Rock turning brown growing algae .

[Alan600]

so some of my rock is turning brown and clean it and its some kind of brown slime and it growing algae . Does that mean i have high phosphates ?

 

[jmarcink91]

Potentially high phosphate or nitrate. Do you have test kits?

 

[5Bucks]

That was me a few months ago after some summertime neglect. Phosphates were .23. got them down to undetectable on Hannah checker in 4-6 weeks. Took out what rock I could and scrubbed, doubled up water changes, cut way back on feeding and DIYed a GFO reactor. 3 months later and the Turbos are still cleaning off a few remaining small patches on rock I could not remove.

 

[Alan600]

I have test kit I test and it's shows 0 phosphates I just don't get it

 

[fishroomlady]

the phosphate is bound up in the algae so don't be concerned about the test kit reading - if you have algae, you have excess phosphate - your rock could also be leeching phosphate.

 

[Alan600]

What's the best way of removing them w/c or gfo ?

 

[Reefing Madness]

GFO or Lanthanum.

 

[Alan600]

How long would I run for or just keep it on there

 

[palmer]

scrub

scrub then water change and add GFO- you will be good- it definitely hi phos

 

[Alan600]

In three years I never had this problem till now . So new to this the scrub how does that work I read a bit about it but don't really know how it works

 

[Reefing Madness]

The scrub will remove the nasty stuff you don't want on the rock.
Running GFO, with high phospohates, you need to test every other day, once it exhausts you will see the phosphate number stop going down, then slowly go back up, when you see the number stop going down, you need to change it out.