Time for a scrub

[outtafocus]

I have a bad green hair algea problem. This stuff is covering my glass but my live rock has very little.

My plan is to pull out all rock and scrub what hair algea there is on it, off.

I am also going to be reaquascaping the tank as I have decided I have way too much live rock for my needs. (note, I will have a few nice pieces of Figi coming up for sale soon)
What is the best way to go about his major task without causing a system crash?
I was going to drain much of the water into a few rubbermaid tubs and placing the rock into these, them just use a brand new nail type scrubbing brush to remove the unwanted aglea.

I plan on using about 50% newly mixed water for the refill, is this a bad idea?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[christyf5]

Hi!

When I had hair algae really bad, I would have a series of rinse buckets. I know this sounds anal but any free floating algae that goes back into your tank has to settle somewhere, and its usually somewhere new

I had about 3-4 buckets of SW (whether it be new water or the changewater from your tank). I would scrub in one, rinse and scrub in the second, then rinse and rinse. As the first bucket got yucky I'd dump it out refill it and send it to the end of the line. I had quite the little assembly line going for awhile there.

As for the 50% water change, I don't think its unreasonable. However you may want to look at what is fuelling your algae problem. Do you use RODI?? If not you may want to look into it to reduce any added nutrients coming in from your water change.

Other things to look at to reduce algae include:

increased skimming
increased alkalinity
adding a refugium


Hope that helps. Good luck with the war on algae. It almost did me in

[kari]

How about Christy's pressure washer idea?

[christyf5]

hehe that works too

Stuff comes off so quickly and you hardly have it out of sw for long. I had no cycle after powerwashing.

[Quagmire]

I used a nail brush,took for @#$%$## ever,but worked well.Took alot of coraline off too.Ive also flipped the rock over so the algae is burried in the sand.That works good if you only have a few tufts to get rid of.Maybe a small cycle if you do that tho.