How to Win the Algae Battle?

Hey gang...

Dealing with a bout of brown hair algae on every rock in the tank...
powerheads and sand lining.

I just did a water change...
Added pura phoslock and put it in a media bag and placed it into my sump...

Bought three turbo snails to help the hermit crabs and tiny snails

I was thinking about cutting the lights from 8 to 6 hours...
4 hours with the t5 white and actinic ... leaving the actinics on an hour before and an hour after (total of six)

I've also cut back my flake food feeding from daily (pinch)
to every three days.

Water parameters

no3 =0
po4 =0.25 (maybe 0; can't tell colors are so close on chart)
mag =1490
ca =580
dkh = 11
temp. =84 (trying to fight off ich; normally at 78 with chiller)
pH =8.3

Will the cutback on lighting effect my flowerpot coral?
Any other suggestions?

ryan

 

Hey check out Reefsparky's advise in this post it helped me tremendously I followed all of his advise and it really worked it saved me from giving up.


http://www.3reef.com/forums/algae/desperate-measures-fed-up-48077.html

 

Reefsparky is on the 6th page Tangster really helped me out there too.

 

What is your flow like?

 

If you gonna use some sort of phosphate removal media your best bet would be to run it in a fluidized bed. Id switch to RowaPhos from the Puraphos. PuraPhos is garbage IMO.

 

I have 4 mj 1200 powerheads run on reef mode on a redsea wavemaker...
flow shouldn't be a problem ...
I'm also pushing about 900gph into the tank... although it's slowed down a bit by running through a chiller...

 

Id get a 2 little fishes phosban reactor, also check your tds in your ro water....u are using ro rite? And do a phosphate test on newly mixed saltwater...see if your salt is contributing.

 

Id also re-evaluate the amount of flow u have. U have alot of rock, is it packed tightly? Your powerheads are only turning your water volume over 16 time an hour. Im not saying thats bad but u just may need more. On my 90 i have 2 tunze nanostream 6045's (1189gph) one 6025 (660gph) my return from sump (425gph) and a vortech dialed in at about 1/3 its power...im figuring 1100-1200gph and my tank is very open.
I turn my tank over about 50 times an hour and by no means is it extremely turbulant

 

Heres my tank:

 

Can you repost the picture...
It doesn't appear on my end to be a working link.
I have cut my light time to just 4 hours... feeding just 2 times a week ... and will do weekly water changes while testing phosphates in the process.
I did use pura phoslock... even though some don't like it... I'll still need to give it a whirl.
I didn't think about the turn over rate on my tank... I thought the 4 powerheads and 925 gph return from sump was plenty in my 72... my rocks if you look at the picture are very open (cavelike)... there's plenty of open space ... I thought...

PS I am posting pics of my tank tonight to show the problem

PSS I am battling ich (so the temp. is at 84 while I treat the problem) that may make it difficult to treat algae for the next 14 days or so