Well I Think I Messed Up

roadkeel · Mar 3, 2015

I have been dosing calcium and alkalinity 2x per week in my 90. 30 ml of each. And the instructions said "add into a high flow area" so I have been pouring it slowly straight into my powerheads. Well I came home today to find a huge red algae bloom, I think). It is on my powerheads as well. It will easily rub off of the powerheads though. So should I have not been adding the calcium and alkalinity directly into the powerheads?

dkray944 · Mar 3, 2015

I've never heard of calcium and Alk creating algea blooms. I'm thinking you have a cyno bacteria problem. It will spread very easily if you wipe it off and then have the powerhead blast it around.

RalphsReef · Mar 3, 2015

That is not contributing to the algae. Sounds like red slime, which is somewhat easily beaten. Try increasing the flow to the areas with the algae and manually siphoning it out when you do water changes.

roadkeel · Mar 4, 2015

Thanks for the advice and tips. I re-positioned my powerheads last night and when I got up this morning and 75% of the red slime was gone. My skimmer looks like it worked overtime last night.

One other question. I have found that I have a pretty good sized dead area on one side of my tank behind my rockscape. I have maybe 8-10" of space between the rocks and the back wall. I now see that I am losing some really needed room/space by doing this. So if I move my rockscape back how much space should I leave between the back wall and the rocks?

tat2z_21 · Mar 4, 2015

Cyano, is tricky and will go away with the lights off and the red slime comes back after a few hours. If your lights are on too long, or if you are over feeding, cyano can quickly start, adding flow to dead spots will help keep the detritus out of those areas and suspended in your water column allowing your filtration to properly dispose of it.