What kind of Algea is this?

[mrg02d]

Hello all,
I finally decided to take a picture of an annoying algae that is in my tank. Every week I have to spend an hour scraping it off the sides of the tank. It is slimy at first, and then hard like coralline. It is actually MORE difficult to remove than the coralline I have growing.

It looks like some kind of brown hair algae as eventually this stuff gets a hairy growth on it.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[melosu58]

You need to get a mag float so you can do it everyday and that keeps it down. If you let it keep building before you know it`s hard and has to be scraped off. I get it daily while it`s dust.

 

[mrg02d]

Hello,
Yea the stuff is actually too hard by the time its morning. Ive got two magfloats
They wont touch it...There is two forms of this junk. Both form by morning, both seems to come off as a dust, but one is soft once I get to it and the other is hard. It also comes back each day in the exact same spot.

So what IS this stuff? I am planning to reduce feeding even more, cut lighting by two hours, and I just recently added a tiny bit of cheato to the DT. Ive been feeding Formula 1 pellets. Maybe I will switch to frozen mysis shrimp (rinsed in RO/DI water) for awhile and see what happens?

Matt

 

[melosu58]

If it`s dusty its diatoms. If it`s hard it`s probably the start of coralline.

 

[mrg02d]

If it`s dusty its diatoms. If it`s hard it`s probably the start of coralline.

Its actually slimy at first, but comes off as dust when scraped really hard. I doubt coralline. The entire back side of the tank is covered in this strange brown algae.

Matt

 

[thincat]

Okay, you should start looking for a cause of that algae. To much light, to much food, to much messing with the sand and rocks, Dead animal somewhere. Tap water. High p03 in the food you feed. If it has no fuel there will not be any excess algae.

 

[mrg02d]

Okay, you should start looking for a cause of that algae. To much light, to much food, to much messing with the sand and rocks, Dead animal somewhere. Tap water. High p03 in the food you feed. If it has no fuel there will not be any excess algae.

I am thinking it could be my pellets. The container claims no phosphates, but from what I read, they ALL contain phosphates. I dont have any dead animals. (This algea has been around for months and months). I use DI water for topoff. ( I may need to check that its still 0 TDS). I will start feeding frozen mysis washed in DI water, cut the lights back 2 hours, and check the TDS in the topoff water. Sound good?
Matt