Algae help

[1eddie92696]

Hi! So I have had my tank set up for about 4 months now and I'm experiencing some algae of some sort. It looks like a light (sortof neon) green. I was feeling it with my finger and it's slippery and unable to be scraped off with my nail. I have had my fair share of algae problems but I like others opinions. There is also a little dark red/burgundy colored blotch on the live rock. It's also unable to be scraped off with a finger nail. I have had some diatoms recently but it's subsiding. It all seemed to start when I changed my light to an old led light from a smaller previous tank. Could the green algae be the beginning of the fuzzy green hair algae? That wasn't fun to deal with last time I had it! Anyways, any help is good! Thanks!!!

 

[1eddie92696]

Two Pictures is on my photo album "Tank".

 

[furam28]

1) what's your light cycle? in general new tanks are prone to algae blooms, so the first 6 months its a good idea to have shorter light cycles. my tank is about 3 months old and i keep my lights on less than 8 hrs per day. if you make any changes to light cycles make sure you do it very gradually because corals can react badly to sudden changes in light.

2) whats your phosphate levels. thats usually the culprit. i would suggest getting a phosphate test kit (salifert is cheap but decent). low phosphate will keep your corals happy and keep your algae at check.

3) to clean algae you need a good clean up crew of mixed snails: these are my favorites: margarita snails (voracious appetite. they eat off rocks and glass), nassarius (these burrow in the sand keeping it well stirred and eat detritus), cerith snails (these eat cyano off sandbed), nerites (these stay mostly on glass), mexican turbos (these eat a lot of algae. so if you don't have enough they die off. they also grow really big and can knock off corals.)

 

[reepher315]

As my coraline developed my tank had shades of green and red also hard to scrape. Maybe just some fresh skin?