Orange in Sandbed

[mikebusc]

What is this orange in my sand bed? And if you look at the side view, there are yellow and purple spots also. Not sure how well you can see with my pics.

 

[mikebusc]

It came on in about two days

 

[Monad]

How old is the tank? What are the parameters? Do you have any pictures under white light?

 

[mikebusc]

Tank is about nine months old now. Parameters were all good except for phosphate. It was .2 two days ago and 1.5 today. I bought some PhosGuard that was just delivered, but maybe I don’t have to use it yet if phosphate is going down. I turned up the skimmer not sure if that helped or not. But I did accidentally have about three days worth of food go into the tank at one time a few more days before the spike. Problem with my auto feeder. Could that have caused a spike that quickly? After a couple days? I have attached some pics under adjust white light.

 

[BristleWormHater]

Wow...your lights are very blue
Thanks for the white light pics I was wondering if you popped a glowstick in the sandbed.
Jokes aside the orange stuff is just diatoms. They go away as the tank ages, they usually only stay for a week or two and make a good snack for most of your clean up crew. The green stuff is just some miscellaneous algae really no problem it will probably also go away on its own but cerith snails would probably eat it too.

 

[mikebusc]

I turned down the white light because I was battling some bad GHA. I’ve also been brushing it off and used some FluxRx. I think I have a handle on it now. But it was bad a couple weeks ago. I also got a bunch of snails and newly introduced five urchins that helped as well. Thanks for the answer. I was starting to worry and was thinking of vacuuming this weekend. What about the colorful spots in the middle of the sand?