Well, where do I start. I had a beautiful 120 gallon reef tank with lots of sps, zoas,and other corals after upgrading from a 57 gallon. Everything was going great, but a few things went wrong.
My number 1 problem....Lack of water changes. I am now a believer. Too bad that it took my tank going to hell and me almost quitting the hobby to realize the importance of what water changes does. Even heavy skimming, a gfo and carbon reactor, and dosing does not replace what a good water change can do to export unwanted nutrients, and replace used minerals.
My 2nd problem....I started using kalk in my auto top off, but I used it poorly, and by not mixing it thoroughly it crashed my tank and lead to my skimmer not functioning properly and clogging my GFO and carbon reactors.
Last problem....Do not ignore algae! If you get a frag from someone and the rock has any algae on it at all, don't put it in your tank! If you see any algae crop up in your tank, spot remove it immediately, don't wait. So, after doing some soul searching and my wife becoming interested in starting a pico tank, I remembered how much I loved the saltwater hobby and vowed to myself to practice much better tank maintenance from now on.
All that being said... My tank used to look like this:
Then because of my failures it ended up like this:
So, I decided it was time to change it, or break it down. I started by cleaning my skimmer thoroughly, scraping the glass, and started siphoning off any hair algae I could. I ordered a large clean up crew and also got some Mexican Turbo snails. I dosed my first dose of Marine Alagefix. Since my tank is 120 gallons with a 30 gallon sump, I figured the water volume to be approximately 135 gallons and dosed according to directions.
Next, I changed about 15 gallons of water by siphoning off more algae at the same time. The hair algae began to weaken.
After the second dose, I noticed the hair algae turned from green to grayish. A much lighter color.
I then did a 40 gallon water change, and removed a few of the rocks on the left island and suctioned the hair algae off completely with a wet/dry vac. It almost came right off! Also I noticed the algae started to turn loose more from the rocks, and my skimmer started skimming copious amounts of it.
I just did my third dose yesterday and I am now about 95% algae free! The bright greenish yellow patches are sponges.
I added a filter pad in my sump in the baffle right before the return. It has worked great in catching any remaining detrius and the water is starting to clear up beautifully. I am wet skimming, running heavy GFO and Carbon, changed my lights from old 14k bulbs to new 20k radium blues. I will probably do another massive 40 gallon water change this week, and after that I will start a weekly maintenance dose of Algaefix. I saw no negative effects on my cleaner shrimp, fish, or inverts. This product is great and in conjunction with manual removal methods works great!