need to kill mystery algae!!!!!!!!!!

[tony]

if its slimy its cyano, if you can flake it off with your fingernail its likely coraline

if you follow the directions you should have no probs with chemiclean, i have used it a few times with no ill effects

[merlin0883]

will chemi-clean kill other types of algae(other than cyano)?

[tony]

here is a good pic of cyano for comparison:

[MKCindy]

I remember reading somewhere about Dark Brown and Red Velvet algae. It was considered good and improved water quality. I have some in my tank and it has always stayed contained to one side of one rock. Control is Sea Urchins and Sea Slugs.

[tony]

will chemi-clean kill other types of algae(other than cyano)?

never has for me

cyano is a bacteria, not really an algae

[apedroza]

I have seen this type of algae before. It is not cyano but a very short "velvet" algae. It encrusts the rocks and is very difficult to remove even with scrubbing. Not sure if it is harmful or not, but I got rid of it just in case. I just cured the LR for a few weeks and it seemed to work.

[caferacermike]

I met another reefer in ATX Friday that claims to have exactly what you have going on. Another "you are not alone" reply.

[Kristy]

Okay Merlin,
Wish you had posted this about one day earlier. I just peeled a bunch of this junk off a couple of rocks and I'm pretty convinced after reading all your replies that we're dealing with the same stuff.

I also think mine was not cyano or if so, then it would have been a different type of cyano than what I've encountered previously. We had a run-in with cyano shortly after our tank was set up and we were able to siphon it off the sand and treat the tank and contain it. This stuff is not siphon-able, not wispy and fluid like cyano. The texture is very different (velvety) but the color is the same. In fact it almost encrusted the two rocks in question.

I also have some coraline algae in the same burgundy color on different rocks and for a long time I scratched my head and could not decide what was going on... is all of this good coraline algae or is all of this some sort of velvety red algae? etc.

Here were the deciding factors for me: The two rocks with this problem were both from the same guy from MAAST and both had a little coral on the rock (one was green star polyp and the other a few zoas). In both cases the red velvety stuff began to aggressively grow in an almost encrusting way and began to choke out the coral.

I spent a couple of hours peeling it off with my fingernails and grabbing it with my tweezers. When you can grab a piece of it, it stretches and pulls off and has an almost balloon-like texture in very small bits. Underneath this mess I was able to find good old coraline algae as well as some gasping coral getting smothered. It is too soon to say whether the coral will recover but I am hopeful that it will in time.

Hope this helps! Good luck,
Kristy

[merlin0883]

I have seen this type of algae before. It is not cyano but a very short "velvet" algae. It encrusts the rocks and is very difficult to remove even with scrubbing. Not sure if it is harmful or not, but I got rid of it just in case. I just cured the LR for a few weeks and it seemed to work.

how did you get rid of it?

[Troy Valentine]

Josh,

I believe the algae you have is called Asparagopsis Toxiformis. It should look like this:
http://www.aquatouch.com/algae.htm

This is the worst algae that you can have..... I almost quit the hobby after 13 years because of it. Thank god a fellow member talked me out of it. So I did a lot of research on it, and found that is actually a common food source in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. It is part of the Asparagis family.

The only way to get rid of it is to use Mexican Turbo Snails, and skim the heck out of your tank.... Remove any excess disolved organic matter. But the most important thing is PATIENTS it will take several months for the algae to go away. HTH