Algae Identification

I have a few questions about whether or not this particular type of algae I have is harmful or not and if so, what are some ways in which I can alleviate it.

Some information about the tank: it is a 10 gallon tank that has only ever had RO/DI used/added to it. The lights are on 8 hours a day. Is this too much? It is not exposed to direct sunlight.

Thanks in advance for any help/comments.

Here are some pictures:

 

the dreaded cyanobacteria claims yet another tank...

its not bad, its also not good. It means you have excess phophates and nutrients in the water.

try less feeding. (less often and less of it)

turn the lights off for a day or two.

and get some a turbo snail or 2.

what about water changes, how often are you doing them?

 

What type of flow do you have?

Looks like you need more flow, easy intervention.

And as mentioned above feed less.

RODI water only for water changes.

 

Thank you for the responses. I'm noticing that towards the back of the tank there is no algae. I have my circulation pump pushing water along the back of the tank long-ways....I have been planning on moving the tank out of my office at work to home and at that point breaking up some of the larger pieces of live rock so I could get the circulation fan to a different spot in the tank.

A question I have is, I have two bulbs in my fixter. A blue bulb and a white bulb. Is it OK to leave the blue bulb on or should I shut it off too?

I have been using an automatic feeder because I am unable to get into the office over the weekends. I will remove that out of the equation because at the lowest setting it is feeding way too much.

 

sounds like a good plan! Another thing to think of, along with feeding less and adding a powerhead for more flow, is changing your light bulbs if they are very old.

 

I would add a power head.

I do not think you need to feed the fish over a 2 day weekend, unless they are young fish.

Is there a brand name on the fixture or bulbs?

 

I definately agree with everything said here. Less food, add another power head, or rearange the rocks so you can get the flow into the front of the tank, and possibly change bulbs depending on how old they are.

 

It is a Deep Blue High Output Double T5 lighting system. It is about 3 months old, fixtures and bulbs. There is a 10,000K Daylight Lamp and a Actinic-03 Lamp. The tank is only 10Gallons. Ideally I want to put the pump in the middle of the tank but there is no room because of the LR pieces and how they are arranged.

When I do my tank move, should I remove the algae from the sand layer, or just let it stay and fix itself as conditions get better?

 

Your lights should be fine then! I used to siphon it out of the sand with a small airline tube. I think adding more flow and less feeding will really help, but I also added a bottle of Microbe Lift Special Blend to get some more good bacteria in my system and it never came back, worth looking into. There's a bunch of threads about the stuff

 

Thanks for all the help everyone. I left the lights off over the long weekend and all of the growth seemed to have disappeared. I'm guessing my cleanup crew was finally able to keep up with the bacteria when it stopped growing.