Algae

[TheTankCrasher]

Hey guys! I recently moved into an apartment and took my 10 gallon for a hard restart after running for 2 years. It currently is stocked with ~10-12lbs of live rock and pink Fiji sand live sand. It’s been cycled and all that good stuff and currently is stocked with a variety of snails, a reinford goby, two red legs and then zoas, palys, a kenya tree, anthelia, hammer and GSPs. I do weekly water changes with my parameters always staying at 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and just barely above 0 nitrates and my salinity stays right between 1.024 and 1.026. My coral has grown significantly with my kenya tree doubling in size and my zoa/palys all developing new heads at a rapid pace. The one thing I have trouble with is algae. I currently only have the very underpowered return pump to move water which I believe is part of the issue and secondly I don’t have a skimmer but that shouldn’t matter with weekly water changes. Attached are pictures of the algae (and one of the tank in general) I have if anyone has any suggestions or help. Also with the given information I’m always open to hear suggestions. I currently am looking to add another fish as the reinford is a cave dweller and I rarely see him leaving me with a still pleasing, yet not as active, scenery of coral!

 

[Sniperhank]

You do not need a skimmer on systems under 30 gallons. You can easily manage parameter issues with larger than average water changes.
Algae battles can be long fought ones. You'll just need to do larger and more frequent water changes with ro/di water along with manual removal of the algae. So, on top of your weekly 10% water change, do another one in the middle of the week. It will get the nitrates/phosphates out of the water column that were kicked up from your move.

 

[TheTankCrasher]

You do not need a skimmer on systems under 30 gallons. You can easily manage parameter issues with larger than average water changes.
Algae battles can be long fought ones. You'll just need to do larger and more frequent water changes with ro/di water along with manual removal of the algae. So, on top of your weekly 10% water change, do another one in the middle of the week. It will get the nitrates/phosphates out of the water column that were kicked up from your move.

Hey thanks for the reply! I realized also that I needed to start rotating my filter socks more religiously as well as changing my carbon bags on a strict 30 day period. I’ve also started to do 15% water changes every other week and a 25-30% on alternating weeks and my coral fish and algae have all been booming