It's a new tank...hair algae is normal and will disappear in time, but to answer your questions.
Salt - Instant Ocean
Water is tap. Tap water tests @ 0-unreadable phosphates, 0-unreadable nitrates as does the tank water.
I use Seachem's Marine Buffer, but sparingly (only used it when my pH dropped below 7.5 after doing 50% water change when the cycle was complete.
pH remains @ 8.3.
I noticed the largest increase in growth the week after adding the new fish. It seems to move around the tank and flourishes in the areas where the diatoms were most prevalent. After a week or so it began to slowly disappear from those areas and began to grow in new areas. It is most common on the LR, probably feasting on some of the die-off left from the curing process and the cycle.
The newly introduced macros had a minor initial die-off as well, but have recovered nicely. That die-off, as well as the new fish, probably introduced an abundance of nutrients to the water.
It was during this time my new skimmer was breaking in and wasn't skimming at optimum efficiency either.
I also added an actinic blue HO T5 right before the hair algae explosion. All of these factors probably contributed to the hair algae loving it so much in there.
It's growth has slowed down, as mentioned, and is slowly being replaced by different algaes now. It looks like red and green turf algaes are starting to grow on the rock as is 'ordinary' green algae. (green coloration to the rock and parts of the glass).
The lights were on for about 12 hrs per day, which I did for the macros, but have since dropped it back to 10 hrs.
Lighting is 120W NO fluorescent and 108W HO T5.
NO = 40w 50/50, 40w 6500K super daylight, 40w 9325K.
T5 = 54w actinic blue, 54w 10,000K
Light cycle = 2pm NO lights on, 4pm T5 lights on, 10pm T5 lights off, 12am NO lights off.
Equipment: 2X Koralia #3, Aquac Remora Pro skimmer, 1 Rena Smartfilter 55 w/ phos-zorb, and purigen. The filter is cleaned weekly.
