In need of advice, reef tank "dying"

[Davileet]

Daveileet, you hit on what I'm thinking went wrong, chasing nutrient numbers up when all along my "grazing" wall of algae was consuming it. It will be interesting to see how params change now that a large amount has been scraped and siphoned out.

Yeah, will be interesting to see what happens. I don't know of anyone needing to dose nutrients except when they carbon dosed their tank into starvation or don't have enough fish and food to feed the tank. In my case, I don't plan to do carbon dosing because of that, and am now trying natural means of removal like an algae scrubber. Essentially I will be farming hair algae to now compete nutrient removal.

 

[moosevandyke]

Regretting it now, but started with dry rock. I've actually been considering adding a few pieces of live rock from a place like Tampa Bay live rock.

I will try to resolve the algae issue, but with already relatively low nutrients, and what I would think is a fairly low number of fish I will need to figure out how to achieve less algae. Thanks!

The algae growth is likely a part of the low nutrients.