Lee, I think that almost every suggestion has been made that I can think of normally. So let attack this problem with a different approach. Why not setup a 20 or 40 gallon for your fish and corals so while you battle the algae outbreak in the main DT you can feed your livestock without any issues. Next you can get more drastic with the algae battle. Lights out on the display for two to three weeks and have the lights on the fuge on 24/7. Remove all filter socks and go to town on stirring up the sand do a good cleaning of the tank and sump and equipments. Keep this going until you are sure you get most of the detritus out. During the time don’t do any additives just do wet skim and siphon the sand and rocks. Keep doing your water changes and check your parameters.
Funny, I just came here to ask about doing almost exactly this. My current problem is that my tank is loaded with this brown stuff, looks like dead algea; blows loose easy, but I can't seem to filter it out faster than it regenerates, partially because I have so much rock, and partially because there is just no good way of removing it all manually (and it certainly isn't going away on its own)
I have a 90g with a T5-HO light fixture that is sitting empty, and I've got about 6 fish; 2 big tangs and a few smaller fish, and a Seabae anemone.
I have two ideas:
#1
-remove all fish and move them to my empty 90g tank with T5-HO fixture (old bulbs). I could put probably 50 lbs of LR (cured LR that is currently in a curing tub, free of any algae or detritus)
-remove all rock from 120g DT (main tank), rinse all the brown stuff (detritus?) in the sink, and put the live rock in a curing tub for a few weeks, no lights, just moving salt water
-clean and vacuum all sand in the DT, and when the LR is re-cured, put it back in the DT and move back all the fish
#2
-Remove "most" if not all of the infected LR from the DT, LEAVE the fish in the DT, and put some of the un-infected LR into the DT
-rinse and cure the infected LR just like above, vacuum sand, etc, and put back in DT once its cured
My only concern with #1 is that the transition might be harder on the fish, and my old T5 bulbs may not be enough for my Seabae anemone.
My concern with #2 is that it might be harder on the fish being in a tank that is being "renovated."
I like your idea, but my concern with that is that I'm not confident that I can get rid of all this stuff without removing the rock and rinsing it, but that requires the rock to cure again, and when it cures in the tank, it just creates more of this brown stuff. So with all this said, what do you think is the best approach? Thank you for all your help by the way. With #1 or #2, I'd essentially be starting the tank over, but I'm confident that with my new, more aggressive WC schedule, I can keep this problem from occurring again. But I need to get back to the point of a clean tank, because it seems that once this outbreak occurs, getting back to zero is extremely difficult. I'm not growing more algae, so I think that my current WC schedule and equipment setup is sufficient to prevent a future outbreak
Here is the "stuff" that I think is detritus? I'm not getting any green algae at the moment. It all seems to be this brown stuff, which shakes loose easy, but again, there is so much of it and so much rock, that removing it with the DT intact is proving nearly impossible.
