good news, bad news...

the good news is that my cyano has all but diminished! i may have 2 or 3 small spots on the glass, and possibly a little more on the rock! bad news is that one, (used to be my fav) piece of rock has been almost COMPLETELY covered by red bubble algae! its almost amazing at how much its covered up just in the past few days... oh, and now a few questions of "what is it?".....

now the algae growing on my glass is hard to remove...scrubbing it, you can forget, and when i use my scraper, it sounds like i'm scratching up the glass (although i'm not)... that's just how hard and rough the algae is... also, in the corners of the aquarium i've noticed patches of algae that don't resemble the rest of the algae.. i'm thinking it may be green coralline, but not sure... i think that, because they're about the size of the end of an eraser on a pencil, and the edges are very pronounced... the rest of the algae in my tank just kind of fades away from a certain point... but these specific spots resemble plates (hence the thought of coralline)...

oh, a few more discoveries; my only snail, which has always been on the rock and glass is digging around in the sand... is "something" gonna happen? like death, or snail eggs? i may have another snail somewhere, but i haven't seen more than one at a time... i've got a couple of hermit crabs tho, so it may be one of them starting to molt...they all have the same type of shell, 2 black, and one greenish... also, i've found more featherdusters (not the same kind as my original 3, which are now getting pretty big and purtiful)... and finally, i found some halimeda that's growing... it started off as a single leaf, but now another leaf is growing on the end of that...

its very strange, or maybe just a coincidence, almost everything except a single aiptasia is happening in the center of the aquarium... the dusters, bubble algae, halimeda, even the snail/hermit digging in the sand... oh, the algae on the glass is all over the place, and what i suspect is coralline, is only in the corners... so not EVERYTHING is happening in the center.......

 

You can have 2 or three types of algae growing at the same time. I have. I have recently got a bloom of green hair algae under control, and now a little cyano is popping up. During all of this, coraline continues to grow on the back glass, powerheads, and rocks.

 

but how can i fight the algae? i've got a lawnmower blenny, and as i've said, only 2 or 3 snails/hermits... i can scrape it off the glass with a little elbow grease, and what floats around, my damsel and mollies eat, and the rest settles on the rock, and eventually grows even more... my hand/eye coordination isn't good enough to scrape and siphon out at the same time... i use a python, but i think i just need a smaller diameter hose, with a smaller tube... it sucks up too much water too fast for me to run around to each piece of algae floating in the water... i also know what algae the fish eat, goes through their system and comes out exactly the same stuff...that's the way it seems anyway.. after scraping, a while later, the fish poop comes out nice and bright green...

as for the bubble algae, there's so much, the only feasable option is to take out the single rock (since that's pretty much where all of it is), and throw it away, because picking each one off is too time consuming, and if the emerald crabs are "hit and miss" as i've heard from several sources, i don't want that... i know that they will spread to cover the entire aquarium if i let them, but right now, its covering the one rock so well that i actually like the way it looks...

i want to keep the halimeda, just because i've heard that its good for nitrate control, and no fish will eat it... when it gets bigger, i may break off the piece of rock that its growing on and move it to a corner or something... and just keep it trimmed down or something...

 

Phos check

HI,
If you have algae you may have phos , its in everything food, flakes , and even plants, it stays in the loop either as plants or even in the bacteria in your sand.
You need to extract phos one way is water changes,skimming helps, another is to add a phos pillow or phos remover, avoid the aluminum based one (white) I ve read the better ones is iron based which is a benaficial element for inverts in small quanities.
The phos is food for your alage bloom problems the higher the phos the more problems it may even help that cyano to cycle.
remove phos from the loop and the algae will slowly die off this may release more phos so you need a phos extractor.Some people think kalkwasser helps trap some of the phos this can be a double edge sord cause if the ph falls a little the phos can be released from the bicarbonate as it dissolves. And there's a art to making mixing using kalkwasser if you mess up your KH goes sky high. personal expereince. hehe
Doug