Green algae on rock and sand

[A Young Reefer]

So I have this green algae growing on my rock and sand for the past few days.
what is it and how to treat it?

 

[A Young Reefer]

Forgot to mention that I have zero nutrients that I am working on raising.

 

[Miami Reef]

Are they easy to siphon out?

 

[A Young Reefer]

Are they easy to siphon out?

Yes I just siphoned 98% of it. But I am confident that it might spread again.

 

[WVNed]

Turn your lights down.
Maybe increase your flow some.
The first thing most people get asked are what are your parameters.

But here are my tanks today
Tank 1
3 years or so old

no algae
Tank 2
3 weeks or so old. The animals from a 75 gallon moved into a 180. I put 150 pounds of live rock bought from fishguy242 in there.

some algae growing

Tank 3
3 years old

all the algae you could ever want.

All these tanks run on 1 sump. They have the same water parameters.
Tank 3 is blasted with light. 300 watts LED over 29 gallons.
Tank 1 I have the light dialed in and a mature clean up crew. Lit with MH/T5
Tank 2 is new, going through new tank stuff and has a small clean up crew. Lit with LED

You say your nitrates and phosphates are zero. The algae is just using what you have to grow.

In my system I strictly control phosphates with LaCl on a doser. This keeps cyano away. If you get some significant phos in your system without nitrates you will see that next.
My nitrates are 33 right now because I just rebuilt my sulfur denitrator and it hasn't come online yet, but it will.
and they really don't matter to me unless they get over 50. I have AWC will prevent that though.
Always keep nitrates higher than phosphates. Find and read posts by Lasse about cyano mat formation.

Your tank looks like tank 3. There is a light level where coral do fine but algae is not exploding so fast a CUC cant keep it knocked down. That is what I have learned. It's like finding the right pitch when tuning a guitar though. Small changes, watch and keep sucking it out. See how fast it comes back. If you dont have the ability to change the light level with control you raise it up slowly.

 

[A Young Reefer]

Thank you everyone!

 

[Miami Reef]

My solution is really simple for this.

You can’t limit algae by lowering nutrients. Up to a certain extent <0.03ppm phosphates.

A system growing corals is the perfect recipe for growing algae. How do natural reefs combat algae? They have herbivores. A lot of them.

The solution is to add some urchins and snails. The algae you have looks like mulm. Probably not a lot of flow with detritus building up. I would siphon it out, increase the flow, and add herbivores.

 

[A Young Reefer]

My solution is really simple for this.

You can’t limit algae by lowering nutrients. Up to a certain extent <0.03ppm phosphates.

A system growing corals is the perfect recipe for growing algae. How do natural reefs combat algae? They have herbivores. A lot of them.

The solution is to add some urchins and snails. The algae you have looks like mulm. Probably not a lot of flow with detritus building up. I would siphon it out, increase the flow, and add herbivores.

I do have snails and urchins. I will be adding some sand sifting snails.
Regarding flow; I have two jebao scp 90s across the whole back of the tank. I also added another wave maker today on the bottom back area of the tank to eliminate any dead spots.
Siphoned it all out and will see how it goes from here.

 

[Miami Reef]

I do have snails and urchins. I will be adding some sand sifting snails.
Regarding flow; I have two jebao scp 90s across the whole back of the tank. I also added another wave maker today on the bottom back area of the tank to eliminate any dead spots.
Siphoned it all out and will see how it goes from here.

Is your tank bare bottom or with a sandbed? I thought it was bare bottom. It’s very possible that the old sandbed is loaded with organics and detritus. I’m a huge proponent of bare bottoms for this reason.

 

[A Young Reefer]

Is your tank bare bottom or with a sandbed? I thought it was bare bottom. It’s very possible that the old sandbed is loaded with organics and detritus. I’m a huge proponent of bare bottoms for this reason.

It’s with a sand bed, I had nassarius snails that sifted the sand for me, but my wrasse ate them all.

 

[ggNoRe]

Did you ever beat this? I'm dealing with it now on my sand bed. I've noticed you have had many similar issues as me.

 

[A Young Reefer]

Did you ever beat this? I'm dealing with it now on my sand bed. I've noticed you have had many similar issues as me.

Yes I actually did, I went the chemical route and used Dino X by fauna Marine using 3/4 of the recommended dose.
I have heard many horror stories of people using it but it has worked for me.

 

[ggNoRe]

Good to know. I had a bad bout with dinos over a year ago but beat it. I thought this green stuff on my sand was green cyano so tried chemi clean first but it didn't do anything to it. For about a month now I've been siphoning it out once a week and working on lowering my nutrient levels. Going to continue to do that for a little longer. If it doesn't work may use some DinoX which I still have some left over.