FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Hi People,

Long time - no see.

My nephew has a 10 gallon that has been coated in a red slime algae (easily removed, but abundant). It does not look like typical brown algae.

I'm thinking it may be cyanobacteria. Any thoughts on how to rid the tank of it? Typical algae destroyer type stuff hasn't worked nor has phosphate removing pads.

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: <20
Lighting: 10 hours - 1w/gal
No Plants
Fish: 3 Danios, 2 c. jullii - no snails or other.
Water changes - 20% weekly.

I'm thinking of scraping out what I can and dropping in some erythromycin. Anything else I should try first?

Welcome back !

You have no plants so maybe scraping what you can and sypon that out. (dead cyano is toxic) then kill the lights for a week ? Babelfish should be along soon, she's a whiz with this algae. Are your nitrates too low ? I have a similar algae in my planted tank after lowering the nitrates from 40 to 10.

The Amazon Nut...

Thanks for the tip on dead cyano. I thought I had read that statement previously. Much of it is on decco and fake plants that can be cleaned outside the tank (like, bleached). I can air dry after rinsing and using dechlorinator.

I think I'll hook up my diatom filter and start scraping what is left on the glass and more permanent stuff. At least it won't be floating around.

This is my nephew's 10 gal. He barely gets in his weekly water changes and I help him with the filter. I was going to get him plants, but then I risk introducing all kinds of algaes I don't want to deal with or can't because I'm not around every day to watch. That's why I didn't get him any more fish than he has. A happy 12 year old's tank is an understocked one