brown, smelly algae, what's this pink stuff? (pic)

[jigga w00t]

I have a 24g nano that has been running about 3 months, 40lbs of live sand, ~19lbs of live rock (that now has a healthy amount of coralline algae), 4 hermit crabs, 2 nassarius snails, 4 astrea snails, 1 rather large turbo snail, and one random snail I forget the name for now...
But I've got this fast-growing brown algae that grows on the glass and back of nano tank. I will be cutting down the amount of time the lights are on until the snails do their jobs, but this algae can easily be scraped off with one swipe of a finger, (I usually just wipe it on a paper towel). So its not difficult to remove, but it smells so bad (like, smell up your whole kitchen, bad) and within 10 minutes, the paper towel had these pink patches on it...

Should I be worried? My snails have been eating the algae, but not fast enough! I've been researching but no one ever mentions diatom algae that smells....

 

[laineym1]

i had a problem with algae and i was researching different types and noticed that if it has a foul smell then it is cyno bacteria. google it and read about it. it can be red or green. hope that helps.

 

[michaeltx]

yeah it sounds more like cyno bacteria cutting lights down a bit and increased flow will help cyno really loves dead zones in the tank.
if you can get a pictureof it in the tank it will help in a postive ID on it though.
Mike

 

[anonome]

Definately sounds like cyano bacteria. I'm not sure I would use a paper towel inside the tank though. They could have chemicals on them that are making the cyano stay around.
Do a water change (most important), and add some more current, decrease lighting will all help this out.
Just so you know, cyano can come in many color forms. But brown and red are the most predominate.

 

[nycbob]

turbo snail will eat them too.