TEST PHOSPATES. mine were high.
wolfhedd


"TW" wrote in message
...
Dave;

I had to deal with this same problem in my tank for many months before I
won the battle. The problem is the source of nutrient that is feeding
the algae. If there is no food to feed the algae it will starve. There
is no two ways about it. You must find the source of the nutrient and
find a way to reduce it.

I would suggest that you do bigger water changes less often. 5% seems
low to me. As my tank is now more mature, I do less and less water
changes and my tank is doing better and better. When I do one, I change
20-25 gal on my 90 gal tank. My system has a sump and a refugium now so
the water capacity is somewhere near 120 gallons when I factor in the
displacement of the LR. So I am doing around 15-16% at a time. I only
do them once every two to three months. I used to do water changes
every two weeks.
I would also sugesst you beef up the biological filtration of your
system. Two inches of sand is not enough. I would add some LS. A DSB
will improve things in your tank. I saw immediate improvement in my
tank when I added more live sand. I had 2 inches of crushed coral to
start with. (that was the suggestion of the LFS at the time but that is
a whole story for another post) I did it slowly over a period of time.

I understand that it may be difficult for you to scrub your LR. In my
tank there were several rocks that were very difficult/impossible to
remove from the tank. I did find that removing them and scrubbing them
in a bucket of old tank water followed by a rinse in another tank of old
tank water worked the best at reducing the amount of algae. By " dump
the bucket" I meant after you scrub the rock pour the old water into the
toilet and get rid of it. When you rip the algae out in your tank you
will allow some algae to float free in your tank and it will just land
somewhere else and start growing.

As I said before it can be a real bitch to get rid of. I almost gave up
the hobby a few times in frustration. I also battled cyno and
dinoflagellates at different times. Both were difficult but neithor had
the staying power of hair algae.

Good Luck Todd