After many months of demoing an ugly wall unit, building a custom cabinet, building a custom sump, etc. my brand new custom 90 gallon reef tank is finally assembled in my living room. I started my L2 today. My question is, if everything is new (including my Real Reef rock), do I have to seed algae into the system? My old tank is still set up while the new one is cycling, and that one is a virtual hair algae farm, so I could take a strand or two and put it in the sump or something....
You don't need to seed the tank with green hair algae, it is introduced naturally. I've found it does take a while before you see green hair algae in a new tank though, you'll often get the red/brown algae before the green stuff appears. So if you want to speed the process up, it wouldn't hurt to put some hair algae in the tank. Regardless, you'll most likely get the red or brown growth on the screen initially, at least that's what I've found. Eventually the green hair algae should take over, and this will quite possibly happen faster if you seed the tank with it.
