Red Algae?!

Hi guys,

A few days ago some red algae started to appear on my sand bed. How bad a sign is this and how can I get rid of it?

Thanks in advance

Swede

 

cynobacteria. i had some in my tank when it was "new" went away a month after the tank cycled. dont know if its bad, but it is unsightly more than n e thing.

 

hmm so thats what its called is there any way to get ride of it

 

Is this normally a new tank problem?

My tank is now ~7months old and never had any algae probs before.

 

could be that, did you change anything? new light fixture? a bunch of new additions at once? using distilled water instead of RO? any one of these things will cause it to pop up really fast. I hear the best thing to do is cut your photo period and slowly work it back up to a normal 6-8 hours or so. Maybe less than that. Like 4-6 with halides/10k whatever you're using, and 14-17 with actinics. I don't know of anything that really feasts on that stuff like you would want it to. I have an emerald crab that continuously eats and eats and eats everything off of the sand bed.

Some other people on here say that they have had luck with vacuuming out as much as possible and doing back to back water changes with good clean water

good luck bro, really... it's horrid stuff.

 

I have a bunch of filter feeders, so over feeding started mine,
I use a Turkey Blaster to turn mine over each day till I get rid of it..
I plan on a 20% water change, more flow, no dead spots.
Getting my sump and skimmer hooked up..
You have a nice tank, just keep with it, you'll win.. I think everyone gets it sooner or later..

Good Luck, Larry

 

cyano is a #$%#$# get something to keep the substrate moving, goby, crabs anything that sifts or moves on top of it, a few fish are known to eat it, I have a dragon goby in my 58g that took to it almost immediately upon introduction to the tank so he's been my cure for it, you can also vaccum it out, you'll want to make sure your getting good water flow across the bottom of your tank, you need to create some type of undertow to keep it from coming back, it forms when water sits still in one spot and the deposits of nutrients build up, then this crap will bloom up.

last time it popped up in my 58 was because we changed the type of food we were feeding the herbovoires in the tank, we went to a different type of sinking pellet and within 2 days the tank was coated in cyano, hence that food went into the trash and we went back to the other type and added the goby to help me keep it combatted back

 

Thanks for info guys.

By the sounds of it, it looks like I've been over feeding the tank since I introduced a coral beauty a couple of weeks ago.

Will reduce food and light and will increase regularity of water changes. Hopefully should do the trick.

Dragon gobies are nice, but its only a 30g tank and I already have 4 fish, so I don't really want to add much more bio load.

Will keep you updated on progress.

Swede

 

get a clean up crew to eat it, higher flow in the area, and something to keep for phosphates like phosban reactor or macro algae. do all three things and it will gone quickly.