ID?

[Donald Gilliss]

So about a month ago I had some dark green show up on one of my live rocks, and over the past month it has spread quit a bit, it doesn’t look like algae or stick off the rock any but need help finding out what it is.

 

[tmcca]

Is it hard or slimy? Looking at pic Green coralline algae. If it is slimy could be Cyano. Hard for sure coralline

 

[DSC reef]

Try blowing it off, looks like blue/green cyano.

 

[tmcca]

Actually looking more closely it is cyano. Check flow; phosphates; Nitrate; Tank new?

 

[Donald Gilliss]

So I take it cyano is no good for the tank? I’ll definitely check parameters. And I would consider it new, it hasn’t been set up for an entire year yet, I’d say about 10 months or so.

Thanks

 

[tmcca]

Cyano is from elevated waste levels including both phosphate and nitrate are the leading reason it grows in your tank. Lack of proper water circulation is another reason as well. Also spectrum of bulbs. You using LED or? LED Green and Red spectrum can cause this as well that I am not 100% sure about. I would check though Nitrate/Phosphate and share your results. Make sure you also use good test kits. Nitrate (Salifert); Phosphate Hanna 764 or Salifert.

Things to think about is lets say you test Nitrate and shows 20ppm it could be actually a lot higher since cyano and other algae feed off this.

Bare bottom or Sand?

 

[tmcca]

What I would do is first check your Nitrate/Phosphate and possibly make more flow in the area your experiencing this and siphon as much as you can. Nitrate <1 ppm; Phosphate <0.3 ppm to strive for.

Reason I am asking Sand or bare bottom is that Sand can trap a ton of detrius. If you do have sand you can either go DSB or shallow not in between and many people make this mistake. I did when I first started. So either go shallow 1" up to 2" or 4" or greater sandbed DSB.. If you go DSB it has to be fine grain.. I am not going to talk DSB just stating this because I had this issue. I had 3" of sand and detrius trap I took my sand down to 1.5 inches and now my tank is 1ppm or undetectable Nitrate.

 

[DSC reef]

We grew cyano with and without sand. Imbalances of nitrate to phosphate can cause issues. Cyano is a bacteria so bacterial imbalances can occur too. Sometimes adding a different strain of bacteria like Dr.Tims can do wonders on some tanks.