Algae in my ten gal NANO

I have what appears to be two types of algae in my tank. There is a dark green / brown one that grows on the walls, and a bright green one that is starting to grow in my LR. The bright green algae looks pretty cool, is it healthy? How do you develop coraline, and how long does it take?

 

as for the brownish algae, I would say it's either diatoms or cyano. does the green hair algae look like hair? if so, then it's most likely GHA(green hair algae) . both are a nuisance. how long has the tank been up and running?

if it is cyano, put flow on the algae and do water changes. also find out the source of the cyano, and rid yourself of it. for GHA, get a ReefCleaners custom clean up crew. and maybe a phosphate remover such as Purigen.

 

the tank has been set up now for about 5 months. It doesn't quite look like hair, its short and bright, almost neon green. I will post pics later when I get home. I have a bunch of nerite snails, astria snails, and hermits that do a pretty good job of keeping the brown algae under control. The brown seems to grow primarily on the glass, while the brighter one is growing on my rocks.
What do you mean by flow on the algae? what could my possible source of cyano be?

 

cyano can come from overfeeding, to much light. basically to much nutrients in the water

 

Nice, thanks for the advice. I'll cut back on my feeding, and do a water change.

 

this might be a good time to beef up your clean up crew..i got a small sand sifter starfish and it has helped a ton with junk on the sand..i never had an algae problem but i used to have junk on my sand..

some nasarias(sp?) snails...the little sand digging ones are great for this...

coralline grows by introducing a rock with it..you have to have daylight and actinics, also you have to have good water params, corraline is a calcifying algae, so your params need to be in check..

more times than not, where you have coralline, bad algae wont grow over it..

with good water params, coralline takes no time to start growing and spreading..

but it needs just the same conditions as corals

 

I just put a Mexican turbo snail in my 12 gal. to eat the GHA off my back wall and rocks, it's doing a great job. It's posted on here somewhere under My GHA is almost gone.

You still want to find out WHY they algae is there though. Otherwise it will just come back and that's a pain.

 

turbo's arent so good with rock's IMO. infact, i havent found any snails that would prefer the rock algae then the glass. just because the algae is short, doesnt mean that it's not GHA, afterall its gotta start somewhere. also, i would NOT reccomend a sand sifter in a nano, theres just not enough sand for them. try a queen or tiger conch snail if you want clean sandbed. Nass's are diggers, but they dont eat the algae, so it doesnt help as much. hermit crab's and emerald crabs should take care of the algae on rocks.