Green Algae nightmare!

[GayFishie]

Hiya, I'm Bridget, the unlucky owner of a 20 gallon reef that is hitting a rough spot. I have two hermit crabs and two margaritas snails and a coral banded shrimp as my clean up crew. It's a terrible, pathetic clean up crew but the best I can do for now after I dropped the light in the water last night and had to drop another forty dollars I really didn't have to buy another. It's gonna be a few weeks before I can start building up my cuc to an appropriate size. Anyways, I have crazy, insane algae. Green hair algae growing like grass (my aquarium has a lawn!) It's on the rocks, sand, glass, filter, thermometer, corals and heater. Rust colored algae covering the glass, getting worse everyday to the point I can't see inside clearly, the only way to remove is to put my hand in a scrape it off with my nails. It also smells bad when I start manually removing the algae, yucky. There is purple slime everywhere, even bridging the gaps between giant bubbles on my sandbed. It's the worst! But 500$ into the tank I have no money left. None. I get that the hobby is expensive but there really is nothing I can do until I get more money. What can I do till than?

[HarryPotter]

Manual removal, less feeding, more flow, water changes with GOOD water, chemi-clean for the slime, etc.

 

Picture?

[Speaker73]

Could try doing a black out of the tanks for a few days and cross you fingers. You could also try the hydrogen peroxide method but that's a bit chancy with certain corals and shrimp. Good luck.

[lkoechle]

If you don't have coral on the rocks and don't mind reaquascaping, I would try the hydrogen peroxide method. Search it in the forum. There have been some good results.

[GayFishie]

I do have coral and shrimp. Today I manually removed a ton of algae and bought four hermit crabs and three turbo snails at the lfs but picked up a fourth teaspoon of brine shrimp which turned out to be a lot and clouded up my tank. Say hello to extremely frequent water changes for a few days