100% Water Change
Well, I've been fighting a losing battle with marco algaes. I had a 4" deep sand bed and my macro algaes (caluperas etc) were growing faster than I could keep up. I flushed tons of it down the toilet, tried using it as compost and the list goes on and on. I decided to go barebottom and today I pulled out all my corals and put them into another tank with 1 week old water. I pulled out all my rock and put it into a big rubber maid bin with tank water, and pulled out all my sand bed. I then mixed up 40 gallons of fresh salt water (IO) and let it circulate for a couple hours. I slowly put the rock back in and restacked it so the top would be quite a bit higher, now my Acro's sit much closer to the light so I hope to get a bit of colour back in one that was a bit washed out. I have a beautiful Acro that is pink with purple tips, as well as an awesome green Acro with blue/purple tips and a yellow/green acro. I also have a very fast growing green tipped pink birdsnest as well as a number of different Monti's. The tank looks good, corals were all open and I have about 100 heads of Xenia now I have to attatch to rock. Ricordia was looking good as well as everything else.
I did the 100% water change because removing the sand bed (DSB) released a lot of hydrogen sulphide (rotten eggs smell) and I figured it would be the best way to reduce nitrates that weren't showing up on my test kit. I added purple up, some Kent Magnesium and will move the fish back in tomorrow. My sump is full of macro algaes that I'll take in to the LFS, I guess I didn't do 100% after all, my sump holds about 20 gallons of water.
Wish me luck, I hope I got all the algae.
Doug
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