Algae on sand

[matt]

Thank you to everyone that answered. When I first posted I guess I forgot some things. Water parameters are good, temps run between 74 and 76, and everything appears to be established.

A couple of things; what do you mean by "good"? First off your temp is too low if you're trying to have a reef tank; go more for 78-80. There are all sorts of things you can't really test for and all kinds of residual instability in a 3 month old tank, unless all your rock and sand came from an existing reef tank. I'd be pretty cautious about adding any fish until your cyano blom subsides, although it probably doesn't make that much of a difference; my current tank was fishless for at least 3 months, during which time I had a cyano outbreak despite the fact that I had almost entirely cured live rock, really high flow, and an efficient skimmer that's oversized for the tank.

[Willow]

if you read about it. It really doesnt matter if it high flow or not. It just wont settle. I have a high flow tank. I battle it all the time.

thanks for clearing that up for me.. lol.. and i had read the it didn't like high flow.. just wasn't sure how accurate that was!

[FireWater]

Like I said before I am new to this whole thing and I am learning as I go and researching as much as I can. I will try to get some accurate #'s on my water paramaters. Temp and conditions were "good" as tested by two different LFS on 4 occasions. I did a water change and full clean last night to remove as much as I could and it appears that what I have for a cleaning crew are getting quite a bit of the hair algae and other algae in the tank.

[urban79]

where did you get your live rock from. Alot of time is from the live rock you get. Cause me and my wife have the same everything. BUt my tank I got rock from alamo(I know IM dum) I fight it all the time. MY wifes tank nothen and I got her rock from other store. but we use the same r/o water and but we use differnt lights but mostly the same kinda wattage. I think it mostly came from the rock.

[FireWater]

Thanks again for responses. I got a hold of a test kit and will check everything myself versus going to the LFS for a while. The cleaning last night will hopefully help and I guess I will weather it out and see what happens.

[matt]

It's really good that you're testing yur own water rather than taking samples to the store, but you should keep in mind that test kits will only give you a general view of some of the more basic water chemistry parameters, and also that there is a real difference between certain test kits. For example, you could test zero for phosphate and still have plenty of phosphates to fuel an algae bloom, and most hobbyist quality nitrate tests are not very accurate at the low end. In particular, lots of new reefkeepers assume that if the fish store says your nitrogen compounds are "fine" meaning no ammonia or nitrite, then everything is go for stocking. But, the bigger picture is that there's a slow maturing period of several months in any new tank during which you should be very cautious about adding to the tank's bio-load. Usually there's so much die-off from new live rock that the whole system is in chemical flux, often times below the threshold of test kits but definitely toxic enough to affect livestock, for a long time until a new population of microscopic (and visible) critters is established and taking over the energy processing chores of the system.