. Its the tap water. Do you have a TDS meter? Have you measured the TDS of the tap water? Also what is you lighting cycle? Might wat to shorten it a bit till your over this.

 

How about this
Reef Aquarium RO DI Reverse Osmosis Water Filter 75 gpd - eBay (item 270405483700 end time Apr-04-10 20:50:25 PDT)
or this
Aqua Reef RO DI Reverse Osmosis Water Filtration System - eBay (item 170456503300 end time Mar-15-10 14:22:54 PDT)

 

Check out SpactraPure, they have good units around that price that come with TDS meters.

 

Ive been going through the same thing. if you want to test your tank with ro water before you spend money on a unit. start doing water changes with ro water from yuor LFS. or wal-mart etc.. do that for a month and see if it helps(it probly will) that way you'll only spend 50cents-$99cents a gallon of ro/di water for now so you dont have to sell any livestock, and gives you time to save up for the ro/di unit purchase.. win win

 

+1 on spectrapure

they did run a 3 reef members discount late last year
75 gpd units at 150 bucks I recall

shoot them a PM or post an enquiry in their sponsors forum

Steve

 

How much and how often do you feed? Do you also feed the corals?