King of the hill- Can nuisance algae be managed by increasing coraline algae load?

[tadrielobrien]

I began my reef hobby nearly 6 months ago with a 13.5 Fluval EVO, and I've had great luck with it thus far (knocking on all the wood available). So far the only major problem I have encountered was a salinity spike that nearly killed my hammer (Beginner mistake- I relied on a cheap hydrometer). That being said, I have recently seen the beginnings of what could be a GHA outbreak. As you can see in the picture, there are no obvious chunks of it, but rather, there are several small colonies on just a few of the rocks. I know that going through this kind of an 'ugly' stage is inevitable, however, I was curious if introducing a high coraline algae load would reduce the chances of the GHA overtaking everything? To do this would y'all recommend introducing live rock with coraline algae into the system, or dosing Purple Tech?

 

[KrisReef]

If you were asking about this 6 months ago I would have encouraged you to add a chunk of fresh live rock, or an aged rock covered with coralline algae, before you added any fish or coral life.
Now if you want coralline I would recommend that you find a rock or hermit crab with healthy growth of coralline and scrape that algae with a spoon (or something else metal) while submerged into your DT. This will spread coralline around your rock quickly as it can grow. Also, like coral this algae needs proper parameters so keep those up (Ca, alk, etc). You don’t need other nutrients as the hair algae demonstrates.