Gold colored growth on my aquascape

SpankMonkey · Sep 21, 2021

I've set up my 10 gallon Nano reef tank, cycled it with that turbo start, and fed the empty tank for about a month now. pretty sure by my monitoring and testing I've gone thru the ammonia cycle. I've added one clown, one red banded shrimp, a narcissus snail and a few coral. small feeds every other day. all parameters seem fine, but I am getting a goldish growth on my rocks. i started with dead sand and rocks. i did add a bottle of coralline algae. is this the beginning stages? am i hitting other issues? ignore the blue and purple colors on rock, as they are epoxy.

WheatToast · Sep 21, 2021

SpankMonkey said:
I've set up my 10 gallon Nano reef tank, cycled it with that turbo start, and fed the empty tank for about a month now. pretty sure by my monitoring and testing I've gone thru the ammonia cycle. I've added one clown, one red banded shrimp, a narcissus snail and a few coral. small feeds every other day. all parameters seem fine, but I am getting a goldish growth on my rocks. i started with dead sand and rocks. i did add a bottle of coralline algae. is this the beginning stages? am i hitting other issues? ignore the blue and purple colors on rock, as they are epoxy.

Do they brush off easily? If so, they are probably diatoms.

REEFTIDE · Sep 21, 2021

SpankMonkey said:
I've set up my 10 gallon Nano reef tank, cycled it with that turbo start, and fed the empty tank for about a month now. pretty sure by my monitoring and testing I've gone thru the ammonia cycle. I've added one clown, one red banded shrimp, a narcissus snail and a few coral. small feeds every other day. all parameters seem fine, but I am getting a goldish growth on my rocks. i started with dead sand and rocks. i did add a bottle of coralline algae. is this the beginning stages? am i hitting other issues? ignore the blue and purple colors on rock, as they are epoxy.

It looks more like diatoms to me but give it time. Lots of this stuff takes time to come in