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.