Wow, I haven't updated this thread in over a year...
I guess the short story is I was working in Alberta from October 2012 to April 2013. My tank had a rough winter in the hands of the tank sitter with massive hair algae growth. I lost my large Snappy's Rainbow Stylo due to the hair algae.
I replaced the Stylo with a new mini colony of the same lovely piece (thanks to my frag sharing). I lost several smaller pieces too including most of my Birdnests. The hair algae has been very tough to get out of the large Austera and I was afraid to lose it as well. Since the hair algae was sucking the nutrients out of the water in such efficiency, the SPS were all very pale and thin skinned from essentially "zero" nutrients in the water column. My D-D Merck phosphate kit showed no color change and neither did the API nitrate kit.
In order to save the corals, I had to feed the water column in the evenings for the benefit of the corals. In the mornings I turkey basted the hair algae to blow the detritus out, and twice per week I used long tweezers to pull as much hair algae out as possible.
In June of this year I decided to give biopellets a go after I've been watching everyone's experiences with them over the last few years. I was very nervous about this, but the hair algae was at such a density that it was very difficult to eradicate - especially when having to balance algae removal with coral feedings. That's a tough balance.
I bought a Reef Dynamics BPR 135 biopellet reactor and some Vertex biopellets. To avoid cyano outbreak, I started with a meager 50 mL of biopellets on June 8th. I know it takes 3 weeks to establish bacteria in the reactor, so around that time I increased my evening coral feedings. I started to see a bit of a difference around 3 1/2 weeks. At 4 1/2 weeks, on July 10th, I added another 50 mL of biopellets. The reactor has been running this way since and I have continued my evening feedings.
The hair algae was officially gone mid-August though I am still working on increasing SPS coloring. While at MACNA I lost a large fish that wasn't removed from the tank (I just found bones), so when I came back from MACNA there was a return of the hair algae in the large Austera. I'm really not sure why the fish died as it was in great condition and had been in the tank for 6 months.
Water parameters:
Calcium 420 ppm (Elos)
Alkalinity 7.5 to 8.0 (Hanna Checker)
Magnesium 1350-1400 ppm (Salifert)
Potassium 380-420 ppm (Elos)
pH 8.1 morning, 8.3 evening
Phosphate 0.008 ppm (Merck)
Nitrate undetectable (API)
Salinity 35 ppt (1.0264)
Here is a photo journal.
It looked fine on July 15th 2012 (I added a couple rocks - the white ones)...
It looked pretty bad on December 22nd...
It looked really bad in April (no pics), although a bit better by May after working on it for 6 weeks even though it was a bit bare from coral loss...
And now today it's finally starting to look pretty good again...
