Red-brown algae. Is it cyano?

[crazyleo]

Hi guys. This is a bit of a long one, so please bear with me. So, about 3 months ago, my nutrients crashed and stayed at 0 for a bit and I had a dino outbreak. I'm pretty sure it was LCA since there was no snotty brown stuff, just brown sand.

I started to dose phosphate and nitrate, lowered my lights and cleaned the sand bed every 2 days. After about 2 weeks it was all gone and I had nice white sand.

All was sunshine and rainbows for about 2 weeks. Over the 2 weeks I raised my lights back up slowly so my montys would stop being mad at me and then the dinos came back only this time its snotty.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago, the dinos are mostly under control with just a small patch or 2 that I suck out when I find them every couple of days, but I have red spots on my rockwork right next to one of my torches. Over the past week, it's stopped opening and doesn't look like it's doing too well and now the orange is growing on the torch. Any ideas what it might be?

Tank is 150g
Alk is stable between 8.7-8.9
Cal 440
Mag 1300
Ammonia 0
Nitrate is pretty stable between 9.8 and 11.6 over the last 2 weeks
Phos .03 but rises and drops alot.
Salinity 1.025

They really show under the blue lights.

Thanks,
Leo

 

[Subsea]

Does it blow off easily? Cyanobacteria, aka red slime, comes in many color.

 

[crazyleo]

Yes it does. I sucked most of it up yesterday during my water change. Is it ok to blow it off? Or will it just make it worse? I've been looking up how to deal with it but I keep finding contradicting answers.