red corraline

The pic is such bad quality that it is hard to tell - but its Cyano since the tank is only 2 months old.

Coralline absolutely can and will grow on sand, but it doesn't plate - it covers the tiny little grain or pebble of sand. As for cleaning it out, I like Chemi Clean - it will do the trick with your manual removal efforts (I like the turkey baster idea as well) but you still need to get to the root cause -- quite frankly, its a 2 month old tank. With Cyano Bacteria present you need to look at lighting, nitrates and phosphates. Comon causes of these are old bulbs (not for you), not using ro/di water, cheaper salt mix, flake & pellet foods can contain phosphates, over feeding and poor water movement.

 

it was brown diatoms and 2 turbos and a blue leg hermit cured it in less than a week, but i do still have a lot of improvements to my tank to be made to prevent the cyano from showing up. i have only2-24" standard fluorescent lights in the aquarium and poor water movement, only a marineland 350, no powerheads or skimmer yet, but don't criticize i',m doing fine (with all u peoples help) and am already picking up parts for my light upgrade