reddish brown and brown algae on the substrate?

[sighthoundlover]

I've had my present 75 gallon tank up and running since February. It has live rock, a cleaner shrimp and a royal gramma, some hermit crabs and a few turbo snails ( I'm going slow). There is no hair algae. I do have what I think is a lot of pretty purple coraline algae. It has recently started to develop this brown and reddish brown algae :?: on the substrate. What kind of algae is this? Is it good or bad? :? I've been mixing it deeper into the substrate with my fingers because I think it's unattractive. What should I be doing? Is there a reason this started to appear?

 

[Kevin1000]

If the red stuff readily blows around it is probably cyano bacteria - pretty typical of tanks about your age. You don't want to be pushing this stuff deeper in your sand bed but s/b syphoning this stuff out of your tank. Cyano can rapidly spread through your tank and become a major PIA.

Cyano is typically caused by excess nutrients especially phosphates. Suggest you syphon the cyano out daily. If you are using tap water consider switching to RO. If you are using flake food switch to something else as flake food is high in phosphates. Wash out your filter media daily until the problem gets under control. Increase the frequency of your water changes. Consider adding a refugium or simply adding some plant material to your tank to compete for the nutrients. If you have a skimmer run full throttle.

If you do a search for cyano you should see thousands of posts. Unfortunately, it is a common problem.

Hope this helps.

 

[sighthoundlover]

Well, here's the thing. My water has 0 phosphates when I test it using a Sea-Chem kit. I use distilled water for my water changes and Phosgard in my Emperor 400. I don't see it "blowing around" - it just sits on the sand. I feed only frozen food - no flake. I do feed everybody 2 times a day, though. I don't give much food in my opinion. I take a cube of the frozen and cut off a quarter of it. I then cut a little piece of the quarter and hand feed it to the shrimp. I place the rest in a cup with some garlic exteme, add water and wait for it to dissolve. I feed 2/3 of that to the 75 gallon tank ( which only has the gramma and the shrimp) and the other third to the clown fish who is currently in my quarantine tank. I do that twice a day. I do water changes religiously every two weeks and remove/replace 10 gallons. Does it still sound like cyan to you? Does this mean I should only feed once a day? Please let me know your thoughts.

 

[Kevin1000]

I probably should not have said "blown around" - many people confuse the red cyano with coralline and the easy test is that cyano readily blows off rock & substrate if you use a turkey baster.

It is possible that this is a simple diatom bloom but I would have assumed that you would have seen that by now. If it is a diatom them some turbos & astrae snails should clean right up.

 

[car]

sounds like a diatom bloom no big deal some stirring and some nassarrius snails work good

 

[reeefer]

I now this thread is a bit old but you still might get this response but hopefully you have this "Silicate" problem under control by now.

I have had my tank set up for years and I just recently had a run in with this Red/Brown covering my live sand. My phosphates were a bit high but it really boiled down to my Silicates were extremely high. I just put CORALIFE Silicate remover in a mesh bag in my sump area and things started going back to normal after 1-2 weeks.