Red/Brown Algae Help Please!!

Hi all - my tank is accumulating algae a bit quicker than normal (new to hobby - so I'm really not sure what "normal" is LOL). I'm getting a film of red algae on my LR and a film of brown algae on my substrate. Any ideas on what I can do or is this normal? I buy RO water and salt water from LFS and do 20 gal water changes every other week. My water stats are good - I just compared my home tests to my LFS and came up with very close to the same results: Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphates near 0, PH= 8.3, Alkalinity = 10, SG = 1.023.

Tank specs: Started 10/08 - 90 gal tank, 20 gal sump, 90 lbs LR, thin layer of aragonite, T5 lighting (3 blue, 3 white), skimmer

Fish: 3 baghhai cardinals, BC blennie, PB tang, 2 clowns, 2 damsels, engineer goby, sixline, coris

Corals: leather, birdsnest, pulsing xenia, button polyps, green star polyps, asst shrooms, fungia

Other: 2 sea stars, sally lightfoot crab, clam, misc hermits and snails

 

the red algae is probably not algae. probably cyano bacteria... number of things that could be causing that... nutrient rich system from overfeeding or the ro water maybe not ro water. also lighting and water movement could be a could be a factor. couple things you can do. make sure there is quite a bit of water movement. looks like you have a birdsnest (sps) so make sure you have proper water flow.

You can conquer the "red algae" if you want to with chemi clean. ive used in the past on my previous tank and it works wonders.


for the brown algae on your substrate i cant help you too much cause im havin a similar problem. my lfs said to stir the top layer every few days and in a few weeks should no longer come back.