Algae on Sand

A

Al Vance

Reefing newb
Hello:
I have a pretty established tank. Still new to reefing!

I have a green algae with bubbles growing on my live sand daily.
I have don 2 water changes this week sucking the algae out but it grows back.
I don't want to keep doing water changes daily.

It has sparked a small case of red slime on the back side of a rock that is hard to get at
even with my home made Wine Bottle Filler suction device to suck out unwanted items.

Will someone give me an idea.

I use RO water for all changes. I manage a Wine making store and have a RO filter for all taps.

Thanks,
Al
 
There could be different factors, but we have to find the source of the algae...sounds like you have green bubble algae and maybe cyno bacteria...
try upgrading your cuc, certain criiters eat that stuff, get more water flow on the rocks and sand too so that your protein skimmer/filtration can pick up the access particles/nutrients out of the water, so that they don't settle and cause the algae...it can also be caused by outdated bulbs too...good luck.
 
one other cause that a lot of people over look is feeding. What are you feeding and how often. You have to look to the source of the nutrients in the water. Could be old bulbs, to much food, a dirty sponge or bio balls. All can lead to algae.
 
I don't have boi balls, My lights are around 4 months old. Do they have a date code on them. Shouldn't it be amount of hours used.
I feed Prime Reef by Ocean Nutrition. A frozen food. 1 cube at 6:00 p.m.
I has give a light feed of flake at12:00
my light cycle is 9:00 a.m to 9:00 p.m. with blues on the first half hour and the last half hour.
 
How many fish do you have in that 20 gallon? That is alot more then I feed in my 48. Is the food being completely eaten? I feed every other day with half a cube or less (depends on how steady my knife hand is) The days I dont feed frozen I feed flake but only once a day and very sparingly. I have been told that I am feeding to much but I cant help my self the fish always come up to say feed me and I cave in.
 
Oh what type of lights are you running? You could try shaving some time off that as well. I have my atinics on for 10 hours a day and the mh 8 hours. That could help also. The bulbs should be ok at 4 months.
 
Try rinsing your flake food. I was having a small problem with algae in my tank. I started putting flake food in a strainer and letting it sit in a cup of RO water while swishing it around a few times before feeding. Being I don't feed much flake I did not think it would make a difference. About a week later I was able too see the difference throughout my tank, primarily on the sand.
 
Whats your parameters looking like?
Post the numbers and that'll get us headed in the right direction.
Another thing that gets over looked a lot,is water flow.
What do you have in there for water movement?
 
+1 all above I'd definitely cut back on the light and the food...I use that food too and only feed the cube every other day; what kind of live stock is in the tank?
 
Sorry guys took me so long. WORK WORK WORK!
I have 2 power head 20's
1 underwater fluval
1 hang on bio wheel
1 protein skimmer
1 UV sterilizer 9W that has a light stream of water coming out of it.
They all pretty much aim towards the middle and hopefully disperse in all directions.
Some issues with live rock placement won't allow much movement around.
i am going to try putting 1 power head near main sand problem and maybe a sand sifting starfish? Or a diamond Goby, but I don't know if my guy can get me one
 
2 Bubble Corals Large around 6 inches
1 goniopora
some Zoo's
1 bubble tip anemone
2 black and white clowns
1 blue hippo tang Small. (I have a good home for him once he outgrows my tank)
1 Cleaner Shrimp
lots of hermits and snails
1 emerald crab
 
Al Vance said:
I shouldn't reallt be having any problems with algae
thats why I go to the extent of this stuff.
Click to expand...

Ya know,we've all thought that exact same thing:mrgreen:
But in reality,when you got water and light,your going to have some algae.And its an all to common fight with new tanks.
As the tank matures,you'll notice that the algae battles get fewer.
 
You should have more than 2 nassarius snails. For the pea sized ones, you can get one for every gallon of your tank or so. You can also get larger ones (like walnut sized), and then you can use fewer.
 
1) get another emerald crab
2) Take out the bio wheel if possible
3) get rid of the fluval...what kind of protein skimmer are you using?
4) I'd go for the goby instead of the star with all those crabs, plus I've heard bad things about sand sifting stars (i.e. low life expectancy, difficult to find when dead as they bury themselves and start to deteriorate which then hurts your parameters)
5) if you really wanted to get something to sift your sand, look into getting a horse shoe crab
 

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