Brownish rust algae and air bubbles

[carreradude]

9 month old 28gal nano quad cf's, started growing a brown/rust colored algae? on the sand bed on in front portion of tank appear to strings, and has lots of little bubbles of air on the surface of the sand where the brown coloring is.
What is this? and how can i get rid of this?

[danel]

Are you using ro/di water? This sounds exactly like what I had a while ago and turned out the filters in my ro/di needed to be changed

[carreradude]

ya get my ro/di water for top off from the same fish store i get my water change premixed water from. i do 5 gal water changes once a week.

[Mavrk]

Sounds like dinoflagellates. How old is your tank?

Edit: sorry, missed the 9 month thing.

[Mavrk]

Does it look like this?

[carreradude]

yes looks simimlar except my air bubbles arent suspended by strings, the air bubbles are right on the surface and the strings are lying flat on the sand bed

[danel]

What do you have as far as flow and clean up crew?

edit= just saw you clean up crew

[carreradude]

my clean up crew is in my signature and its a nano so I have to return pumps and a wavemaker and a koralia nano power head

[danel]

Have you tested for phosphates? This was the cause of when I had them as my ro/di was bringing phosphates into my tank.

As far as water goes, I used to buy water from my LFS until I noticed that the water was coming with high TDS readings and I was having trouble with phosphates, nitrates and just ended getting my own ro/di

[carreradude]

no havent tested phosfates recently, the water comes from a very reputable well know store, would testing the water directly help also.

[danel]

Definitely test your water and you can go from there. I would test for phosphates, nitrates and ammonia to begin with.

[carreradude]

ok will do i just did my ammonia and nitrates both looked good, should i test the water from the store as well?

[danel]

As far as water from the store I would see into the TDS and phosphates reading only

[Mavrk]

Originally Posted by carreradude

yes looks simimlar except my air bubbles arent suspended by strings, the air bubbles are right on the surface and the strings are lying flat on the sand bed

Yeah that picture is just of one variety. Sounds like dinoflagellates, but could be cyano... Most likely dinos.

What's your pH?

[carreradude]

ph is 8.2

[Pumped]

Originally Posted by Mavrk

Does it look like this?

I have something similar to this in my tank. It is now covering 70% of my sandbed. My tank is only 3 months old. At first I thought it was diatom, but looking closer I see billions of bubbles on the tips. I was using tap water up until yesterday I got my RODI unit and did a 50% water change.


My nitrates are 0-5, and phosphates zero.
My nitrates were higher before my wc & last week I threw in some Chaeto about the size of a baseball.
I 'm hoping this dies out on its own.

[Mavrk]

It should. It could also be cyano depending on the coloring. Is it slimy and more red? It is really just part of the new tank syndrome. Green algae comes next. Your readings are low because they are being used to feed algae, etc.

[Pumped]

The color is a really dark brown.
Well my nitrates were always around 20 but thats because my old water source had 20 and now its 0 thanks to the BRS ro/di.
I almost bought a bag full of snails today until doing some reading.

[karp12]

Originally Posted by Pumped

The color is a really dark brown.
Well my nitrates were always around 20 but thats because my old water source had 20 and now its 0 thanks to the BRS ro/di.
I almost bought a bag full of snails today until doing some reading.

I had the same thing in my tank around the nine month mark. This is what I did to get rid of it.

1) Take it easy on the fish food
2) Keep up on my water changes every week
3) Make sure the protein skimmer is working correct
4) Add a little more flow to the bottem of the tank
5) Cut back on my lighting on time
6) Added chemi pure elite

It took about a month and I have never seen it again..