cortr
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2018
- Messages
- 7
- Reaction score
- 25
- Location
- San Diego
- What state or country do you live in
- California
Hi all. I'm on about month 4 of my first and only saltwater tank and have been fighting some algae for a bit over a month. It's 48 gallons.
At first I had some algae growing on the rocks that was sort of like bits of lettuce, maybe half the size of your littlest fingernail - though I was pinching them off as best I could, and scrubbing the rocks with a toothbrush. I also reduced my feeding, thinking overfeeding was the culprit, and kept doing aggressive water changes. I've been water changing about 25% of the water once a week or every ten days.
That original algae is mostly gone. Now I've got a sort of rust or brown colored "particulate" algae (or bacteria) on my sand, and it was growing on the rocks too - more on that later. In the pictures below you can see it decently well, though it doesn't really illustrate how the stuff comes apart in your fingers. You can't really pick up a clump of it, it will separate from the sand and rock easily but you're lucky to grab onto more than a pinch of it. I've also not had much luck siphoning it out - it may be that my siphon has too large a diameter, and I'm not getting enough vacuum force. There's also some wispy stuff on the right side of the tank, I'm not sure whether it's the same stuff or something else entirely.
Anyway, at the recommendation of my LFS, I've been dosing "Vibrant" algae cleaner, and it does seem to have been knocking the stuff back. I just gave the third (weekly) dose of 1ml per 10gal on Tuesday of this week.
If anyone can help ID this stuff or has suggestions on how to get rid of it - or other suggestions about the tank (I'm reading that maybe I'm actually water changing too much for example, or virtually anything else) I would love to hear them. I feel pretty clueless about the hobby, which is great because I love to learn!
Thanks.
At first I had some algae growing on the rocks that was sort of like bits of lettuce, maybe half the size of your littlest fingernail - though I was pinching them off as best I could, and scrubbing the rocks with a toothbrush. I also reduced my feeding, thinking overfeeding was the culprit, and kept doing aggressive water changes. I've been water changing about 25% of the water once a week or every ten days.
That original algae is mostly gone. Now I've got a sort of rust or brown colored "particulate" algae (or bacteria) on my sand, and it was growing on the rocks too - more on that later. In the pictures below you can see it decently well, though it doesn't really illustrate how the stuff comes apart in your fingers. You can't really pick up a clump of it, it will separate from the sand and rock easily but you're lucky to grab onto more than a pinch of it. I've also not had much luck siphoning it out - it may be that my siphon has too large a diameter, and I'm not getting enough vacuum force. There's also some wispy stuff on the right side of the tank, I'm not sure whether it's the same stuff or something else entirely.
Anyway, at the recommendation of my LFS, I've been dosing "Vibrant" algae cleaner, and it does seem to have been knocking the stuff back. I just gave the third (weekly) dose of 1ml per 10gal on Tuesday of this week.
If anyone can help ID this stuff or has suggestions on how to get rid of it - or other suggestions about the tank (I'm reading that maybe I'm actually water changing too much for example, or virtually anything else) I would love to hear them. I feel pretty clueless about the hobby, which is great because I love to learn!
Thanks.
