Came home to an unwelcome surprise

[Swiftler]

So I just got back from being in Seattle for 5 days. I had a friend taking care of the critters while I was gone. I came home today to find half my tank covered in this red algae. I know it's not good. What steps do I need to take to get rid of it. My lights are on for about 9.5 hours. Any advice would be great.

Swift

 

[Grizz]

cut back on the lights for a few days. do more PWC's it looks like cyano caused by to much feeding you can vacum most of it off the sand rocks it comes off easy Or you can use some Cemi-Cleen it kills the cyano then you must do a 50% WC to remove all the dead stuff

 

[Jereli]

I remember once using ultra life red slime remover as my last resort. Disappeared completely in couple days. But that wont fix the problem the source of problem would still be there but it does temporarily make everything look better again. By The way I did not see any affects on my live stock when I used it. Also Best bet is lots of water changes and less feedings.

 

[Swiftler]

So clean off the red slime and do 5 gallon water changes every week for a couple weeks or should I do more.

 

[Gti_Leo]

well what are your perameters looking like? thats cyanobacteria which is caused by nitrate and phosphates in the water, was your friend rinsing off any frozen food with RO water? also he/she may have been way overfeeding which caused a large skipe in nitrates

 

[huma-huma]

I'd vacuum up as much as possible right now, cyano doesn't really hurt your fish, but the problem is that if you kill it all off, its gonna cause a huge ammo spike, given the sheer amount of cyano in the tank. So vacuum as much up as possible and then cut back on feeding and lighting a bit. Do pwc's eevery day or otherday for a week or two

 

[johnmaloney]

Also when you kill off cyano or other nuisance algae en masse like that they will rob the water of oxygen as a part of the respiration process when they die. Or rather overload it with co2. Anyway they can create deadspots, so that is another reason to siphon out as much as you can prior to treatment, and additionally making sure there is plenty of surface agitation to keep ph levels stable.

Cyano is pretty common when you return from a trip I feel like. It has happened to me a dozen times, the good news is it is usually related to an over feeding by the sitter, or something along those lines. (Tank like was turned on by the sitter and they forgot to put it back on timer, etc...) A water change and a good manual cleaning usually gets the tank back in shape fast, it is the problems that have slowly crept up over time that are the hardest to remedy, I think yours will rebound quickly.