I had my tank TOTALLY covered in hair algea.. long stringy stuff.. looked like a forest instead of a reef tank..
I tried snails.. LOTS of snails.. turbo, margerita, astrea, couple trochus.. they found their patches that they ate.. and kept clean.. but didn't really make any progress..
hermit crabs.. blue leggeed hermits, zebra hermits.. even got an emerald crab.. all seemed to be eating at the buffet.. but no real progress..
Bought a yellow tang.. man do they eat alot.. but still.. not enuf.. got the lawnmower blenny.. he tore up more than he ate i think.. but he did eat.. hehe..
got a diadema urchin.. he did some good work too.. (man i have alot of herbivores)
overall.. even with all the critters in there.. i still had algea up to my armpits..
Myself and lostmind took a pair of toothbrushes and a combiniation of scrubbing the smaller rocks oin a bucket and scrubbing the larger one IN the tank..
week later.. algea...
SO.. we went for round 2.. and scrubbed it AGAIN.. and THEN keeping the lights out except for about 2 hours a day for 2 weeks...
perfection.. and its been great ever since. (cept the battle with nasty dino's, also fixed by lowering the lighting cycle away from 12 hours to 6 on 18 off)
i must have spent like 300+$ on snails at JL.. oi..
my tank was 90Gallon, red sea berlin skimmer, RO/DI, 2x400W MH 10,000K Ushios + 2x96W PC actinic. all the readings on the tests were exactly where they were supposed to be.. The lights were on 12 hours on/off whcih is i think what really contributed to my outbreak.. lowering the lighting cycle to stop the algea from growing back and let the critters get a good foothold I think was why it worked for me..