Have a few questions please help me :)

J

jarock

Reefing newb
Hey i have a few questions i noticed this morning i have little hairs on the side and back of my tank and never had any prior to today i have had my 55g tank setup for a little over 3 months now just have my live rock around 25lbs and 2 crabs nothing else in my tank. Would anyone know what these hairs might be and can you prevent them ?. Also i noticed green algae growing on my tank faster then usual by far, anything i can do to treat the algae and the on my glass as well ? Another concern i have i noticed my sand is a rusty color and i moved the sand to see if it would get sucked up by my carbon filter and it did but came back again this morning i don't have a protein skimmer yet saving for an octopus skimmer would that maybe be whats causing the sand to turn rusty?One other thing my one hermit crab died around 3 days ago i bought 3 to have them eating algae and to have a couple things in my tank i never thought anything of it when it died but this morning i noticed also a little crab that was dead i never knew i ,the other 2 hermit crabs are looking really rough is there a chance i have a few crabs fighting with them since i found a dead one i never knew i had? Should i try and trap to see what i find in my tank and if so how would i trap them ?I also noticed i have a lot of bubbles by my heater and around all the sides of my tank would that be eggs from an animal or protein ?
 
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Hairs sounds a little like hair algae, which can grow out of controll pretty fast. Scrape and siphon out as much as you can. Red/Rusty sounds like cyano bacteria. Bubbles.....hmm. Do they seem to be attached to the end of little strings or stuff that looks like snot? Do you have any pictures you could share. That one sounds a little like dinoflagellates, which can be toxic to algae eaters like your hermits.

Many things can cause algae and bacteria blooms. Old lights, poor water flow, high nutrients, low food quality, over feeding, excessive die offs, low PH, high nitrates, old filter socks or pads, infrequent water changes, so on and so on. You can do things to remove excessive algae, but you really really need to find the root cause before it overruns your tank.
 
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The bubbles seem to be gone now they come and go which is weird.my rocks are dark green but are clearing up over time cycling i think the only place that i see if its algae is on a piece of wood i got from my LFS that was in with the live rock he gave me it looks like grass is growing.
 
Take the wood out and throw it away. It's not natural for a reef tank, and if it came with algae, it will only spread that algae to rocks.
 
why would he give it to me it was covered in white stuff took a week or so for the white stuff to disappear and now green hairs are growing on it ?Im not 100 percent its wood but its definitely not rock
 
i also have one small rock thats covered in a dark green film should i try and scrub it off as well ?the other live rock i have look normal just the wood piece or non rock and the small rock look different then the others
 
would i be able to put my peice of wood in freshwater to make my hitch hikers come out ? Also can i scrub my one small peice of live rock down with a aquarium brush used on the glass to take away some of the green slime in freshwater?
 
Just pull the snails off the wood and place them on a rock.
I'll bet that piece of wood had some hair algae on it.And not that you've put it in your tank,its spreading to your rocks.
 
I think you'd be better off just to toss the wood.The snails probably aint doin much anyway.
Or you could drop it in a bucket of salt water with a powerhead and put the lid on it.
A couple of weeks with no light will kill the algae off and should force the snails out in search for food.Then you can catch them and throw em in the tank
 
so i i pulled the piece of what i thought was a piece of wood last night it was actually live rock but when i took it out it just smelled horrible like ammonia even after 2 weeks from being in there. I threw it in freshwater to see if anything would come out and the second it hit the water a 2 inch shrimp shot out it was a mantis shrimp. I'm assuming he was bother my hermit crabs i just threw the piece out since it was less then a pound and since it smelled so bad and had so much hair algae on it i hope that helps my problem and this morning so far no hair algae on my walls at all :)
 

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