red cyano/algae??

[Ichthus]

I have a 65g that is almost a year old. I have noticed in the past 6 months or so that a red algae/cyano grows only on the glass in front of the DSB. Never seen it on the rocks or sandbed....until today. The color of my CC seems to be turning a light shade of red. I begin my lights at 1pm and they end at 9:45. They stagger on/off to simulate dusk/dawn.

I feed a frozen mixture of mysis shrimp, blood worms, prime reef and flake food. About 1 frozen cube 1xdaily along with a 1 inch square piece of a veggie sheet.

I have 1 yellow tang, 1 blue tang (don't tell the tang nazis that I have 2 in a 65g), 1 blue tailed damsel, 1 royal gramma, 2 f.percula clowns, 1 banggai, 1 cleaner shrimp, turbo snails, margarita snails, cerith snails and nasarius snails.

Corals include 2 hammers, yellow leather, 3 brains, blastamosa, modern cynarena, finger leather, devils hand leather, fox, 2 bubbles, colt, star polyp, candy coral, montipora capricornus, a green slimer montipora, and about 3 or 4 other montiporas.

The lights are 4 x 96watt PC's (2 white 2 actinic 10K)

What can I do to keep this stuff from spreading? I just don't want it to get out of hand.

[Geoff]

do you have a skimmer?
maybe try 1 conch if the cyano is not so bad. i think your system is a little fish heavy. you can start by trying to remove the damsel. do you have a sump or refug?

G~

[Ichthus]

I have a CPR Bak-Pak resting over my Tidepool sump. I just added the blue tang recently as a local guy was upgrading to a 500g. I never had a problem with the damsel since he is a small bugger. I probably do have too many fish.

Just didn't understand why it started spreading. Do you think too many fish is the reason?

I thought that my skimmer wasnt working very well....it used to suck the gunk and I would have to empty it 1x week. Now, maybe 1x month. Do youthink I need a more powerful skimmer than the CPR on a 65g reef? That and before when it was working so well, i did not have a sump and now I have the Tidepool Bio Wheel sump.

[Geoff]

you might want to remove the bio-wheel off of the tidepool. this may be fueling your nitrates. have you cleaned the skimmer lately? how much flow do you have in the tank. cyano does not do well if there is sufficient flow. i think the increasing the flow would help slow the spread untill we find the true problem. i am inclined to think it is the bio-wheel. if you can you might want to try and grow some macro-algae in the tidepool. just hang a small NO grow flourescent above it.

HTH,

G~

[Ichthus]

Thanks Geoff. I have 2 1200 MaxiJets. I have tested my Nitrates and they are 0. Maybe my kit is bad???

Prob been about 2 months since I cleaned the ole skimmer.

Vacuuming the CC wouldnt help would it? Does sand like Southdown get Red Algae or is it a CC thing?

[Geoff]

vacuuming would help if you can do it without to much disturbing of the SB. it does not matter which kind of substrate you have they can both get cyano on them.

your test kit may not be bad. the problem is the fact that the bio-wheel produces free floating nitrates that can be used by the cyano. the bio-wheels do not have the habitat for the nitrate reducing bacteria on them, so it goes free floating ready to be used by another organism. in the LR all of the bacteria are in close proximity so the entire Nitrogen cycle happens right there, no free floating nitrates.

G~