How do I clean up this mess??

[Doan]

Hello all I have made a mess.. As some of you know I put in a new Hippo last week and was a little worried about him ich wise and all.. Turnes out he is ok but I was feeding him the formula 2 with the garlic in it and overfeeding just to make sure he was good and get him up to speed ya know?? Well he's fine now .. but the tank is having a major algea outbreak it looks like the Diatom outbreak I had at the end of cycling The sand is even all brown it's nasty. My nitrates were also up hmmm. So I did a 10% waterchange and thought brought them back down but my question is how do i clean this up. I was just gonna hang some algea on a clip in there and drop the feedings to once every two days and start mixing up the food a little more again you know not just flakes all the time, do another water change on Wed and then again on Sunday. Will that help?? Just need to get it cleaned up it is looking pretty nasty..

Thanks

Doan

 

[Sam]

Sounds like a plan. Unless you have a clean up crew, you will just have to ride out the bacterial breakdown of the food which will take some time. Just be careful to not starve the Regal. They do like to browse all day, so if available as an option, a few "small" feedings (maybe 2-3) per day should do it. Feed just enough that the tang eats all of it in a couple of minutes. HTH