Newbie question

[boomer 453]

Hello everyone. Hope you don't mind a question that you have probably seen many times.
70 gallon aquarium that has been set up for 4 years.
Amiracle sump filtration with Phos-zorb pouches placed in the sump.
Powerhead with carbon in the tank for extra water movement.
2" crushed coral in the bottom of the tank along with bleached coral for decoration.
This is a fish only tank with-
1 tomato clown
2 Damsels
1 Yellow Tang
1 firefish
1 sand sifting sea star
1 red sea star.
Lighting is flourescent with 1 T-12 100% blue actinic and 1 T-12 10,000k. Both are coralife bulbs and changed every 6 months or so.
10-12 gallon water changes are done every 3 weeks or so

Here is my problem- I'm getting a significant amount of red algae on all surfaces that recieve light. In the "shade" of the bleached corals the substrate stays clean. I'm sure this is a lighting problem but im not sure what the problem is? Can anyone give me some insight as to how to resolve the problem? The perplexing part is that the back glass is growing a nice green algae that the tang is thriving on. I want to add an emperor angel eventually but not until the problem is fixed.

Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

has this been going on for the last 4 years? i would doubt that it is the lighting since you replace the bulbs every six months (assuming this is now a recent problem) could be a water quality issue..RO/DI water being used? change your phos absorb bags too?

 

[Len]

It's a combination of lighting and nutrients most likely. If you're not using a RO/DI filter for your top-off, that's my first recommendation. Use of a protein skimmer will help to by removing nutrients and supersaturating the water with oxygen and raising pH (all good ways to stem red cyanobacteria). Perhaps try different types of bulbs as well; cyano tends to be opportunistic based on certain spectrums so a change in bulb spectral output could help.

I gotta warn you about the intended Emperator; it'll outgrow a 70 gallon pretty fast when healthy.

Hope that helps a little. I wish you luck.

 

[Anonymous]

My experience with the "red stuff" is to let it run its course like the flu. I have had it once and it lasted for about 4 weeks then it was gone. I did not do anything.

 

[boomer 453]

This is a fairly new problem-at least in the amount of growth. Normally any algae buildup i had was either brown or red but never in this quantity or spreading this fast. I'm careful not to leave the tank lights on for more than 10 hours a day so maybe i should drop down to a 6500k 50/50 bulb in place of the 10,000k.
I don't have an RO unit so water for changes is tap water that sits in a food grade container being aerated for 2 or 3 days after it's been made before going into the tank.

Thanks for all the help

 

[Anonymous]

I don't know where the tank is located, but if you don't need to have the lights on for display... don't. The fish don't need them. I used to run into different algae issues when I used to have African Cichlids (FW), but running the tank without lighting worked great. I would only turn them on if I wanted to view/display the tank.
HTH,
~wings~

 

[Anonymous]

Oh.. right. cyno is different, because it's not technically algae, right? In which case, I'd totally take the above suggestions as well.
~wings~