new 20g and can't decide

[Beverly]

Originally Posted by Ryan

Like the algea u get when u first start off. Canyo, turf, brown all that stuff.

I get around having all that start up algae, as you call it, by not curing my rock in the display tank. Rather, I cure it in a smaller tank or rubbermaid container with heater, aeration and some NO lighting. During curing, I siphon out the bottom of the container/tank as well as give each rock a good swishing in changewater about once a week. This gets rid of all kinds of algae-producing crud from the rock. It's surprising all the crud that comes out during the following weeks when I siphon the bottom then swish the rock, almost as if it had never been done before

Once the rock is fully cured, I give it all one more swishing before transferring it to the display tank. After it's aquascaped in the display tank, swishing is not possible, so I turkey baste the rock the day before weekly water changes. Still, lots of crud comes out of the rock, and it is either sucked into mechanical filters or falls to the bottom of the BB tank.

On water change day, powerheads are turned off and the mechanical filters, in our case foams, are thoroughly cleaned in outgoing changewater. The bottom of the tank is siphoned of obvious crud. Then I baste under the rock structure to move the hidden crud to the back of the tank where it is siphoned out.

IME, if rock is cured in a separate container and swished regularly, the bioload is low in the display tank, and there are enough snails in your cleanup crew, there is almost no nuisance algae at all.