What else can I do?
 

So the short version of this story is that I had a bad cyano or some type of algae problem. It looked brown and snotty with bubbles. The bulbs I was using were over a year old.

So what I've done so far to try and get my tank looking top notch again is I've changed all 6 bulbs on my t5 fixture. I've added cheato. I did a round of chemiclean about 4 days ago. Took all the rocks out, rinsed them in some fresh salt water and scrubbed them. Did the 20% water change and have my skimmer running again with carbon and gfo.

I've also added some sand back into my tank since I was running it bare bottom and added a conch and another snail (like a huge nassarius snail).

Tank parameters.
Sg 1.025
Temp 79
Mag 1400
Dkh 9.0
Cal 380
Fish are a yellow tang, coral beauty and clown.

Here are some pics of the algae coming back a bit again.

Powerhead with the bubbles and brown algae.
http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/a.../photo3-14.jpg

Finger leather opening up again but has some brown algae on it.
http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/a.../photo2-22.jpg

Duncan which has been closed for about two days starting to open again. You can see a big string of the algae.
http://i866.photobucket.com/albums/a.../photo1-22.jpg

what are your nitrates and phosphates at??

could be dinos , google dinoflaggelates(im the worse for spelling lol) could be what your dealing with:)

good luck!

Nitrates and phosphates are nearly 0

I really hope they aren't Dino's.

sure looks like it to me. if your phos and nitrates are near zero you shouldnt be getting that much algae.

running media??

i would start looking into dinos as crappy as it sounds:(

Could it be calothrix?

I really lack for clean up crew in my tank. I have one brittle star, about 5 Astraea snails, a conch I just added and a huge nassarius looking thing. I would count my cleaner shrimp but it seems to eat fish and coral food.

I am running gfo in a phosban reactor and just added cheato.

I'm thinking of doing another water change tomorrow and seeing how things go. Let the cheato and new lights have a chance to work.

The article says that snails can die from Dino's and I've never had any snails die and I've been dealing with this for a couple months now. It's just recently that I've started to really try and fix my tank with the steps I listed above.

where did you get the sand or was it new??

I had the sand from before when the problem was bad. I took it out a few months ago, rinsed the crap (literally) out of it and it sat dry until a few days ago when I rinsed it again, and let it soak in some to/di before I added some yesterday. I haven't added even a quarter of what was in there before.

something seems off to me when i look at the pics every shot has algae of some kind growing. you have new bulbs , good water,running gfo and have a cuc.....your bioload is low and no nutrients......

i would think your old "bad sand" is still bad , probably releasing stuff you couldnt wash out enough of.