Lots of algae

Ive got some algae growing in my tank...it started less than a week ago and is quickly growing out of hand. I need some suggestions on how to kill it or tame it...its not overly unnatractive until it all bunches up. Some ideas ive had are maybe my phosphates are too high(i dont have a phosphate test), i guess it could have hitchhiked from my new rock but that doesnt seem likely as the algae isnt even on the new rock, or maybe my skimmer isnt working right. I could be and probably am totally wrong so thats where you guys come in;D Heres some pics:
FTS with algae :
Closer up on the worst part:

As close as i can get; as you can see the individual strands look like little ferns...i cant find any references about it on the net:

 

check out the ultimate nuisance algae thread on this site

The last picture looks like a bryopsis species to me
You dont seem to have any live corals in there? thats great really

if it where mine, I would rip out as much as I could manually at next water change time
I would purchase a P04 test kit and a Nitrate test kit ( if you dont have one)
once I had manually got as much out as I could, I would then run a Phosphate removing resin/ compound in my filter to zero that level and if the results of my nitrate test where over 30ppm I would also run some nitrate removing resin

thats what I would do if it where my tank
Steve

 

I agree with Steve, HOWEVER (dont shoot me here steve), I'm going to suggest that we ask things like...

How old are your lights? If they're old, or very warm in color, they may be bleeding into 6500K which algae LOVES.

with no coral, cut down the light exposure of your tank by an hour or two a day.

While we're at it, lets talk about your cleanup crew. Hermits devour this stuff (you're never going to be able to get this out by hand). Take a trip over to ReefCleaners.org | Clean Up Crews and Macro Algae and fill that sucker out!

 

shoot you for what?

you've added a perfectly good post that gives more valuable information to the original question

I always welcome things like this, Trelane , because I benefit from it also

Steve

 

I was kidding of course! ;D;D

 

Holy algea batman, that is a large ball of it.
I manually pulled a little off my filters/top of my PH last night but nothing like this.
I cut back on my feeding and helped both my algae issues

 

I agree with Steve - its Bryopsis, it turns it all into a whole new game. For now, as you have no light dependent creatures i would kill the lights permenantly until you figure out whats feeding the algae (phos, Nit etc..)

 

yikes +1 on the bryopsis. I would agree that you should kill the lights to help out.

 

I have just had a small outbreak of the same, bryopsis pennata. I managed to catch it just in time, take out as much as you can by hand then check phosphates. Snails will do a good job of cleaning up the rest.

 

thanks everyone for the suggestions. Ive just finished doing some daily maitnence (cleaning glass, top off etc) and i am going to kill the lights for a while since i dont have any corals. The bulbs are not old at all they have been used no more than 300 hrs and are 14k MH. I do test for PH/ammonia/nitrates ever other day and none of them go perceptibly over 0 according to my test(other than PH obviously) I also today pulled up a lot of the stuff that was on the sand, giving the damsels heart attacks in the process. The only clean-up crew i had was 5 hermits but there seems to be no more than 3 left; i found a dead one as i was yanking the algae out. I also cleaned out the floss and bubblebreakers in my wet/dry and fixed a small problem with my skimmer( the pipe you raise and lower to increase water level was stuck so i unstucked it and raised it and it seems to be producing much more skimmate now.) So my shopping list for next LFS trip is as follows:
1.Phosphate test
2.More productive clean-up crew(more hermits and/or snails?)
3.possibly a phosphate reducer
Anybody got any more suggestions?