Well gang - after about a week, here's what we have now:
Here's how it went down ... 4/14 of course, the beginning of hades and panic. LOL
4/15 - pulled as much HA out by hand as possible. Real messy situation even if you do pull the rocks out. When I put the rock back in the tank, I still had little HA pieces floating around the tank coming off the rock.
4/17 - powered down lights on tank, still had ambient light, but by end of first day HA already looked to be discoloring some. Also put seagel, chemipure, and purigen in the sump (helps with phos, nitrates, and clarity of water)
4/19 - bought 5 turbo snails that seemed to start to work on some of the HA
4/20 - HA very yellowish in color after 4 days of lights being turned off. Not to mention my poor cheato turned into a mess of lightweight thread. (Good thing I had an abundance in my other tank)
4/21 - turned lights back on and watched tank over the next 24 hours.
4/22 - today, I scrubbed down the rock with the most of the HA left on it in R/O water in a bucket and placed back in tank, will continue to monitor. Also added some fresh cheato from my other tank to assist in soaking up nitrates before the HA can get to them again.
Seems it may have been my dry rock which wreaked havoc on everything, even my skimmer went ballistic for a bit when I first put it in. Took some tests today and water quality seems to be leveling out pretty well:
Phos: .25
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5
PH: between 8.0 - 8.3
I think, at least I hope the worst is over, will probably wait a couple more days and start putting in some purple up again. I believe it was the dry rock, but if the HA begins to grow again when putting the purple up in, then I'll know it's that instead.
Anyway, thanks to everyone for the help, hopefully my time line can help someone else down the road.
