Help me mystery BROWN ALGAE!!

[jeff669]

Hello all, I am new to salt tanks and converted my fresh water tank to salt. It has been running smoothly since November 14. Recently some sort of brown algae has taken to a few pieces of live rock and coats the glass leaving me to clean glass daily. It has only been real bad in the lst month. I use RODI water which is coming from a 1 month old 5-stage RODI brs filter. I do 10% water changes every week. My tank specs are as follows : 72 gallon bow front, 10 gallon refugium/sump, eshopps psk-75 skimmer, wave point 210 watt T5 HO fixture. I use coral pro salt. I test water weekly and all signs are good so....***!!!

 

[SloppyJ]

Pictures would help.

 

[haleyf1024]

Pics? May be diatoms

 

[jeff669]

 

[jeff669]

 

[haleyf1024]

Looks like diatoms to me. They should take care of themselves. Just watch your nitrate levels

 

[jeff669]

Yeah I have been watching and all tests show none or close to none, thats why i dont understand why it wont go away.

 

[haleyf1024]

I had the same issue. My levels were at 0 yet they stuck around for about a month. My hermits and snails loved it though, and I blasted it off of the rocks daily. Try some mexican turbo snails, or a zebra turbo. They did the most cleaning in my tank, with margarita snails in a close second.

 

[jeff669]

I will pick up some this weekend, i have a cleanup crew that apparently sucks, not sure what kind of snails they are though. I also have a red kind of algae thats starting to be a pain in the *** in my fuge i meant to ask about.

 

[jeff669]

 

[jeff669]

i just stirred it up this morning, it started to blanket the rubble rock

 

[haleyf1024]

Can't get a close look at the pink. Are you sure it's not coralline? You can throw some CUC into the fuge as well.

Is that what your snails look like?

 

[jeff669]

pretty much ill take a pic of one of them. How many snails should i have in tank?

 

[jeff669]

 

[jeff669]

 

[haleyf1024]

Then you have astrea snails i also found that they suck at their job (no pun intended lol). Pick up some nassarius snails to, they will stir the sand a bit for you. For a 72 gallon, I would get probably 6-10 mexican turbos depending on how big they are. Then maybe 10 margaritas and possibly 10 cerith snails. Do you have hermits?

 

[haleyf1024]

Thats quite a bit of green on the walls. Some LFS get huge zebra turbo snails. Granted their $8-10 a piece, they do an amazing job. I would get one or two if you could find some. If you don't have sand, scatch the nass snails.

 

[jeff669]

Yes, i have prob 8 small blue hermits, and 8 astrea snails. I will definetley go to lfs and pick up 20 - 30 more snails then

 

[jeff669]

that green is actually from a display on the back of tank

 

[haleyf1024]

Ahh okay. That makes sense lol. If you have fish then I would grab a few more hermits to, maybe an emerald if you usually have a lot of extra food floating around. Scarlet hermit crabs are another alternative to the traditional blue legs if you want to add a little color to your CUC. They do the same job and are less murderous than blues. Just make sure you have extra shells so you don't end up with crabs eating each other