Looking to reboot my tank, I could use some advise

[scott]

 Hello all, 
I'll start with a little background on my tank. Just over a year ago my wife and I picked up a used and established 30 gallon nano reef tank. We didn't know much about reef tanks but had a lot of experience with fresh water and wanted to make the jump. Everything was going great until around January, life got real busy and admittedly we got a little lazy and our parameters went wild. With in a week we were covered in a hair/turf algae, our  phosphates over 1, Nitrates around 100ppm, the Ph dropped to 7.6 and Calcium was as low as 320mg/l. 

 The good news is that we have the phosphates to an untraceable amount, the Nitrates are around 2 ppm the ph and Calcium are still low but much better (7.9 and 360 -380). My KH has suddenly shot up to 220 - 280. All my coral and invertebrates have died and my substrate is covered in brown algae. So we have decided to start fresh and reboot the tank.

 We have a new batch of live rock and I'm looking into a new substrate. I am a little concerned about the algae re appearing after we pull everything out. Has anyone had a similar experience that can offer advice?  

[DrBlueThumb]

Are you using rodi water? Did you use the water from the old system? you are probably going to go through a cycle for the next 3 months after you add the substarte which will give you all types of algae until it levels out. Just do your regular water changes of 10-20% a week and wait it out and see, before buying coral and fish. I'm going through hair algae and rust coloured algae right now soon it will die down. It's been 3 month's and all I have in there now is a heater,filtration,lots of new rock, lots of new aragonite, a few pieces of live rock, 1 fish, 1 shroom rock and a snail. It may take another few month's for me.

[scott]

Yes I use RODI water, I am thinking that I may just add to my existing substrate and I was going to use about 50 - 75% of the old water.

[DrBlueThumb]

thats a good idea just keep your water changes up and you'll get there.

[chronic]

+1 to what The Dr. said......Patience is the key to this hobby. Having said that I recently fixed my algae issue by running Chemi-pure elite...the stuff is amazing my water is at its clearest ever and whatever GHA I had is slowly withering away. There are 2 forms of phosphate and most home kits only pick up on the one and not the other. Other options could include running carbon and a GFO in a separate reactors.
The C-P elite has GFO in it I believe or something along those lines to remove phosphates as well. Just keep in mind that cause your test kit reads no traceable phosphate, doesn't mean they're not present.

[DrBlueThumb]

Rocks are like sponges, they will take time to realease there P/N into the aquarium. same with aragonite