Yellow Stuff growing on my Sand. Please help identify (pictures included)

[Ashish Patel]

I've had a few spots of this yellow stuff growing for the past few months. I did not thing too much of it since I do have some yellow sponge growing on one of my rocks. However, this stuff pretty much covered the entire back of the tank. I actually stirred up the entire sandbed 2 days ago and this was taken moments ago so its growing pretty fast now.

Has anyone else had something like this and identified it? The way its growing I can't confirm if its sponge or some other forms of bacteria or algae.

These are the best pictures I could come up with so let me know if more pictures would help.

 

[jda]

It is either cyano algae or diatoms - I cannot tell from the photos. Google images of both and see which one it is.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I just took a picture with the whites on.

 

[Ashish Patel]

It is either cyano algae or diatoms - I cannot tell from the photos. Google images of both and see which one it is.

Thanks. Wow - green slime algae - I can't believe I thought it was sponges. Time to remove and rinse some sand..

 

[jda]

If your tank is new, then this is just part of the cycle and I would let it be and do your routine maintenance - water changes and the like. This is a rite of passage for a tank less than a year old. Most of the time, anything that you do to interfere will need repaid in twice the time later.

If the tank is very much established (like more than a year and able to handle nitrates on it's own), then that is different and let us know the setup and parameters.

 

[Ashish Patel]

If your tank is new, then this is just part of the cycle and I would let it be and do your routine maintenance - water changes and the like. This is a rite of passage for a tank less than a year old. Most of the time, anything that you do to interfere will need repaid in twice the time later.

If the tank is very much established (like more than a year and able to handle nitrates on it's own), then that is different and let us know the setup and parameters.

Thanks for your insight...Yes you are right the tank is 8 months getting established but I felt it went through these cycles already having gone through diatoms, red slime, and some dinos. My parameters where all over the place the first 5 months but the last 3 months I got my nutrients very stable and finally seeing SPS encrust to the point I noticed small growth per day and increase ALK consumption. Few days ago my eheim feeder must have clicked its teeth so it was dropping in x10 times more pellets so this definitely caused a bacteria issues (smell in the house is awful and not the first time this happened, last time I got black cyano it seemed), I stopped feeding the tank for 2 days. I have not tested my water since all looks well but will test tonight. Luckily I caught it last time the autofeeder had my phosphates up to .1. I will no longer use the autofeeder to feed fish unless I am traveling.

Nitrates .2-.5PPM
Phosphates 0.03 (give or take)
ALK 8.0-8.2
CA 420
MG 1400

 

[Ashish Patel]

I tested last night

Nitrates - .5PPM (salifert)
Phosphates .025 (hanna ULR)
ALK - (8.3 hanna 8.1 Redsea)
MG 1400

Does anyone see anything wrong with this? Should I just let the cyano run its course? I'll probably siphon some of it out in the coming weeks. Its seem to stop spreading after stopping feeding for few days. I was overfeeding the tank to deal with low nitrates but I found it stays the same regardless of feeding. The overfeeding probably just cause unwanted algae growth.

 

[Ashish Patel]

The yellow slime was not a much of a concerned the real concern was the unidentified smell coming from the tank!

I did all these things this week and still the smell remains!

Day 1 Removed Autofeeder
Day 2. Removed 30% of sand (20LB) 25% waterchange
Day 3. Replaced all carbon.
Day 4. Removed 80% of chaeto
Day 5. Removed miracle mud 5lbs and 10LB of Liverock from sump. Made 25% waterchange.
Day 7. Removed more sand 20% and 25% waterchange.

2 months ago I pickedup some frozen mysis from store that was going out of business. Have been feeding this shrimp exclusively since running out of LRS reef frenzy 3-4 weeks ago. It hit me that this food smells funny but I never thought much of it since its frozen. I notice a slight improvement in smell after stopping using this producT!'

Don't feed OLD frozen fish food! It may cause smell and cyano!