Originally Posted by hagfish
I'm sorry, but your logic is backwards. Algae needs nitrates and phosphates plus light. So when you say proper water conditions for a marine tank, the two are on polar opposites. Corals don't like high nutrient levels. Algae's do. There is a little middle ground, but if you want to keep corals then you want to minimize nutrients, which will minimize algaes.
FWIW I've had a successful reef running for over a year. I've been through hair algae and I'm now to the point where corals are thriving and growing.
It's not hard to grow algae at all you know. No skimmer + no water changes + heavy feeding is a simple formula for algae growth. So what do you even mean about not being able to grow algae in relationship to corals thriving? This just doesn't make any sense.
And I do have a fuge with macro algae to get the benefits you mentioned about algae. So I have no use for hair algae. Although my blenny is happy when some shows up.
Your correct and incorrect about the coral needing nutrients part. IF you read in the recent reef magazine, Xenias do quite well with some phosphates!!!! They actually do better with some then no phosphate. Each method works for different folks, my hair algae did NOT kill my corals for your information!! I keep all kinds of zoos, long tentacle plate coral, hammer coral, candy cane coral, pocillopora, pink bird's nest, blue millipora, green star polyps, blue line mushroom, RPE, brown & white pipe organ, bubble coral, pink tip frogspawn, etc etc. I might miss some stuffs I didn't type out. My tang decided to eat all the hair algae though. I was wanting to get rid of them once until I read on the web somewhere about how amphipods promote hair algae growth. I'll look it up once again and I'll try to e-mail it to some of you folks once I find that site again. Like I've said once before, if something works for one person, it doesn't mean it would work for another. Different opinions for different folks. If it works for you, so be it, no need to get snotty about it! :happyfish