Brown Algae - diatoms

[AustinReefClub]

This weekend I added some frags (green star polyps, yellow polyps, orange cap) to my tank after getting my lights last week. The frags love the light and everyone seems happy, until yesterday morning when I looked in the aquarium and noticed a distinct brown tint to some of my LR.

Looks like I have brown algae/diatoms on the sand, rock, and aquarium glass. I've read that this is due to light + food + silicates. I did make the mistake of using tap water when I first started the aquarium.

What's the best way to combat the brown stuff? I've read about doing massive water changes and reducing light to starve it out but I don't want the corals to suffer.

My substrate is fine sand, so I'm concerned about siphoning it (won't the siphon just suck all the finer grains out)?

[aquasport24]

How old is your tank? Got to let it going thru cycle first before add any livestock. My tank went thru 6-8 weeks cycle. Start using R/O DI water for water change after the initial cycle completed. Do not add anymore livestock( i know it tempting but just wait). You can add some clean up crew to help out some...and test for nitrate..good luck and just be patience.

[Daniel]

If you want to start working on a solution get yourself a rena phos zorb pillow put some floss to pick up any diatoms as you clean them off. Change floss daily. Rinse pillow once a week.

[kkiel02]

One of our sponsors (reef cleaners) has a real good article on nuisance algae and diatoms are one of the first three. Might want to read it all though since you will more than likely have to battle them throughout your reefkeeping experience.

[AustinReefClub]

The aquarium was started with existing live rock from another member, and after a few weeks of testing everything seemed correct (Aquaktek checked the water for me and found negligible ammonia, nitrites, measureable nitrates that they recommended would be fine with a 25% water change). On their advice I added 3 snails and two blue-leg hermits, waited a week, and had them test the water again. Everything was good so I purchased a small male ocellaris clown. Three days later I added a second clown. This past weekend I took another water sample in and was told everything looked good except my PH had fallen to around 8 and my alk was low.

I picked stuff to adjust my PH up to 8.3 and raise the alk, picked up some small frags, and headed home. I followed the directions to raise the ph and alk. When I introduced the frags after acclimating I dropped in a dose of reefroids. The frags all seemed happy, but the next morning I noticed the browning on my top live rock and sprinkled on the sand.

Given that the brown algae didn't appear until my lights came in and started being run (actinics 10 hrs, others 8) and the reefroids dosing, I'm trying to figure out where the tank stands.

I turned off the lights for the remainer of the day yesterday and hand fed the clowns some mysis making sure they ate it all and left nothing to litter the tank. As of this morning the "bloom" seems to have stopped and receded a bit, still showing some brown on the live rock but the surface of the sand seems much cleaner.

I plan to do about a 30% water change tonight and put a freeze on introducing life.

Would you think that it's the light + reefroids that kicked this off?

[Daniel]

The lights being off won't help the diatom problem you have to remove the silicate and nutrients (food source) from your tank. Mine was leaching from my sugar fine argonite sand and new base rock (cured and washed many times over 3 weeks) I put in. The problem gets worse when there is not enough circulation. I had power go out for 8 hours that was the cause of my recent bloom. I'm slowly taking out sand to have a very thin bed.

Daniel

[AustinReefClub]

Between my two power heads and the emperor 400 on the back there doesn't seem to be an issue with circulation.

Is there a trick to siphoning fine sand?

[justahobby]

When sand starts rising crimp the tube with your hand. The sand will fall but debris will float long enough for you to uncrimp and continue. If you are using a big tube you may want to always have a wad of tubing in your hand to create a slower siphon.

[manhorsedog]

it will be gone in no time just wait, all tanks have to go through many different stages. It most likely it will not be "stable" till about a year from now.

[GoldCorals]

T

Given that the brown algae didn't appear until my lights came in and started being run (actinics 10 hrs, others 8) and the reefroids dosing, I'm trying to figure out where the tank stands.


It's hard to say where it stand's at the moment and to put it just on the lighting may be premature. You mention a lot of changes; lights, livestock, feeding, additives for alk and pH on what appears to be a fairly new system. With so many changes in a short time frame it's hard to pin point a cause. Heck it's difficult on a established system. The problem could be one thing a combo of any or all.
I'd recommend no more changes to the system for 4-6 weeks with a weekly water change of 10% (testing water chem twice a week) to let things settle down and avoid any major problems.

[alton]

Yep what Gold Corals said, it is called new tank syndrome, cut your lighting times back a little and ride the brown wave. After a month or so everything will clear itself out. Just keep doing water changes.

[AustinReefClub]

Appreciate all the input, and yes there are tons of variables in this equation so I will start controlling those to locate the cause.

That said, when I got home last night the tank looked much better. Rather than the full bloom I was expecting the snails seem to have cleaned up quite a bit of the mess. They had cut huge swaths across the glass and the sand surface looked much cleaner. When I googled brown algae and diatoms everything had pretty much indicated the problem would get rapidly get worse. Luckily not the case here, but serves as a good slow down warning.