Daughters tank is a mess after vacation.

[rolibr24]

We left on vacation for a week and a half and we came home to our daughters tank that is a mess. It looks to me like hair algae on a few pieces of rock and on the sides of the tank. The sand bed has a reddish slime.
One of the pieces of rock is full of a coarser type of “grassish” algae, the two other pieces of rock and sides of the tank are full of a finer type that looks like hair algae from the images I searched.

We kind of freaked out and just did a large water change. We scraped off everything from the walls and sucked it out along with the reddish slime in the sand bed. I neglected to take pictures, sorry


We had the lights on timers, about 9 hours on. She has a HOB filter and skimmer, the cup was not full, and the filter was not loaded up. The fish are happy and well and the coral frags that she has are looking great, but several of them also have a bit of algae on the frag pieces. We had a sitter come daily to feed our fish and take care of our other livestock. It is a 30 gallon tank.

Where can I go next? I did pull out the rocks that were fully loaded. What should I do to nuke those? Our son has a tank that is cycled and sitting until his fish are out of quarantine from our LFS. So we do have the option of moving all her fish and coral over to his tank if needed. But I am a little concerned about moving her frags over to his tank and compounding the problem to his tank.

I am picking up a microscope tomorrow after work to get a better idea as to what I’m dealing with.

 

[Ultra Aquatics]

Reddish slime is more than likely cyano, increase flow and siphon out. Green algae is hard to diagnose without a pic or more Info. Does any of the green algae have a “fern” like structure? Meaning the strands have offshoots...if so then it’s bryopsis...which will need to be eradicated with fluconazole. If not it is more than likely green hair algae or turf algae. Mexican turbo snails can be a big help with these.

 

[rolibr24]

Here is a pic of the coarser algae that Is is pretty much contained to a single rock that I have sitting in a bucket of tank water right now.

If it is Bryopsis what can I do to this piece of rock to rid it before it goes back in the tank?

Here are pics of what look to me more like hair algae. Am I on the right track?
She does have 2 asarious snails. That first pic is actually one of them with the algae growing on him.

Hear is a patch of the “red slime” that I wasn’t able to get in the water change.

 

[Robink]

How long has her tank been set up?
If it already went through the ugly stage then I'm guessing the sitter over fed the tank. The coarser algae is not bryopsis, some kind of macro, and I'm guessing that came with the live rock and took off with the extra nutrients in the tank.
If the tank is relatively newly set up, it could just be going through the ugly stages. Regular maintenance and good husbandry will take care of that in time.

 

[Ultra Aquatics]

Agreed, the first pic doesn’t look like bryopsis, The rest look like regular hair algae and cyano.

 

[brandon429]

I want to suggest a complete, total 100% rip clean where we kill off that algae outside the tank, the sand is 100% cleaned zero cloud zero invader, and the whole tank is reset back up totally clean and it will not harm anything. partial cleaning is the risk, mixing cloud waste around, but this type of all-on cleaning is very powerful, here's one. You would simply do this, then add the direct algae killing step to that rock as you picture it/ hit all the plant areas with peroxide it'll kill em off. rinse rock put back on totally clean bed.

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

that is a 120 gallon system, far more delicate corals in tow and we pull this off every time we attempt it because we rinse that sandbed into total compliance, there is no waste to re mix when we're done.