Red Algae...will this help?

My tank has been set up for about 5 years, about 3 weeks ago NE Arkansas had a bad ice storm, electric was OUT for about 1 1/2 weeks. I only lost 3 fish...but now i'm having the 2nd red algae outbreak in five years. I suppect the power outtage has something to do with this. I just ordered some Chaeto, should get it this week. Will this help get rid of the algae by starving it out or should i do something else. Help please.

 

I'm guessing you had a build up of phosphates and nitrates and lack of flow with no power, leading to the cyano outbreak. Dead fish probably contributed too if they started to decompose before you pulled them out. Cheato is a good start. I'd test your parameters, you may benefit from doing a water change as well.

 

I do water changes weekly. I've read that may nitrates could be high and not showing because the red algae is cosuming it. So i'm a little afraid that the parameters will be off and I wont know about it. The algae is just on the rocks and not on the sand, boy i sure dont want to have to scrub all the rocks. LOL

 

yep, treat this like any other situation where something's gone wrong. Get your parameters back doing ~10% WC daily, and testing. Chaeto will help starve the cyano but so will fixing your params. I'd do both! +1 for sitting in the dark watching fish die sucks. My condolences.

 

red cyano doesn't like high flow, so a couple koralia powerheads will help too.

 

Thanks for the K, I was terrified I was going to lose everything, so when my hubby thought to put a sump pump from his boat just to keep the circulation going, 48 hours into it, I was thrilled. So do you guys think I should start scrubbing or try the power heads and chaeto first, plus more water changes.

 

oh yeah, last time I had red algae, I felt like Dory, off of Finding Nemo, "just keep scrubbing, just keep scrubbing" would really like to avoid this if possible.

 

I have pulled rocks out and scrubbed too. I tried some red slime algae remover by ultralife from the LFS earlier today and as of now it appears that it has all disappeared;D. I also read some other posts about this product with no ill side effects to corals,fish or inverts. I hope this may help.

 

i've been reading some of those to and with my first bout of red algae it didnt seem to help alot, maybe i'll try it again. Thanks

 

Red algae is always in the tank but it doesn't get going because the tank is in balance. Chaeto will out-compete it. The other goal is to get your params back in line and WC to get the tank back to conditioned water. I don't think you're going to end up scraping. Also you would benefit from shorter light sessions per day on the tank (8 hours or so and turn off anything in the 6500k spectrum that's on the red and turn ON 6500K on your chaeto for longer. You don't have to be fair to your algae!)

Also some herbivore fish and cleaning crew will eat the stuff, though this can cause a very small nitrate spike.