quarantine to prevent algae?

I noticed some time time ago in John Maloney's "ultimate nuisance algae" thread, that many types of algae happen because "you didn't quarantine".

I'd like to hear more about this from the experts. Can anyone comment on quarantine procedures pertaining to nuisance algae prevention?

I'm tearing my tank down and starting over from scratch this week, partly because of an algae situation ... a mysterious fuzzy grey stuff ... more on it here: http://www.3reef.com/forums/algae/whats-fuzzy-grey-brown-stuff-64960.html.

While this is not the only reason for the tear-down, it was definitely a factor - and because of it, I'm nuking all my rock and sand, and sterilizing the tank completely. I'll be starting with base rock this time, devoid of any life, and doing my best to avoid introducing nusance species in the future.

Meanwhile, my small collection of corals will be in QUARANTINE, in a brand new 29 gallon tank ... hence this thread.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

If it were me i would scrub the rocks off in a bucket of salt water then rinse of in fresh salt water .. if any of your corals are on plugs or rock rubble it will hold the spores. the bottom line is to find out the cause.

i tried the nook thing because of hair algae and it just came back.overfeeding i found was the cause of it now it is going away slowly.

 

the grey stuff you had was probably lyngbya. you have to fight those out really, lyngbya is a cyano species that is pretty common and will get in your tank just like red cyano will normally. there are certain things you can QT out, and certain species that are so commonplace that it is nearly impossible to keep their spores out, and there spores readily settle in an aquarium. Species like Lobophora for example, are more likely to spread asexually rather than sexually, or to put it plainly likely to take hold by creeping on you rock work rather than through the settlement of spores. This is what makes them Qtable. Most of the time you can see it on the rock before you put it in. I myself have got a cool frag of something and rushed to put it in the tank despite the fact it has gelidiopsis for example. (I probably mispelled that, but it is late - ). I should have cleaned it first, made sure the algae was gone and then put it in. Now I had to take out the rock it was on and isolate it in a cleaning tank. Some of the items in that guide need to be updated, a lot of it was cut and paste and it will get back to evolving into something useful one day.

for a qt tank, I think the wal mart 10g kits work great. they won't keep high lighting corals going for long, but for one week for observation it is great. helps with new fish too (if they can fit), not only for regular QT reasons, but lets you make sure they are feeding etc... a must for shipped fish i think, some of shipped fish that go straight into the DT suffer from "disappeared after 3 days syndrome". the isolation helps.