Newbie with lots of questions.

Someday I will have a euro-reef skimmer

 

Having cyanobacteria or diatoms is just a normal part of a new tank and it is frustrating. However you'll get there. You can ask your local water company for a water quality report. Unfortunately, a lot of water companies are adding chloramines and phosphates to their water now instead of just chlorine. The phosphates they are adding are partially what is causing the diatom/hair algae/cyanobacteria problems in a lot of people's tanks. '

You can add a DI unit to your RO unit relatively cheaply. Like Scuba said, it will remove the phosphates and silicates from your top off water. That is important because of this.......PHOSPHATES=BAD!!!

I'm not saying you have this because you don't have an RO/DI unit instead of an RO unit. The phosphates can be in your food, salt mix, top-off water, etc.

I PROMISE......it will get better. The fact that you want to fix this before moving on is a good thing.

 

welcome to the forum

the prizms are decent skimmers for the price there are much more better ones but that all depends on what you can spend. if you can go for the higer end models go for it. you actully do have quite a few critters for only running 4 weeks best thing is to slow down and quit adding things for a while your tank needs to level out.

corals should actually be added to the tank later, for the first couple months or so you wil have many different alge phases and most of them can kill and suffocate corals. as far as fish you should add 1 or 2 at a time no more than that because each fish adds to your bioload and that needs time to even out also.

for your cyano its a pain to get rid of add circulation, dont stock so fast, dont over feed, increase smaller more frequent water changes, check phosphate, nitrates, and silicates. with having new lights its probably not part of the problem. but check any of the above all of them can add to it. also use your skimmer and to keep up on it you can use a turkey baster to suck the alge out. it comes back but it helps from building up.

 

This will get rid of your cyno algea, but you may need to increase the water movement in your tank...usually adding powerheads and maybe a wave maker to get alternating currents or a scwd on your return..this stuff is reef safe...just turn off your skimmer...FOAM...follow directions to the T..do the water change it says...and I have ran carbon for a few days after the water change to get rid of the rest..lets see..here it is

Chemi-Clean
http://www.mops.ca/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/skus/wt/WTBE-16714.asp?E scstore

good luck

 

I have used Chemi-Clean before and it works great.

 

I noticed someone already mentioned blowing the red slime off everything in the tank with a turkey baster. Try to remove as much as possible of the floating red slime. I just caught all mine in a net as it floated around.Definitely need some more power heads. Good luck.