New reefer brown algea

skrimpz

skrimpz

Member
Hi all,
i just recenlty switched from a 30 FOWLR to my 46 bow whihc i got a new light system for not mh but i think they will be good enough and i havent gottten any more live rock yet or obivoulsy any soft corals or polyps but my question in i now have a ton of this borwnish algea which appears in about a few hours i have to clean the glass every day i just didnt know if this was normal for the amount of light input i have now or if when i get some coral the light will not gorws as much algea... thanx
i know it looks kinda crappy right now but i had just been concentating of adding water slowly to not stress my fishes

 
granny

granny

Member
Brown diatoms are pretty comon when you first set up any tank-and yes, the lighting encourages it. But that stage usually passes. You probably lost a lot of your beneficial bacteria when you switched over-and may need to add some phosphate/nitrate pads to clean things up a bit.
Are you using RO or distilled water?
 
jerth6932

jerth6932

Active Member
tim's post pointed you in the right direction!!! just as long as you are using RO water, you should only be experencing the diatom phase, and it is normal. It will last a couple of weeks and then die off!
 
granny

granny

Member
Just a comment or two.
You really need some more live rock-and maybe cover the back of your tank with something to cover up all those wires and tubes and things since the tank is tall, you proably wont have live rock all the way to the top.
OH, you can take out anything that isnt alive and scrub the diatoms off for now which helps improve it a little bit. A fellow aquariast told me he uses a bounty paper towel to wipe off the glass then throws it out because if you scrape or scrub, you spread the problem.
 
dburr

dburr

Active Member
The brown things are the empty dead shells of diatoms. Wiping them won't spread them.
Wiping them will only let the skimmer take them out. Are you useing a skimmer? And it will pass as stated before.^
 
skrimpz

skrimpz

Member
I used all the water form my old tank when i put everything in the new bowfornt and then slowly added water over a few weeks ive been using Disstilled and also had gotten 10 gallons of Ro at my local SWF store ive been leaving the lights on for 12 hours cause i set the timer to that cause i know when i have corals and such that i will need it on for that long, yes i do have a crappy skimmer but i should be getting a new one today there is appartenly some fish show or somthing today just out of STL so im gonna check it out thanx all.....
 
jerth6932

jerth6932

Active Member
If you were to cut back on that long lighting day it will break up a bit too .... 12 hours is long when you first start a tank, and have the diatoms. You don't have much in there right now, you could probably get away with 6-9 hours a day.
 
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