How to keep a "white" sandbed??

[revisMVP]

My sandbed looks just plain UGLY!! It's covered in red slime algae and brown diatoms. I have plenty of water circulation and plenty of CUC but it still looks ugly. I've read gobies can do a good job at turning the sand over but can they single handly "clean" up my sand?

[arch aquatics]

algae problems are from one of 2 things

1) nutrients

2) light

once you get everything in check your algae will go away and leave you a nice white sand bed

[TheOldSalt]

Gobies won't help. They'll only make things worse. You must address and fix the cause of the red menace.

[Capt_MPFD]

I have the same thing in my tank, but I only have 2 small fish for a 55 gal. Is it too much light/not enough light? What about nutrients? Over feeding? My levels all seem to be in check but I have the same issue.

[Fishfirst]

1) nutrients: over feeding, too many fish, not enough water changes, or poor initial water quality of said water changes - a lot of times a combination of these
2) light: old bulbs, light on too long, direct sun light usually fuel to the nutrient fire.

[kay-bee]

How matured is the set up and how long is the photo-period?

[e048]

usually this is normal in new tanks.

My tank just finished getting over diatoms... now its the regular green algae, my cerinths love it! they lay eggs all over the tank to take advantage of the food... I still have some cyano here and again but what helped me deal with it was three things.

1. I got a goby and pistol shrimp (they churn up sand like a bulldozer)
2. Cut my lighting from 10 hours to 7
3. got my fuge and tank loaded with pods and macro algae (chato and graciallera algae works best) these out compete the diatoms and cyano for nutrients after adding macro to my tank my nitrates and phosphates dropped so fast I tested my water twice to make sure...

good luck! Hope this helps