Red alge how to remove it?

You're right! We do need more information on your tank.

Please take the time to test your actual water parameters that are listed and post them:

Salinity:

Temp:

Nitrate:

Phosphate:

Stock List:

Clean up Crew:

What foods do you feed and in what quantity?

Equipment:

Lighting, and how old:

Protein Skimmer:

Refugium:

Sump:

Heater:

Other filtration:

Chemicals used and in what amounts: 

Anything else that you can think of...

Using antibiotics like chemi-clean only goes so far. If you don't follow the directions, it won't work. You have to do a 50% water change the next day to get your parameters back into proper balance and to remove some of the medication and the dead cyanobacteria and nitrate and phosphate that is released by it.

When was the last time you checked your TDS reading on your RO unit? When was the last time you replaced your carbon filter in your RO Unit?

Your lights are fine, but you are having a problem with the nutrients in your tank. Ever considered getting a phosphate reactor and using some phosban? Chemi-pure elite works pretty well too.

There's a lot you can do to get your tank going the way it should. We just have to figure out what the source of the problem is and then fix it.

Over dosing meds will kill everything in your tank. Chemicals are very dangerous and you MUST follow the directions to the letter.

Just because it's red does not make it bad to have.

There are all sorts of red algae, macro algae like red bubble to name only one. These types of algae hitchhike on rocks and corals and many are very pretty and desired. Then there is red coraline algae, this algae is very hard and crusty and must be removed with scrubbing but most people like coraline on anything but the glass.

Then there is Cyanobacteria that isn't an algae at all, it is a bacteria and feeds on extra nutrients in the tank, like phosphates and is often caused by bad water like using tap instead of RO. This is a slime that developes like a mat and lifts off easy.,

Therefore not only do we need more tank info, a picture would help a great deal.

like flower said ,the red you have is not algae it is cyno a bacteria.this stuff can hang around for months and grow at a fast pace.i like to do alot of small water changes.like on my 90 gallon tank.i would do 5 gallons every other day or 3rd day.sucking up the red stuff.dont do too many waterchanges as it will unbalance the system.this is whats going on the system is not balanced and it needs time to mature.the red will eventually go away on its own.

really thats it? lol that aint nothing looks like a small bloom.just keep up on waterchanges and it will go away.i have had this stuff 1/8 inch thick covering half the tank.i could pull it off like carpet.

i have been fighting green hair algae for a year now.algae and the red cyno(you have) take a long time to get rid of sometimes.it took me about 6 months to get rid of the red cyno i had.

red cyno does not like alot of waterflow.what do you have for powerheads.i see you have pebbles for a base.add 1 or 2 more powerheads and really get the water moving around.this will make a huge difference in getting rid of this stuff.

Where to start. You don't have a large bio load with only 4 fish. With the shrimp and crabs and snails you have I would say the only thing missing there are about a dozen Nassarius snails. They are burrowing snails and will work to keep the sand bed stirred up a bit. I only see one power head in there and it is pointed up to the top of the tank. Good for gas exchange but what is causing flow throught the tank? The Rena outputs could help here if positioned correctly. Your rock work looks pretty open so I would start with getting some flow both through them and down across the bottom. You want to have any uneaten food and critter waste suspended in the water column so the the Renas can remove it. Cyano which is what your pictures show grows in areas of high nutrient and I woudl suspect there is a lot of waster accumulating in the areas where you see it. These would be the areas I would start concentrating on to get flow to them.

Clean your filters more often maybe twice per month and put some chemipure elite and purigen in them. Also the water changes as noted will help.

Well...I see one lone power head and placed in a way that gives the least amont of flow...on the end of the tank where the flow goes forward and just losses steam.

If you get two power heads and place them in the back to bounce off the flow from the front glass, the low water flow will be gone and I bet your red algae will be too. I read Spankos post after mine was typed so he noticed the low flow as well..

Protein skimmer seems like it is an adjustment, but the rena blowing bubbles seems like an air leak at a fitting somewhere. It has to draw air in order to blow it out.

I would definitely take the advice these folks are giving and offer some of my own:

1. Add a sump with a refugium (with some macro like chaeto)
2. Upgrade skimmer to one that can be incorporated into the sump
3. Add more power heads
4. Ditch the flakes (they are like feeding potato chips and add phosphate into your system even if you are only adding very little)
5. Change lightbulbs if they are more than 8 months old

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gemmy 

I would definitely take the advice these folks are giving and offer some of my own:

 

1. Add a sump with a refugium (with some macro like chaeto)
2. Upgrade skimmer to one that can be incorporated into the sump
3. Add more power heads
4. Ditch the flakes (they are like feeding potato chips and add phosphate into your system even if you are only adding very little)
5. Change lightbulbs if they are more than 8 months old

Yep, what she said and what the others said. I will add one more thing:

Calm down.

Pull up a chair with your favorite beverage and enjoy your tank, understanding that it is attempting to balance itself; telling you what it's condition is. Listen to it. Respond, do not react.

You do not have an urgent problem, based on the pics, just a condition to adjust.

I have some cyano in my tank too. Most, if not all of us do (except maybe Spanko and his ULNS). When I see cyano in my tank, I take note of it, slowly adjust my routine and:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tailgate1979 

What do you mean by its balancing its self?

I can't give you the doctorate thesis that others here can; I can only give the most elementary explanation. If you never added nutrient to the tank, you would not see hair algae, cyano or other undesirables. As soon as we do, the nutrients have to go somewhere. Fish poo, protein skimmer skimate, macroalgae growth, broken down by biological filtration into nitrogen gas, it has to go somewhere. That which cannot be handled by your tank remains as fuel for undesirables such as cyanobacteria.

Very well said.