What to do????

[engwife36]

Hello eveyone. My name is Leean and I was told I could come here to learn about the hobby and get some help if I ever need it. So here I go....

I have a 110 gallon tank that has been running for a little over two weeks. I have put 85lbs of CaribSea Aragonite Seaflor Special Grade Reef Sand and a 20lbs bag of live sand. There is only about 16lbs of LR in there right now. I have 88lbs more curing in the garage. My lights are 2 IceCap 660 ballast w/6 80W T5 Flourescents. I also have a Euro-Reef CS 6-2+ Protein Skimmer. There is of course no live stock in the tank yet. I have started getting I guess a typr of algae. It looks like a buch of tiny worms stuck on everything. Brown in color. Very tiny. You cannot tell that from the pics. Does anyone know what I am trying to describe and what can I do to fix it.

When I initially filled the tank up I used regular water with the prime stuff. Since then I have done one water change of about 25 gallons with RO/DI water. I have a 6 stage system that I will be using from now on. Thanks for all, L

[Instar]

Hi Leean, welcome to MAAST.

Every new tank goes through some natural startup algae blooms. The first are the brown ugly diatoms, unless you like brown that is. If it appears coagulated into little shapes, that can be the work of competeing bacteria colonizing the glass and rocks as well as micro organisms that live on the diatoms or construct tunnels with their empty cell membranes making a place for more little diatoms to grow easily in the shape you see. Nothing to worry about, but, certainly a motivator to think about adding a cleaning crew when your tank is ready. There will be more algae blooms that will annoy you but, just take it all in stride for the first several months. It has to happen to get the nice tank you want. It will be fine in the end as long as you use the correct wave length of lights for salt water tanks and have that clean up crew added eventually, and of course, use RO/DI for make up water. It also helps to have plenty of water movement, no stagnant spots. Do you have a refugium to grow macro in or a sump with this tank?

[matt]

I'm curious about your curing live rock in the garage. On one hand, I think it's a great idea to cure your rock outside of the tank, rather than subject your tank to the pollution that accompanies curing live rock. On the other hand, it's best to cure rock in a temperature-stable environment in as large a water volume as possible, with a skimmer and good lighting. So, hopefully, you have a few very large tubs in an airconditioned garage with lots of powerheads pushing water around, and can hang some lights over the rock. Ideally, you'd have your skimmer in there too. It's probably not practical to get the lights going, but that means you'll lose coralline algae; no big deal really, it'll come back. The temperature is a big deal though; if your garage is anywhere near outdoor temp you can count on basically everything alive on the rock dying. So, I would suggest you somehow get the rock at room temp so it will stay under 85F; either move the tubs indoors or just put the rock in your tank and plan on a 100% water change after it's all done.

As Larry said, you're going to have a few algae blooms as the tank goes through it's maturing process, and this will definitely be aggravated by using tap water, so at some point, a 100% water change (meaning taking all the water out at once, a big PITA) with R.O./D.I. water would be a good idea.

Welcome to MAAST; you'll get all sorts of enthusiastic advice here!

[engwife36]

Thanks for the info. I guess I need to move the LR inside the house. My garage gets pretty hot. I amgoing to do a 50 gallon water change this week with my RO/DI. This should help as some.