Switched to Aquavitro salt and my tank is nuts

[napoleon41]

Not sure if I'm glad, or going nuts. Got talked into a 5 gallon bucket of salt 6 mos ago by Ki in Denver (Key's Island). Wow! It's good stuff.

About that time, I also finally got my nitrates down to 5-10 and dropped the temp a bit.

Now everything is going gonza!

2 Questions, as I am just starting my second year with a micro reef tank. Both have to do with gaining control of the hour + that I have to spend weeding every week.

1.) We bought the tank with a small green bush on the live rock that literally looked like an little sculptured evergreen bush. It's dark green and has always been the same size. Until we started this salt. Now it's trying to take over the place. I thought maybe I had gotten green hair algae growing on top of the bush, but I gave the fro a haircut the other day with my siphon assisting, and it's dark green all the way down. Kind of oozed some light green goo where I cut it.

What the heck do I do with the thing. I feel like Mr Hyde has come out to play.

2.) Attached to one side of a new frag that was glued to the live rock long long ago, were one or 2 pink xenia strands. Pretty palm tree looking things. At some point, the frag fell against the back wall, and the xenias attached there and have grown into a rather large colony.

How do I best go about controlling their quest for world domination? Colt corals are easy to murder, but these things are like snot when you try to grab them.

[Sabre]

Xenias dont take well to PH change or really high PH and thats about all you can do besides take the rock out and put it in cold saltwater. oh yeah set a seastar right on top of it piece by piece day by day. As for the green stuff put an air strip in your tank to lower phosphate and give it a mohawk.

[napoleon41]

I just got nasty with the xenias and killed most of them off. Still have a bunch of buds around that I have to clean up, but for the most part I'm down to 1 major clump again.

The green stuff has to be a micro algae of some kind, though I know it isn't hair algae, my lawnmover blenny eats that stuff like crazy, but won't tough the bush.

It seems that the emerald crab eats it, or at least I saw him eating it the other day. I might order a 2nd one next time.

I will say that cutting the algae was a bad idea as I now have spots of it growing everywhere even though I siphoned while cutting. Uggg.

Pulling it seems to keep free strands from breaking free. I actually just grabbed hold of the mass and pulled, and most of it came loose and I dropped it into the siphon bucket. Strange stuff.

[napoleon41]

BTW, why put it in cold water? Does it let go?