brown algae?

[safaripilot]

I am 7 days into my new tank (125 g) and have ammonia 4+, nitrite .25 and no nitrates yet. I am breaking in the tank with 8 damsels and 50# of live rock. Over the last 48 hours I have developed a brown algae starting to cover the CC substrate and the live rock. I last cycled a different tank over 6 years ago and can't remember if this is acceptable or not. Any replies are appreciated.

 

[bigeyedfish]

Yeah thats normal, once your cycle comes to a close it should go away. if its really bad you might need some crabs and snails to clean it up. wait on those till the ammonia and nitrite is down to 0. I'm just now starting to get rid of that crap and see green algae growth

 

[adam & jeanne]

could be the diatom cycle, i had the same problem about 4 weeks into my fish only tank that contains no live rock or live sand, stayed for about a week and disappeared.

 

[ocellaris_keeper]

When I was rooting around my new tank with the fish net chasing an unhappy damsel I scraped the bottom where the brown algae was growing. It separated it from the substrate so I just went along the bottom and removed almost all of it.
Only a little bit of the stuff returned and then disappeared three days later. Help your cause and scrape the stuff away.

 

[josh]

Hi, yes it is the diatom bloom phase. It will go away on it's own - more correct it wil be taken over by green algae. I however, wouldn't remove it as it is a stage in the cycle.. if you disrupt the inital phases you will disrupt the later stages as the all feed off one another.
brown -> green -> purple ( coraline )
HTH
Josh