NUTRIENT AND ALAGE ISSUE

[koosman09]

It seems like i cant find an answer anywhere or come up with a logical effective way to handle this situation. I will give you guys a run down and maybe someone with experince can start giving me some answers. I have a sps dominat red sea reefer 250 bare bottom and my nutrients are extrmely low nitrates dropping to un detectable numbers effecting my sps growth tremendously not only is that effecting my sps but basically straving out mostly all of my lps specifically torches, frogspwans etc, so i decided to strat dosing brightwells neonitro which instantly brought up my nitartes to thereputic good levels and my sps started to explode now a few months later im having a bad alage issue, cyano every hour building up on the glass and some other alage i cant name, so normally you would say lower your nutrients to reduce the algage growth but my nutrients are low as it is and if i bring my tank back to zero nitrates it will starve out my system again and i will not succeed forward. i am stuck in the middle here, i have alage thriving on my nutrients sucking it out of the water straving my corals. if i keep dosing nenitro algage blooms more and it quickly gets eaten up back to zero. phosphates are always zero and impossible to get up so i quit on that. please understand my tank is not covered in alage and is not dying out im just having a very difficult time balancing out my nutrients. see attached photos of my tank. Its hard to see the alage and grabage growth on my rock but its there.

HOW DO I KEEP MY NUTRIENTS AT A STEADY LEVEL WITHOUT THEM DEPLETETING FROM ALGAE AND HOW DO I ERADICATE THIS ALAGE WITHOUT STRAVING MY CORALS OF THERE BASIC NUTRIENTS.

 

[homegrowncichlid]

You need herbivores, I like one zebrasoma and one bristle mouth for all situations. As for cyano. I think there are plenty of invertebrates who can clean that up. You're right, given all things equal, how do you grow just coral, without algae? both live in the same conditions. Over time, algae will dominate and over grow corals. Cyano grows faster and will out compete any coral. Turning off the light for 3 days will reduce the population probably 99%. Antibiotics (red slime remover) will also work for you. You just need something to prevent it from coming back.
(personally, I'm still waiting for my algae scrubber to kick in it. It grows algae, but algae still grows every where else. Herbivores in the main tank and sump will be the key to my success.)