Bought an established tank, have a few questions

[freakin]

Ok, do after 3-4 months of reading I finally got a sw tank. I got a biocube 29 AIO that has been running for about a year.

I got it home 2 days ago after a pretty straightforward move.

It has a decent amount of green hair algae that the previous owner said was due to being lazy for the last month and not doing water changes. So that is the first thing i am trying to tackle.

40lbs of lr
About .5-1" of livesand that i did my best to not disturb while moving, but it definitely got stirred up more than i wanted.

8-9 heads of hammer
What i think is a xenia
A few rics
Small rock with 40-50 small polyps w green skirt
Some ugly white fish that my wife wouldn't let me get rid of
4-5 hermits

So I went to Denny's yesterday and got 2 turbos and a few other smaller snails to start trying to clean it up.

I did about a 25% water change when i got it home. Bulbs are 2x36w pc, one 10k and one actinic. Both are only a few months old.

Sapphire aquatics protein skimmer.

No sump.

Mj1200 return, 2x k1 for flow.

I changed out the filter pads that looked pretty scummy, and picked a bunch of algae off the rocks.

NO2: 0ppm
NO3: 5-25ppm
NH3/4: it was low (in the car and don't have sheet in front of me), the 2nd or 3rd from 0 on the rsm kit i have
PH:8.5 - how should i bring this down?
Alk: Normal

I don't have a phosphate kit.

The scape he had (which i sort of copied) had the LR touching the back wall and i dont think any CUC can get back there. How big of a problem is this?

So how do I tackle the hair algae problem?

 

[lvsuckerfish]

run gfo and feed less maintain a strict weekly water change. of 10-15% each week I would buy the brs dual media reactor along with the carbon and hc gfo and run that it will not happen over night but high nutrients is the problem also running a fuge will help weither HOB or plumbed down to a even 10 gallon will work good. bigger the better 20H same foot print as a 10 but taller

 

[freakin]

I'm trying to avoid an external sump for now. I may look into a HOB fuge. Should I run some chaeto in the DT for a while until I get the water quality up? Is it bad to remove a macro from the system all at once?

GFO = Granular Ferric Oxide? I want to see what I can do biologically before I add chemicals to the tank.

I should probably get a phosphate test kit to see where I am standing as well, correct?

Should I add more to the CUC?

I have not done any feeding yet. The previous owner said he only fed weekly or even every other week. He gave me some pellet food, biggish dried shrimp and some sort of green seaweed. I'm actually completely lost on what/when/how to feed at this point.

Should I try to get rock off the back wall or direct some flow into there so it doesn't build up detritus?

AFAIK the previous owner used RO/DI. I did my WC w/ premixed RO/DI from Denny's but will be mixing myself from now on.

Oh and the params from today

NO2: 0ppm
NO3: 5-25ppm
NH3/NH4: .25ppm
Alk: Normal
PH: 8.4
sg: 1.024
temp: ~80-81

The lighting cycle was 8 hours a day previously. They only got about 5-6 hours on Friday before the move, and I ran them for about 4-6 hours yesterday. I was planning on a full 8-hour cycle today.

 

[freakin]

Oh and is there any way to get a fish out of your tank that you don't want? My best guess is some type of goby based on http://fins.actwin.com/species/index.php. He looks pretty much entirely white. Does anyone have a better site for reef species IDing?

 

[Shane and John]

This is just a guess...but maybe look up a pink or bluespot goby...see if its close to your fish you are looking to ID...