What is this? Dinos? diatoms? Something else?

[pookie]

So a little background the tank is about half a year old now. I have higher than desirable nutrients Nitrate is at 19.5 and phosphate is at .07-.17 (Hanna issues) I have a refugium going below the tank in my sump i do weekly water changes of about 35 gallons. (the tank is a 90-gallon display and 40 sump) I started noticing whatever this hairy stuff is about 2 months ago and I scrub my rock every water change now and try to get it off. It is very hard to get off and I "really" have to scrub it to get it off. Within 2 or 3 days it's back and stays as the images show. I have 2 Viper spectra lights running 10 hours a day and run refugium light always. I have noticed in the fuge that there are lots of "weird stuff" inside of it. I see very stringy brown algae which are most likely dinos even tho I have high nutrients? I see a little bryopsis on the sides and GHA on the glass as well which I take out monthly and "try" to clean up Also the chaeto is growing off of the glass? Just want some help on how to get rid of this "hairy brown stuff" I'm tired of scrubbing rock :/ I bought Chemiclean to maybe treat it but haven't dosed it yet. I tried dr tims refresh to no avail and my gonios were ticked over it.

 

[slav621]

I went through something like this around the same time frame as you too. I would do weekly water changes and scrub/pick it off the rocks and it would just come right back. I finally got rid of it when I did a really good scrub and picked as much off the rocks that I could and then did a 3 day blackout. After the blackout I did a 70% water change and then loaded up on snails, a pincushsion urchin, and a emerald crab. I have been smooth sailing with algae ever since. I too have an unopened bottle of chemichlean because I realllllyyyy did not want to go that route but I was sooo tired of the algae. Good luck!!

 

[doubleshot00]

Your levels are not that bad. Do you have any tangs or clean up crew? Turbos should clean that up.

 

[The_Paradox]

To me it just looks like your rock is starting to mature.

 

[pookie]

So I have a scopas tang and a sailfin tang. 3 urchins (all different species can't remember what they are called) I also have my fish named ***** which is a melanurus wrasse who lovessss flipping them over and eating them. Also my copperband does too :/ also my levels used to be really high 50 nitrate and .37 on phosphate that was a month and a half ago tho