Brown algae...I think

At first I thought the stuff on the bottom was related to the diatoms because it came shortly thereafter. But now that it has greened up, it seems they aren't related. Is cyanobacteria something I need to worry about?

 

It's not something to "worry" about but it is an indication that something is wrong with your water. If it is cyano, increase water flow in the area that it's growing and get your nitrates and phospates down if they're high. How old are your bulbs by the way? And are you using r.o. water? If you are using r.o. water, you might want to test it for nitrates and phosphates as well.

 

The bulbs are maybe 6 months old at the most. I am using RO water that is prefiltered by a whole-house filter, so that should be good...but I'll check it out anyway. One thing I know for a fact is that I have poor flow in my tank. Apparently I need to bump that up the priority list.

 

Increasing flow does absolutly nothing for slime other then make it stringy which looks worse then just a large patch of slime. Back when my tank was having all sorts of problems, flow was not an issue. My water source was. I switched to a new source and apparently it was full of phosphates. Went back to purified tap water(not ro) and problem solved.

My 75g turns over 30+ times an hour, flow was definetly not an issue, all it did was make the slime stringy that I had. I have also heard the same results from other people who were told to increase flow.

First you need to find the source. Correct the source or change to a better source. Then do a 20%+ water change, siphon up as much of the slime as ossible, then you shouldnt have any more problems.

 

I'm due for a water change on Tuesday anyway. This time I'll try to do some siphoning as well. But, how do I siphon up the green stuff without siphoning up the sand?

 

Ive never had a problem with a siphon. You might get a little sand, but nothing to worry about. There is a lot of good things in the sandbed, but there is even more worse things that need to be siphoned out from time to time. Even the best sand filtering critters cannot do it all. All the left over food and waste settles in the bottom. Skimming and filtering cannot always et it either, thats why some people run bare bottom tanks. Over time all that built up gunk will harden your sand bed, and make it usless. Seen it happen... When we moved one of my buddies tanks (125g and a 120g) there were what looked like black sheets of rock, which was really sand that had hardened from all the watse build up under the rocks over a few years. It was pretty nasty, which is a VERY good reason why you should never reuse sand without really washing it out well, which defeats the purpose of the idea of reusing it as livesand.

 

Interesting....OK, I'll give it a go. Thanks!

 

Alright, I tried using my siphon and not much happened. The algae was too heavy to go up the tube. All I managed to do was stir it up within the sand. Some stuff did come up, but not much to notice. Do I need a different type of siphon? I just have the gravity-type.