WHAT IS THIS?????

[palcaidinho]

the past couple of days i have been noticing some redish algae in my tank. my water tests are great, i have a 55 gallon tank with a fluval canister filter, 2 powerheads, uv setrilizer and a skilter. my skilter has not been working too well latyely. could this redish algae be caused by not running the protein skimmer unit on the skilter? please help

 

[DJ88]

palcaidinho,

Sounds liek you are having a cyanobaceria outbreak. I may be worng but with what I read that is my best bet.

FIrst thing.

On a 55 I'd get a much better skimmer. Skilters aren't what I would use IMO. They rank below a sea clone for skimming. If the skimmer part isn't working right as you said I'd bet you have loads of excess nutrients in your tank. Get a new skimmer.

As well what kind of powerheads do you have? If it is a cyano outbreak you can help fight this with good circulation.

As an aside,

What do you have inside the fluval? If you are running media inside you may want ot remove it a bit at a time and use the fluval for water movement and possibly a place to run carbon form time to time. The media in a fluval can collect detrius and it will start producing nitrates that will aid in the growth of algaes and cyano.

hth

 

[palcaidinho]

I also forgot to ad that i have just upgraded my lighting to power compacts, I was running the cheap ones that came with the tank. I was told that with the new lighting it could cause an algae outbreak. any truth to that?

 

[SteveP]

Yes, additional lighting could fuel an algal outbreak. Get a better skimmer! You said your tests were all good. What tests were they? If you were testing for nitrogen compounds and they turned out OK, you might have excess phospahtes.

Steve
8{I

 

[DBW]

Can you describe what the algae actually looks like? Any features you can see, the consistency, where it is growing etc.

 

[palcaidinho]

it almost appears like a clay/reddish collor dust or sand

 

[danmhippo]

Rub your finger against it. Does it look like they will budge and "crawl" away? If you'd place some of these red sand dusts in a cup of freshwater, does it wiggle? If yes, you have flatworm outbreak.

If you rub your finger against it and it simply flakes off and feels kinda slimy, you probably have cynobacteria outbreak.