Major cleaning time

Hi everyone,



So my tank is about 1.5 years old. Its a 40 gallon DP, with a 20 gallon sump.

I have 2 clowns, a bangai cardinal, some cleaner & peppermint shrimp, some assorted snails, and a sea urchin. I also have some soft coral and some LPS corals too.



Recently, I proposed to my lovely fiancé, and we also bought a new house!

But now with all the renovations at the house, and all the appointments for the wedding planning, I've really drifted from my beloved tank, which is still at my old house (well.. parent's house, i guess lol), where I'm still living.



During that time (a couple months easily), I've really let the tank go, and green hair algae has pretty much taken over all the rocks. Oddly enough, my soft and LPS corals seemed to love the dirtier tank, as they all grew quite a bit and look great. Haven't done a water change in a very long time. I've only been topping off when the water would get low. I also cleaned the glass with the magnetic cleaner every once in a while. So basically, I've been quite busy with life, and if I did find any time, I was too lazy to put the work in that I used to. Not good!



But my passion for saltwater tanks isn't lost! I want to put my foot down, and get this tank back on track. I will force myself to make time, either in the morning before work, or at night before bed. Because there's nothing more rewarding than watching your beautiful tank (without all the algae!! lol).



Basically, I wanted to know, what's a good way to go about the clean up without making too much of a change to stress the fish out?



I will be taking my readings tonight after work, so we can see what that's at.

I'm definitely going to be ripping out a good chunk of that green hair algae.

And I'm pretty sure I'll be doing a nice water change tonight too, but how much of it should I change?



What do you guys recommend as a sort-of schedule to follow to slowly get the tank back into tip top shape without bothering the fish/corals? (water change %'s, how often, etc) They seem to be very happy right now in this "dirty" tank.



What about a clean-up crew? I know not much will eat the long hair, but once I remove the bigger chunks, should I get some sort of crabs or snails to clean up the rest?



I'm very excited about getting back on track, and I hope you guys can help guide me in the right direction to do so! Let me know if there's any more info you need. As mentioned earlier, I will run some tests tonight.



Thanks everyone :)

(sorry for writing so much! lol)