Green/ Brown algae

[MrCote]

My tank finished cycing a little over a month ago and I have been having a problem with green/ brown algae. It grows on my glass unbeleivably fast. I have red legged hermits, 2 sand sifting stars, and 2 turbo snails for cleanup crew. I set up my protein skimmer and that didnt help either. Could it possibly be a phosphate problem?

 

[JohnK]

What does this stuff act like when you disturb it?
-powdery dust like, blows away in the current
-stringy, velvety looking mat, tears up in chuncks
-slimy snot like goo

Can you post a pic?

Lot's of nusance algaes are common and normal in a newish tank.

 

[MrCote]

i Just ceaned the algae off the glass a few days ago but Ill take pics of what already grew. Some of it is a bright green color that is powdery and blows away in the current, this algae is on my front and side glass. and then there is browninsh algae that is more stringy that grows on my rocks and back glass. My rocks also grow a lot of algae that is brown, but it looks like grass.
There is one spot on one of my rocks that has a whitsh yellow slimy looking algae on it to.

Ill take pics and post them up in a second

 

[MrCote]

 

[MrCote]

 

[Turbosnail]

pics not working

 

[MrCote]

 

[eweston]

How long are you leaving your lights on?
Does sunlight reach the tank?
What are you using for top off water? Tap or R/O?
How often are you feeding the tank?

My Remora HOB skimmer ran like crazy for a month during a recent algae bloom that I experienced with green hair algae. Cutting down on lighting for a week, weekly water changes for a month, and switching back to R/O water for top offs helped me drastically.

I finally have my tank back under control.

This is what my tank looked like before.

 

[MrCote]

 

[Turbosnail]

the algae on the back might be dinos can you get a better pic? The algae on the side is normal new tank algae shorten your light cycle.

 

[MrCote]

How long are you leaving your lights on?
Does sunlight reach the tank?
What are you using for top off water? Tap or R/O?
How often are you feeding the tank?

My Remora HOB skimmer ran like crazy for a month during a recent algae bloom that I experienced with green hair algae. Cutting down on lighting for a week, weekly water changes for a month, and switching back to R/O water for top offs helped me drastically.

I finally have my tank back under control.

I leave my actinics on for 9 hours and my 12,000 k's on for 6 hours. No sunlight can reach my tank. I use my tap water for top off water but I have a very expesive filtration system on my tap water and I have well water. So the water is pretty much distilled. And I feed once a day using only the amount of food my fish can eat.

 

[MrCote]

I can try getting a better picture, I cleaned ALL the glass off spotless a few days ago thinking that would be the end of it but it has already came back. But there isnt too much. Ill take another pic now

 

[MrCote]

 

[MrCote]

 

[MrCote]

those are the best pics i can take now

 

[JohnK]

The pic in post #9 is simple green film algae. No big deal, inevitable really. Reducing phosphate (and nitrate if it's an issue) will reduce it.

The bad news is that the pic in post #8 looks a lot like dinoflagellates which can be very difficult to eradicate and will smother a lot of corals. Keep an eye on that stuff, if it seems to disappear at night only to come back in just an hour when the lights come on, it might be dinos. Next touch it, does it feel like a sort of velvety nothing that clumps when you mess with it, or does it feel like snot? If it feels like snot, it's probabaly dinos.

The good news is that your tank is new so you can kill that evil menace before it kills any corals. Since it sounds like you don't have anything photosynthetic at this point, leaving the lights off for up to a week would be a very viable way to deal with it. The only other thing that kills dinos is elevated PH, and that's not easy to do without a pricy dosing pump (for a constant kalk drip). You can also check your alk, if it's low it will let the PH drop unusually low and this can encourage dino growth.


Oddly enough someone else posted with what is probably the same problem just yesterday;
http://www.bostonreefers.org/forums/showthread.php?103216-Algae-taking-over-tank

 

[eweston]

Fortunately, I've resolved the issue I had with my tank. It involved reducing the lighting, many frequent water changes, brushing of the live rock, and a lot of skimming. It has been about a month now and the algae has not returned.

 

[JayM]

nice tank....

 

[JohnK]

Eric, what kind of algae were you fighting?

 

[eweston]

I'm not exactly sure but I think it was green hair algae and cyano.