Is algae bad or good?

Question

in my saltwater fish tank i have algae(lots of algae)

Answer 1

If it's long green and hairy looking you should try to rid of it. Take the rocks out and scrub this off with a wire brush and remove as much of it as you can, then do a water change. If it is pink, green, orange, purple, or red and hard it is beneficial to your tank. Cyano can be eliminated by increasing the flow in the areas that it is growing. Good luck, it can take some time to battle green hair algae, and sometime a skimmer is nesseccary.

Answer 2

i think it's bad. after a while, it's gonna stink. you should clean out your tank. after that, buy this algae-eating fish.

that's what it looks like when it's sucking the glass.

http://www.schillmania.com/photos/35mm/i...

Answer 3

Depends on the color, pinkis good, but any other algea needs to be cleaned, pink does to if it starts to take over the tank, but pink means that tank is healthy. Other algea than that just means there is enough light for it to grow.=)

Answer 4

Algae in itself isn't bad, but it is indicative of lax maintenance.  Without nitrate (which accumulates without water changes), algae will not grow, so if you're seeing algae growth, you can assume you need to be doing more water changes.  There are several Cyanobacteria species  (not truly algae) that are capable of producing toxins, but these are fairly uncommon in aquaria.

List of toxic Cyanobacteria: http://www-cyanosite.bio.purdue.edu/cyan...

Answer 5

Some algae is actually required for a saltwater tank, your fish will die without it.  A good amount of algae will look like somebody sprinkled algae on the bottom of the tank but should not look like a carpet.  If you have too much algae in your tank you should check your filter or maybe you need to change your filter or activated filtration rocks.  It could just be that you need to clean the tank and do a partial.  There is some work involved with saltwater.

Answer 6

sometimes it's bad, but if you leave any kind in for a while and don't clean it, then it can turn into a bad problem