Red Sand

[Sregnar35]

I recently added a 260W PC setup to my tank, and now my green hair algae is going nuts, so I got a yellow tang to help control it, he is doing a great job. I've noticed what I would imagine is coralline algae spreading from my live rock to my base rock in the form of spotty red and maroon areas. But i now have large areas of my sand that are the same color? Will my sand be covered in coralline algae? Or is this reddish maroon color in my dsb something else? It seems to have really started spreading like crazy since I added the lights?

 

[Dale W.]

Sounds more like cyano than coroline. If it is soft, you should try to suck it up and out of the tank. another thing to do is keep your calcium levels up which will help deter the bacteria from growing.

 

[Sregnar35]

Will cyanobacteria coat each individual grain of sand? I thought it was more of a flowing slimelike substance. It seems like the red shows up on the sand, then within a few days the red sand is covered in green hair.

 

[Sregnar35]

Reefscape, here are some pics that may help describe what I'm looking at, I took these shots last night. It looks like spotty coralline on the base rocks starting to form and the same red is on the sand.

 

[OrionGirl]

Yep, that's cyano. PITA, hard to get rid of. Manually remove as much as you can, and increase flow rates. You may want to check your alkalinity--I think low levels help cyano out.

 

[mogurnda]

If you can find anyone who carries "sea bunnies" aka small sea hares in the genus steilocheilus, they specialize in eating cyano. IPSF has them sometimes. Of course, they will starve if you solve the cyano problem.

 

[Sregnar35]

Should I worry about it?, because it's really a great shade of red, and the tang loves eating all of the green hair algae that seems to grow over the red. As for increasing the flowrate, I already have 1000gph in my 75g tank, but I can try changing the angle of my powerheads.