Need help fixing water quality issue

[PrettyFishies]

Hi all!

I've been battling green hair algae due to high phosphates and just can't get ahead of it.

I have a 125 with one fish and several corals (soft and LPS), I use RO/DI and have a monitor inline to check that it comes out 0ppm. I use a sump but leave the refugium light off to keep the hair algae from getting worse in there. I have a reef octupus 200 skimmer, one ecotech mp40 and a jaebo thats rated at 800gph I believe. I think water movement is an issue, but, it's pretty turbulent. I can't tell. I use LEDs - the cheap Chinese types with just white and blue. They're on for 8 or 9 hours a day.

I have been dosing with a Seachem product, essentially similar to vodka dosing, and it's helped keep the phosphates down. I've manually removed the algae but I can't get all of it and it just grows back. I need a way to kill it all.

What suggestions do you have?View attachment 297615
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[coralbandit]

You should try An ATS in your sump.. Algae Turf Scrubber...
DIY Upflow ATS how to on YouTube.

 

[Sniperhank]

An ats will address nitrate much more than it will phosphate. Vodka dosing will also manage nitrate over phosphate. This is in a 16 to 1 ratio if I remember correctly.
How much and what are you feeding? If large water changes and manual removal doesn't address the issue at hand, you may need to look into something like phosguard or gfo.