Red algae?

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Talon

Aquarium Advice Regular
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Sep 6, 2014
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76
Location
Pennsylvania
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I found out a while ago my kole tang had white spots on him. I used a kordon ich attack for a few weeks and he seems completely better, BUT now I have tons of the stuff in the picture growing in my tank. The two might not be related but it seems to happen when I started using the ich attack. Can anyone tell me what this is and what I should do about it. It is starting to take over my whole tank. There are also strange bubble things on some of my rock that you might be able to see in the picture too. I would appreciate any help. Thanks!


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As Kordon Ick attack is simply an organic additive, expect there to be an organic result in the tank. Adding organics to our closed systems generally results in increased algae.


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Looks like a bad case of Cyanobacteria. I have it. It tends to go away when water is changed. It thrives off bad conditions. You can't get rid of it easily but you can control it by doing regular changes.


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I agree with what was just said. That is cyano. It will go away when water conditions are under control, nitrates and phosphates that is.
Large water changes with ro/di water, minimizing feeding with rinsed frozen foods, siphoning out the cyano during your water changes. It will take time, but it is an easily solved problem.

That then brings up the next part of your issue, your fish had ich! Hopefully you treated in a hospital tank and didn't treat with a copper based med in your display. If you did, don't expect any inverts to ever survive in that tank. But, keeping on topic, fish get sick when they are stressed. This can come from several things, such as living space not being large enough and is common with tangs, but also from nutrient rich water! High nitrates can be stressful and deadly to fish, which is why aiming for under 40 nitrates is best in my opinion.

For a side note, ich is a parasite that has several life stages. You only ever see one, the cyst phase on the fish. You don't see where they are growing in the sandbed or even swimming up from the sandbed to find a new host. To successfully treat ich, this requires 6-8 weeks of running the display tank fallow while treating the fish in a hospital tank during this period with a copper based medication. There are other meds on the market that are all talk, they don't use copper and say they are 'herbal' or 'all natural'. There is no proof of them ever working.
 
I still think it's dinoflagellates. OP I would look them up and decide for yourself. Dino creates Co2, which are the bubbles in the algae. I had them, and I took out all my rock and scrubbed. That took care of them.
 
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