Coraline Alge????

djcanis

djcanis

Member
Is this Coraline or is this somthing being caused by my water? It has been steadily growing for a while, and my lawnmower belenny doesnt seem to go near it. Any thoughts? I dont have a phospate test, should I invest in one? I scrape the spots off the front of the tank but let the rest go. The crushed coral was vacumed about 3 weeks ago.




 
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1tang2nemo

Guest
looks like Coraline to me. I don't think you have to clean the crused coral or a sand bed, I have never cleaned mine and it looks fine. I don't think you need a phospate test unless you have hard coral.
 
lobstergrabber

lobstergrabber

Member
The algae you have there looks to me to be cyano algae which is actually bacteriological. Is is slimy and can it be sucked up from the rocks? If so then this is hat you have. Do a search on red slime and you will find a ton of others with the same problems. Potential causes are high nutrients and a lack of water flow.
HTH Rich
 
djcanis

djcanis

Member
some of the chuncks so look like the red slime, water flow shouldnt be a issue, its a 29 gal, I have 4 power heads plus the filter, (60, 12, 200, 240 gal/hr). It started shortly after moving the tank to the new place about a year ago. But lately it has gotten worse. I vacume it off when I do water changes. Im more concerned with the hard purple and lavander colored stuff all over the rock.
 
sjimmyh

sjimmyh

Member
Well, the lighter stuff is almost certainly coraline. The darker stuff is cyano (red slime).
Lots of articles on how to minimize cyano. Just need to apply some techniques to reduce it and you look darn good.
 
djcanis

djcanis

Member
Thank you all for the help, have been doing a bit of reading, and most of what I see says that it is a problem of either water levels or flow. Yet, I test my water every other day and its good, gravity is a little off from evap, (house is really dry) but the rest are good. And as far as flow rate, soem of it is growing right in front of the power head, I have a 29 gal that is circulating about 500gal/hr without adding in the filter. Could it be my placement. I have 2 on the back wall, about a 1/3rd of the way in on either side blowing into the rocks and then 2 about mid height on the sides blowing toward the middle of the tank. There are no spots of free standing water.
I think I'm gona try turnign off the lights for a while, and sucking it out with the syphon. I'm using tap water but I have been adding aqua safe (i think), it says it removes phospates. Should I try somthing different? Is there any phospate remover that I can use that wont hurt my livestock?
Thanks again for all the help.
 
mcbdz

mcbdz

Active Member
Do not use tap water. Use RO/DI water. Walmart has it fill yourself for 33cent a gallon. some lfs sell it and a lot of different grocery stores. You will be glad you switched.
 
farslayer

farslayer

Active Member
I had cyano growing right in front of my powerhead, so I was in the same boat as you. You do need to switch to RO water; and if I were you, I'd drop $100 and just buy one. Your tap water is feeding the cyano, so it's an endless cycle for you right now. Start doing some water changes with RO water. Blast the cyano off with a turkey baster and suck up what floats off the rock so that you can discard it. Do this for a couple of weeks and see how well it works.
 
hocky

hocky

Member
Originally Posted by Farslayer
I had cyano growing right in front of my powerhead, so I was in the same boat as you. You do need to switch to RO water; and if I were you, I'd drop $100 and just buy one. Your tap water is feeding the cyano, so it's an endless cycle for you right now. Start doing some water changes with RO water. Blast the cyano off with a turkey baster and suck up what floats off the rock so that you can discard it. Do this for a couple of weeks and see how well it works.

Agreed, I had some cyano growth and was using tap water. I did a 25 gallon water change with RO and have been topping off with only RO and the cyano growth was gone in about a week.
 
floridabob

floridabob

Member
your flow sounds ok keep sucking it up at water changes,
and if you want to remove phosphates use
2 little fishes phos. remover $39.00 on this site.
i got my phos down from .50 to zero -yes ZERO in 2 days.
also go get yourself some 5 gal jugs from wally world and get
ro water either from your lfs or any grocery store that has a machine
your cyno will be gone soon
 
petjunkie

petjunkie

Active Member
Does it come off easily? It looks like red corraline to me, usually grows in lower light. Maybe a closer pic would help too. I also have a velvety looking red algea that grows in a few places that looks like that. Cyano you should be able to get off pretty easily, corraline will not come off without work.
 
djcanis

djcanis

Member
The red smile comes off very easily, I used a turkey baster, like suggested above, and it woked great. put the baster in the tank and blast the red slime, used a syphon to suck it out. I have left the tank light off, for like 36 hours now, and using a flashlight, I can see the spots I didnt get already starting to shrivel. Gona head to wally world tonight and invest in soem RO water. I would like to get a filter, but the cheapest I have seen is $100 and thats a little out of my budget for a water filter at the moment.
Thanks for the help everyone, I will post pics after she is cleaned up.
 
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