Help identifying white looking roots on rocks

[Bradw18]

There's a small local fish store that iv been going to for as long as I can remember. She use to have saltwater tanks but got out of it as the market for saltwater fish around were I live went down. She kept one 55 gallon set up with a few feather dusters a chocolate star fish. We'll now she's decided to get back into saltwater and start from scratch. The tank she has has a red algae blanket covering most of the bottom of the tank. The few parameters I know are 2 t5 lighting (both ballast and bulbs are old) 6500k lights salanity is 1.022 no power heads and only a hang on filter. On the rocks there's what I can only describe as white roots coming from the rocks. Is this a part of the red algae or something else?


http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk21/bradw19/C0D78E31-D97F-4F88-9561-3A289261E0F5.jpg (http://s276.photobucket.com/user/bradw19/media/C0D78E31-D97F-4F88-9561-3A289261E0F5.jpg.html)

[mcgyvr]

The red is cyano..
The white are just tube worms which are harmless

[chefbill]

And if that is how she would keep a display tank looking (won't even get into how it's functioning) in a retail setting, and didn't know cyano and tube worms, I think I would pass on anything she was trying to sell me.

Dead center of the picture, you can even see a perfect straight on view of one of the worm's crowns.

[Big_Boss_77]

Probably old lights causing the cyano, just a guess without more knowledge

[Clowny88]

The red is cyano..
The white are just tube worms which are harmless
+1 ... Not a good looking tank, no power head? Sounds like she jumped back into saltwater without catching up on the changes in the hobby.

[Bradw18]

Her son is the one that use to take care of all the saltwater. Both the star fish and the 2 feather dusters I got from her are doing great. This is her only saltwater tank and she's taking it all the way down. She's almost 55-60 and last time she was into saltwater was in the 80s long before we could get on a forum and post a picture and ask for help. One thing that bothers me is she thinks she can just use tap water instead of using a rodi unit. Luckily I have one on the way:)