Green Hair Algae Problem

[jmick]

Yes, took out the rock one piece at a time and cleaned it off and put it back in the tank. No, it didn’t remove all of the algae but it did remove close to 90% which is a good start. I placed the rock in a vat full of tank water and scrubbed away (had to refill the vat close to 5 times because it was so dirty and I couldn’t see what I was doing (I also dunked it in a tub of very clean water before putting in main tank).
Your plan sounds fine but make sure you give yourself plenty of time because it takes a lot of time (80lbs of live rock took me almost 4 hours to clean). Also, you can probably save yourself some money and skip the live sand and instead use very fine oolitic sand (your live rock will seed it fairly quickly).

 

[segsig]

Thanks for everything Jmick but heres a couple of questions that may be stupid for you but I'm still not too experienced. When you replaced the water 5x did you use regular water or keep refilling with tank water? if you used tank water, and it kept getting dirty, how much water from the original tank was put back into the tank?
basically I'm confused about how much water you use, from where, and when. and what to put back in the tank after everything is cleaned out?
sorry for being so thick headed--I just want to do it right this time since I have never done it before.

 

[jmick]

I did a 10 gal water change when I did this so I used the water I removed from the tank to scrub it in.

 

[segsig]

Jmick... 2 more things. After cleaning the rock can I rinse it off with fresh water before putting it back in the tank since the tank water I'm cleaning it in will get dirty? AND, how long can I keep the rock in the tank without water before adding the rest of the rock back as each gets clean and putting back the tank water in without ruining it?

 

[jmick]

Originally Posted by segsig
Jmick... 2 more things. After cleaning the rock can I rinse it off with fresh water before putting it back in the tank since the tank water I'm cleaning it in will get dirty? AND, how long can I keep the rock in the tank without water before adding the rest of the rock back as each gets clean and putting back the tank water in without ruining it?
I don’t see why not, I wouldn’t advise using tap water but a little RO or RO/DI should be fine or put aside some of the tank water (that you removed for the water change) and use that to dip the rock before putting back in tank. I’m a little confused by your second question. You’re not planning on empting the entire tank are you? I hope not because you don’t need to. In any event, live rock can be out of water for some time. I hope this makes sense, I’m a little under the weather this week and not thinking very clearly (damn flu)!

 

[segsig]

Feel better. And yes I was going to clean it all out as I was going to remove all the substrate and scrape all the walls and clean it up during this whole thing. But I was going to clean up each piece of live rock, put it in the tank bare bottom , and when all the live rock was back, put in the live sand, and then return the water from the bucket which was holding the fish--along with the fish of course. And then basically replace whatever water is needed treated as a water change