Krish, would you please elaborate on this?
No prob man...Let's see how well I can do this
The reason algae grows in any tank is because there is a food source available for it to grow (eg nitrates, phosphates etc). Without these excess nutrients and light of course in the tank, then it wouldn't be able to grow. So when you start seeing algae growing in your tank, it means that you have an excess of nutrients in your tank and as a result, the algae is binding them up and using them for it's growth. As it binds them up, you will start reading less and less nitrate levels and even phosphate levels in your water. The fact though that the algae is still there in your tank, means that the bound up nitrates and phophates are still in your system so you'd need to cut it back or basically "trim it down" to export it out of your system by physically tossing out what algae you remove. So in reality, you will be using the algae at your advantage. Eventually over time, as the nitrate levels start to lower more and more, less and less algae will grow as there will be a limited food supply. Once there are no nitrates left in your system for the algae to use up for it's growth, then it will stop growing. So with that being said, this is why you see people set up refugiums. It is a place for them to harvest their algae out of sight and let it do it's thing there and not in the main display. Same thing I did. I ran a light over my sump on an alternate photoperiod from the tank with more watts per gal and made the conditions more favorable for the algae to grow there rather than in the tank and each week, I'd have a chamber full of algae I'd vaccum out until eventually, as my tank balanced out and matured, the algae never grew anymore and I read 0 nitrates which afterwards, I tossed the light and my rock was able to take care of any nitrates produced. Now this is where the algae is concerned and how it can work for you. About the live rock now, once your tank has reached a point where you are reading 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite, your tank has completed the initial cycle and you will usually be reading higher levels of nitrates (which is where you are at). In order for nitrates to be worked off or lowered other than with the use of algae or water changes is by allowing the rock to do some of the work for you. Over time, a certain type of anaerobic bacteria will start multiplying within your live rock at the presence of nitrates, which will be resposible for converting the nitrates into nitrogen gas. The problem is, nitrates have to be available for the necessary bacteria to grow and multiply and do it's thing just as ammonia and nitrite had to be present for their specific aerobic bacteria's to grow to take care of them. So it's good to allow the tank to balance out on it's own in a way and find it's own equilibrium. You can do some water changes to lower the nitrates, but still you'd want the necessary anaerobic bacteria colonies to grow within your rock so as waste is processed and any nitrates are produced in your tank, it will make quick work of it which will leave no room for algae to grow. You should have quite a bit of anaerobic bacteria already present in your system seeing you were reading nitrates from day 1, but the reason why they never really lowered during cycling was because all the die-off created even more nitrates as ammonia was converted into nitrite and nitrite was converted to nitrates. Now that the tank has cycled, it should be a lot easier to lower them.
Hope that made sense man and I didn't cofuse you more.
Where you are at now, I'd just do a water change of about 10-15% every week or 2 and let the live rock do it's thing and the tank mature. You are at the point now where you can safely add in any hardy fish, but just keep in mind, the more livestock you add, the more bio-load you will have which your system will have to adjust to so be sure to add your livestock in slowly.
