Fluff, you have a point, however, I have a pico tank that is only topped off with distilled water, the only water that goes into the salt mix is distilled as well. This has been the case since I set this tank up in 2004. I have proper watermovement due to a hang on mini filter, as the micro powerhead was not sufficient.
I never add any food, ever, nor anything else, ever, for any reason, to the tank. I have a cyano problem that has not gone away completely for almost a year. I imported it on a frag and it took off from there.
So, my water is not the issue. I am not adding food to the tank, ever, since the goby eats the pods on the LR. You tell me what I could do different?
Skimming will work in some cases but I am hardly going to add a skimmer to a 2 1/2 gallon pico tank.
My solution was to add a couple of tiny hermits that were supposed to eat the stuff. It is hard to tell if they are or not, which is why I did not recomend them.
All I am trying to say is that if you have a problem, you should use the following steps, in order, to try and fix it:
1. remove anything contributing to the problem, in this case, maybe the water used, which he was doing.
2. try to find something that will eat the undesireable whatever it is, in this case, a few species of hermits MIGHT and conch are supposed to. Adding a few snails might work for him, and you can never have enough hermits in a tank, so I don't see any harm in that.
3. use a chemical to do it.
That's all I was trying to say, I am the last one here to recommend dumping chemicals into the water! That should always be last resort.
Heck, his lighting could be the major factor if it is just an algae, and what is he going to do, swap out his lighting for lower rate stuff? I know every time I ever upgraded my lights I had a diatom explosion in my tank - you can get it when you replace the bulbs during maintenance too.
Just my 2 cents worth. I have been looking at this stuff for a long time in that pico.
