very short brown growth on live rock - anyone ?

[3bavboys]

does not come off when i tried to blow it off with a turkey baster -
kinda moves back and forth from flow in the tank -
diatoms ?
or
the beginings of hair algea ?
or someting else ?

 

[reefkprz]

sounds like hair algae, a picture would be nice.

 

[3bavboys]

crap
what now?

 

[reefkprz]

check your water parameters (specificly nitrates and phosphates) as well as your regular tests. do you have a cleaning crew (snails crabs ect.)? if so what kind.

 

[3bavboys]

my trates are high - 75 plus - 90g fowlr - 125#lr and 80 # ls
only about 2-3 snails and 2-3 hermits

 

[reefkprz]

well there are your problems
1 excessive nitrates (do more water changes)
2 nothing to eat algae or to eat leftover food/fish waste causing high nitrates
get more crabs snails (depending on the fish you have maybe a couple brittle stars)
how new is your tank?

 

[3bavboys]

tank is up 1 yr - 11 fish (all between 2 and 5 " ) , 3 shrimps
amonia and nitrites are zero , ph 8.2 , sg 1.0023
proclear wet / dry and proclear skimmer

 

[reefkprz]

how often do you rinse/clean your bioballs? I am familiar with the proclear I have one on my 55, the balls can trap waste and build up gunk you need to rinse them regularly when you do a water change just fill a bucket with tank water and rinse them in there to get the crap off.oh yeah the sponge needs to be rinsed too.
since you have shrimp you obviously dont have anything thats going to decimate a good clean up crew, I would get more snails and crabs, do you know if any of your fish would eat starfish because serpent stars are great poop eaters as well as good at gettign missed food.

 

[3bavboys]

what eats hair algea ? just increase clean up crew ?

 

[reefkprz]

usually a good clean up crew will take care of hair algae as long as its not growing faster than they can keep up with getting the nitrates down will help with that.