greenish / blue algae help please

[xsdbs]

(I apologize if this is not the right spot to place this thread)
I have never seen this in my tank before and thought I should ask about it. I have noticed the last few days a greenish / blue color in a couple areas of my sand. It's not covering anything but I see the color and I don't think its good, (I could be wrong). I did do a water change over the weekend and before I did the chane I did a water test and found everything to be ok:
nitrate 0
nitrate 0
amonia 0
ph 8.2 - 8.4
posphates 0
what could be the cause of this stuff. Thanks in advance for any info

 

[Ace25]

I have seen that type of algae before, most of the time it is at places like PetCo (when they did SW). To me, it is the next stage beyond the brown diatoms. When it gets to the green stage that definately tells me you don't have enough flow across your sand. There could be many other factors that are causing it as well (type of water used, how much feeding, how often/large are your water changes, how many fish in what size tank, etc), but usually the other factors by themselves won't lead to that extreme of a problem if you have enough flow across the sand.

 

[xsdbs]

thanks, I'll have to try to redirect my power heads. I have (2) rio 2100's, a hydor 4, I am using a fluval fx5 ( I think thats the model ) for circulation as well as a pondmaster 26 from my rufugium. I am thinking about replacing the 2100's with a couple more hydors or something similar. The rios have such a blast stream that they really can mess with the sand.

 

[Ace25]

I hear ya.. it is very hard to get flow just right when your trying to have it skim across the sand without actually blowing the sand around.

 

[xsdbs]

I hear ya.. it is very hard to get flow just right when your trying to have it skim across the sand without actually blowing the sand around.

just curious do you and most people use to get a good flow across the bottom without sand storms? Thank again

 

[Ace25]

I use koralias myself, good dispersed flow. Still requires quite a bit of tweaking and placement, but they are much better than other jet type powerheads IMO. Try bouncing flow off of the glass/acrylic it richochete the flow if need be. That is how I do it, 2 Koralia3s in the center facing the corners, it bounces off the corner and flows down the front and sides making for absolute perfect flow across the sand.. just at the point it barely moves the sand around, but not blowing or making piles/holes. Ideally I would like Vortechs instead of Koralias, but at $400 per powerhead vs $40 I will stick with the $40's for now.

 

[xsdbs]

I use koralias myself, good dispersed flow. Still requires quite a bit of tweaking and placement, but they are much better than other jet type powerheads IMO. Try bouncing flow off of the glass/acrylic it richochete the flow if need be. That is how I do it, 2 Koralia3s in the center facing the corners, it bounces off the corner and flows down the front and sides making for absolute perfect flow across the sand.. just at the point it barely moves the sand around, but not blowing or making piles/holes. Ideally I would like Vortechs instead of Koralias, but at $400 per powerhead vs $40 I will stick with the $40's for now.

thanks for the help, I will probably be adding more of the koralias or perhaps the tunze, I saw a thread here earlier that there is a "beef up" kit for them also that will get them up to about 1500 gph and low current usage.