[narcotis]

Hello everyone and Welcome to my first post here, i am going to apologise up front because i already know there are a million posts on alage (i have spent the last 3 days reading them all) and yes i mean ALL of them

But i would rather get help on my particular situation rather then saying "well thats kind of sorta like my problem"

This will probably be a long post but want to be as discriptave as possable so i get the best help.....

So here it goes.............Oh yeah, i started this process like a real idiot lol

I bought a big canister filter for my fresh water cichlid tank and it turned out it was too big to use on the 20G tank i had so i got a 75 from a friend and decided to get rid of the cichlids and do the Reef tank that i have always wanted

I got the tank set up and filled it half way with tap water from the house that i added water conditioner to to make it safe.

Then i put in 2 bags of live sand (40lbs each) well that was a cloudy mess for a week. Finally the water cleared up and i went to the LFS and realised i need to use RO water.

So i drained all the water from the tank and filled it up with RO water that i got from the machine at the grocery store, (now im not sure exactally how good that water is anyway )

Hooked up my canister filter, Koralia 4 powerhead, and heater and let the water clear and heat up for about 5 days then went and picked up about 20 LBS of live rock, put it in the tank and it was not enough. so i got about 20 more pounds, still not enough but i didnt realise how expensave rock turned out to be so i stopped there for the time being (after all i had to save some money for the light that turned out to be more expensave then i thought as well) and i threw in a dose of Biospira just for good measure incase my once live sand is now dead sand

Gave that 2 days and put in a clown fish to get the tank cycled a little faster, the fish did well and loved swiming in the current

My light came in (Tek-Light 6 lamp) so i picked that up and with the money left over bought another 20lbs of live rock bringing me up to around 60lbs and a peppermint shrimp went home put the new rock in, shrimp in, and the light on.

A day or two later i bought 7 red leg Hermit crabs and a cleaner shrimp. put those in, and everything is still good and crystal clear.

Ran that for about 2 weeks and added a Coral beauty angel and 2 days later added probably 20 red and blue leg hermit crabs, 3 turbo snales A Coral Banded Shrimp, and a Royal Gramma which instantly hid and has never came out to this day, (but is alive and seeable if you crawl down to the corner and look in the back.)

Everything still good i was checking Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate every day and never noticed a spike all were at

A week later my Nitrate test showed 5mg/l With Ammonia and Nitrite still at 0 did a water change and all was well again went to the LFS and the guy told me 5 mg/l is nothing to worry about so i bought 2 coral type things, 1 small rock with some neon green grass stuff on it that turns purple when it closes (what is this called) and a soft tree type thing that is purple ish and put those in my tank.

All tests still fine and a week later i woke up and the tank was beautiful and crystal clear and when i went to bed that night the tank was completly coverd in green algae poweder it looked like.

Ok, there is my history now i will explain the green alage stuff.

It is like a verry fine dusting on everything in the tank it wipes off the glass effortsly with a quick swipe of the magnafloat cleaner thing. but i have to do it 2-3 times a day otherwise i can't even see inside the tank.

I added another koralia 4

So i talked to the fish guy and he told me to check my phosphate which i bought a test and it read at 0 and i threw in a pad in my filter to absorbe any of the junk that might cause the problem

it has been about 2 weeks now that it has been like this and i need to fix it.

i just went to test my water and i got
PH: 8.0 (about, i hate these API tests)
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate 0
Phos: 0
Salinity: 1.026

I have noticed that if i wipe the glass clean at night after the lights go off it is crystal clear in the mornign untill the lights come on,

I held off feeding everything for 2 days and that didnt seem to make any differance,

i have done plenty of water changes but dont want to do too many to where it regresses back into a new cycle.

Here i will list all my equipment and stuff

::Equipment::

75G glass tank
Oceanic salt mix
2 Koralia 4 powerheads (1200GPH each)
* Marineland C-360 Canister Filter (369GPH flow rate)
* RO Water from machine at gracery store
Tek-Light 6 Lamp T5 fixture with lamps as follows...

2 54W [Giesemann] Aquablue+ 15,000 K
2 54W [Giesemann] Actinic+ 22,000 K
1 54W [UV lighting company] Super Actinic 12,000 K
1 54W [GE] Ecolux 6,500 K
I have the 2 Actinic+ lamps on from 10am - 10 pm and the remaining 4 come on at 11am - 9pm for a dawn and dusk effect

** The canister filter i know is not the best idea but i had it so i figured use it untill i get my protine skimmer (octopus extreme something or other)
**I will be getting my own in home RO/DI filter just as soon as i can then i know exactally the quality of water i am getting

::Fish n' Stuff::

1 Clown fish
1 Royal Gramma
1 Coral Beauty Angel
1 Coral banded shrimp
1 Peppermint Shrimp
1 Cleaner shrimp
25-30 Red and Blue leg hermit crabs
3 Turbo snales
I feed the fish once a day and it is a very small ammount. and the corals i feed trace once every day or 2
and the coral banded i give half a shrimp every 3 days

Thank you for bearing with me through this novel of a post and i look forward to hearing from you all thanks again for your help. anything else you need to know just ask me.

[pogodzib]

First off, Welcome to RB! You seem to be going faster with adding fish than I would recommend. Make sure you give things time to stabilize. Your LR and livestock may be adding too much waste into your tank than it can presently handle, which could be aiding the algae. Once your LR and LS has had time to settle in, it will help keep your nitrates down (hopefully to zero).

The green/purple grass sounds like Green Star Polyps. The purple tree sounds like a Kenya Tree. Both are easy corals to keep alive.

The green algae you are getting on your glass is a green film algae. It is common in all reef tanks to one extent or another. The better your water quality, the less often you will have to scrape it off. Most people still have to clean their glass every couple of days. If you have a good skimmer, feed lightly, low bio-load, use pure RO/DI water, possibly dose ozone, etc... you may be able to get by with only having to clean your glass once a week or two. The easiest way to clean the glass is to get a Mag-Float (or similar) scraper.