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Richmond

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My sand is starting to become covered in algae. I can't tell if it's diatoms, or cyano, or something worse. Any thoughts?

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andrewey

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At first blush, it looks like cyano. If you were to blow the sand with a turkey baster or something similar, does it fly off in strings/sheets? Is it bad all the time or worse at the end of the day compared with the beginning?
 
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Richmond

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At first blush, it looks like cyano. If you were to blow the sand with a turkey baster or something similar, does it fly off in strings/sheets? Is it bad all the time or worse at the end of the day compared with the beginning?
Just started seeing it yesterday. Seems better in the morning, but got worse throughout the day. I'll turkey baste now and report back in a moment.
 
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Richmond

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At first blush, it looks like cyano. If you were to blow the sand with a turkey baster or something similar, does it fly off in strings/sheets? Is it bad all the time or worse at the end of the day compared with the beginning?
Hitting with turkey baster, it's kinda mat like. It basically just disintegrated into the sand when I blew hard enough to break it up.
 

ScottB

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They way to know for sure is to get a sample under a basic student microscope. Often it is a mix of diatoms, cyano, and (hopefully not) large cell amphidinium dinoflagellates.

I am not a big fan of dosing antibiotics (erythromycin most likely, but manufacturers won't say) to a reef aquarium. Many do it, but results vary a lot: Nothing, good short term but cyano returns, solves the problem, or very often it solves for cyano only to invite dinoflagellates to fill the breach left behind.

Cyano often appears when nutrients are swinging or are out of balance (NO3 versus PO4). That is where I would start focussing first. Make sure you have available nutrients for sure before throwing a hail mary antibiotic.
 

andrewey

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Blowing away in mats is suggestive of cyano. It could be something else or even a combination of many organisms. The only way to be sure is to scope it out, although there are some other neat tricks that can ballpark the likely organism.

If it is cyano, you really have two schools of thought. One one hand, you could use chemiclean, theorized to be a compound that is or is similar to erythromycin- if you do this, make sure to follow directions closely as @Snoopy 67 pointed out. The second approach would be to adjust your focus on your nutrients to ensure they are in line and balanced in addition to increasing flow lower in the tank (after nutrients are dealt with).

Edit: @ScottB gave the better answer first- go with their recommendations :)
 

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