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New Member
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Last Login: 10/13/2008 4:26:41 PM
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| In my 55g tank i have about an inch of live sand. The tank has been running for about a month. All of a sudden about half of my live sand began to get this green stuff on the surface. Its been like this for a week now and is starting to spread to the walls of my tank. It comes of when i pass over it with my magfloat. I would like to find out what it is and get rid of this mysterious green stuff. Does any one have any idea what this stuff is or how to get rid of it?
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Starting Member
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During the first year or so that an aquarium is up and running, the aquarium experiences many algae blooms. Each algae bloom is of a different type of algae. You are experiencing your first algae bloom: brown and green film algae on the glass and rocks, and diatoms in the sand. You cant stop it, you can only clean the glass with your magnetic algae cleaner. Eventually, its just going to cover everything and over time it will die down. While it is dying down, you will experience other algae blooms of green hair algae, brown filamentous algae, bubble algae, cyanobacteria, etc. If you want to keep the levels of algae down, buy some snails. I have one turbo snail in my 30 gallon and he eats algae like theres no tomorrow. Ive heard that with turbo snails you should get like 1 per 15 gallons. once you get into your other algae blooms like hair algae and bubble algae, you can get an emerald grab, more snails, hermits, etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------38 gallon freshwater: 1 turquoise severum, 4 red& blue columbian tetras, 2 gold gouramis, 3 otocinclus, 1 clown loach 30 gallon saltwater: 1 coral beauty angel, 1 clarkii clown, 1 banded coral shrimp, 1 serpent star, lots of cool macroalgae
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New Member
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Last Login: 8/13/2008 9:30:22 PM
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| get a phos-ban reactor and add 2 more inch of sand
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New Member
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Last Login: 10/13/2008 4:26:41 PM
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| A phos ban reactor? I 've never heard of that what does it do? I'm going to add a couple more inches of sand once i get my live rock in place.
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Starting Member
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A phosban reactor gets rid of phosphorus, which is the main fertilizer of algae.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------38 gallon freshwater: 1 turquoise severum, 4 red& blue columbian tetras, 2 gold gouramis, 3 otocinclus, 1 clown loach 30 gallon saltwater: 1 coral beauty angel, 1 clarkii clown, 1 banded coral shrimp, 1 serpent star, lots of cool macroalgae
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New Member
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Last Login: 10/13/2008 4:26:41 PM
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| I have to look in to that.
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Junior Member
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| My 2 cents. Sounds like cyanobacteria to me (bluegreen algae). I doubt that it's both cyano and diatom, probably just the one. Try siphoning off what you can with a piece of rubber tubing, this will help speed the process a little by getting it out of the tank. Stirring it up with a glass cleaner will just help it get spread around. But as plecodiscus stated, it will eventually (a week or 2) go away on its own. You'll probably have an outbreak of diatomacious algae as well. This type of algae thrives on an excess of silicates in the water. Once the availabe silicates are deminished, the diatom bloom will also die back. Both algaes are always present in the tank but as long as nutrient levels are kept low, you shouldn't experience large unsightly blooms. As for hair and bubble algaes, these can be kept from ever being a problem with good husbandry. Bubble algae (valonia) can be kept away by checking and cleaning live rock before it's put in the tank. If you see any pop up once you've placed your rock, do what ever it takes to get it out. If the rock can be removed, do so and pull all of the bubbles off with a pair of tweezers. If not do your best to get it off where it is. Stay after it until it doesn't come back. This stuff can be a real challenge if it's allowed to get out of hand. Emerald crabs are said to eat this type of algae but they won't control it if you don't help. Hair algae (debersia) can be controlled with snails and fishes. Again as plecodiscus stated, turbo grazers (I'd recomend 1 per 5g) are good choices. I particularly like trocus snails. They're true tropical snails and will reproduce in you tank. Turbos will get the job done quicker but get very large and can bulldoze over corals. As for fishes, the Jeweled Rockskipper Blenny is an all around great fish and an excellent algae eater. Again, if your not overfeeding, you're doing water changes on a regular basis and keeping your skimmer clean and functioning efficiently, these shouldn't be a problem to start with. Controlling nutrients is the key. A phosphate reactor is a cylinder that is used to house phosphate removing media (or what ever you want to place in it). The cylinder is plumbed into your system so as to allow tank water to slowly pass thru it. The water enters the cylinder at the bottom and exits at the top. As the water passes thru the media, phosphate becomes bound to the media and is removed from the water column. Activated carbon or combinations of several types of media can be employed in the same manner. I use a Eheim Pro 2 canister filter with activated carbon and phosphate media to accomplish the same thing. Media should be changed roughly every month. Don't sweat it too much, it's all part of the system stabilizing itself. Everything should settle down in 3-4 months. :) A good rule of thumb to remember when it comes to saltwater aquarium keeping: Nothing good ever happens quickly in a saltwater (reef) tank!!!:) P.S. I guess that's more like 102 cents worth huh. (LOL)
So many species, so little money!
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