brown algae on sand!!! what can i do???

[Mr Cob]

I'd get a sump with macro algae. I never have liked canister filters on reef tanks.

[allan]

+1 what rob said.

You know, a watched pot never boils. You will have that brown stuff until you realize you no longer have it. My whole tank was brown when I redid the rock and sand. The first time it happened I was like "What the heck is this crud?" this last time I was like "Hmm, my coffee needs a refill". It was gone before I knew it.

A diamond goby is good, especially over the dragon. Dragons take the sand and sift it at about three or four inches and leaves your rock and coral covered at about that height down. The diamond does the same thing, but they stay right over the surface of the sand so distributed sand isn't as bad.

Someone chime in... I believe that maintaining a diamond/dragon will limit the amount of pods in your overall system which could be problematic if you did want a dragonnet later.
To my own intent, I wanted a dragonnet. I got one of them physchedelic dudes the other day. I wouldn't get an engineer goby for fear that my pod pop would suffer for it.

[Kristy]

+1 on the diamond goby, best way to keep your sandbed clean. I don't think they compete for pods so much as they pick up the detritus. I'm sure they might eat the occasional pod but I never got the impression that this was their primary diet.

[allan]

eating the detritus... isn't that a foodsource for the pods? I was led to believe that was one of the largest concerns when getting a queen conch, it competes with the food source for the pods. This leaves a smaller pod population.

[Kristy]

Welllll.... we feed pretty heavily so there is plenty of detritus to go around so I've never worried about that! When I looked it up I found it says they eat other tiny plankton organisms, algae, bacteria.

[jroescher]

What about water flow? Too little flow will cause problems also.

[blupez]

We had something similar going on in our tank. We tried using Algone and it helped some. I ditched it then added a couple fighting conches and some nessarius snails but the thing that's helped the most is the diamond goby. Not only does he keep the sand looking clean but is fun to watch. This was a huge win for us.