Trouble getting rid of brown algae (I think).

[Unodostrace]

So I’ve been trying for the past couple months to beat this brown looking algae from my sand. I’ve got a 10g that has an aquami KPS powerhead in it that’s basically running on the lowest setting. My nutrients are generally at 0-0.03 and my nitrates are right around 1 or so. I don’t know if I need to bump up my flow? I don’t feed excessively and I do weekly water changes of 3-5 gallons.

I do my best to siphon out as much as possible but it always seems to come back.

Stock- One black and white clown, one firefish, hermits, cleaner shrimp, and a couple snails.
Along with various corals.

I’ve attatched some photos of my tank/setup for further inspection haha.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

It looks like its generally in the shaded region around the rocks. Diatoms maybe? What type of snails do you have?

 

[Unodostrace]

It looks like its generally in the shaded region around the rocks. Diatoms maybe? What type of snails do you have?

Just one Astrea and one nassarius.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Ceriths are good for cleaning sand. Dwarf ceriths go through the sand during the day and clean the glass at night. You could try some ceriths to help with this issue. Fighting conchs also clean the sand of diatoms, GHA, uneaten food, and detritus. I hear they rat alot so supplemental feeding maybe required for it due to your smaller tank size. It would take several ceriths to do the same work or probably 100 dwarfs ceriths.