75 gallon tank

Looks great! How did you beat it?

Thanks Phil,
I honestly think the biggest difference came when I quit using the pellet and flake food and switched to Rod's Foods. That said, I've also increased my water changes from twice a month to once a week, completely disassemble and clean all the pumps and skimmer every week (also have ran the skimmer and other pumps in a 5 gallon bucket with vinegar water a couple of times in the last 3 months), beefed up the clean up crew (added a few snails and hermit crabs), and pulled out gobs of the stuff at every water change. (Haven't had to remove any the last couple of weeks. It finally just disappeared.)

A couple of other changes occurred in the tank which may have also helped, but I'm not sure if they were positive or negative changes. First the light over the hang on the back fuge went out and then the pump so I removed the hang on the back fuge. It had a deep sand bed and cheato, but it may have been a detritus trap???. Then both of the compact fluorescent lights over the main tank burned up. Those were replaced with a cheap t-5 unit. The lamps in this unit are more yellow (less of the blue tint than the last lights). Don't have any idea if this helped or hurt. The last thing, which I think probably helped (fewer fish equals fewer pollution) but I wasn't and still am not happy about, was my Fridmani Pseudochromis jump out of the tank and turned himself into fish jerky. While this means less pollution in the tank, I'm mad at myself for never fixing up one of those "bird netting" type screens that can be seen on several of the other forums.

Anyway, getting the hair algae out of the tank was a big concern of mine. First I didn't want to transfer an existing problem into the larger tank. Second, I didn't want to continue to spend lots of money on the larger tank if I couldn't figure out how to run a clean tank. 75 gallons of hair algae nastiness is that much bigger and uglier than 29 gallons of hair algae ugliness.

It looks even better all cleaned up. Nice job.

Thanks Marc....here's hoping I've learned my lesson and can keep it this way, in the 29 until it gets moved to the 75 and ultimately in the 75.