brown stuff on my coral

[olimark]

Hi, I am new at this and had a tank for 1 month. I have 4 really nice pieces of coral. They are starting to grow brown spots and are looking ugly. Is this a good thing or bad thing? It sure looks ugly. What is happening to my tank? What causes this? Also my glass is growing this stuff.

 

[niger12]

I assume you are talking about dead decorative corals. In this case, I believe what you are experiencing is a brown algea bloom. This is very normal in a new tank. Do you have any livestock in the tank yet? Also what is your source for water tap/RO? Tap water is normally hight in phosphates and will make algae worse.

 

[exotickeeper]

Your tank is just going through the normal bacterial bloom and the brown alge is ABSOLUTELY normal and will go away, but you can stir the sand up if it's bothering you

 

[olimark]

Yes this is dead coral. I do have live stock in the tank and they are all doing well. Regarding the water it was tap water. :santa: Do you know how long it takes to dissapear and is there any chemical I can use to help it go away?

 

[broomer5]

olimark
I would suggest doing a search on here for the words
Diatoms
and
Silicates
Almost everyone gets them in a new tank. Usually around the 4-6 week after set up timeframe.
I would not try and chemically treat the tank - they most often go away if you use decent freshwater.
What type of freshwater are you using ?

 

[olimark]

Broomer5, I am using reg tap water. It sounds like I am best to use some other type of water. Perhaps distilled water?

 

[broomer5]

Many people would agree that using freshwater other than tapwater would be wise - some continue to use tapwater.
It really all depends on "your" tapwater - on the route you think is best.
Personally - my tapwater is unpredictable here - so I bought an RO/DI unit and treat my tapwater prior to using it.
Buying an RO or RO/DI unit is one choice.
Buying RO or distilled water is another choice.
Using tapwater is another choice.
If we could test for everything in our tapwater each day - and know for sure it was pure - it would be great.
Unfortunately - we can't do that.
So a lot of people either make their own RO ro RO/DI water ... or buy it.
I would always suggest using RO, RO/DI or distilled over using plain untreated tapwater to anyone in this hobby.

 

[tiencvu]

For 3 months, I used tap water and algae was all over my tank, I started using RO water after that, my tank now has very little of algae. I suggest you should use RO water. You can buy RO water at the local fish store. It is not that expensive....
Try RO water and see if the algae goes away...