why is my liverock brown??

[kingshrimp]

i in the past week changed my hood light from the std. one that comes with the tank to a compac light (smartlight) is what it is called. anyway the live rock is about a month and a half old it did not have anything growing on it when i bought it. but now with that new bright light all the rock is turning brown to dark brown there is a little green growing in spots but mostly brown even the coral that i put in there the tips are turning brown. what is this brown stuff?? is this good?? if not how do i get rid of it?? please help i am new to all this!!

 

[chevron tang]

the brown stuff is just algae. it won't hurt anything. it should go away in a few days. if you are seeing green now then the brown is turning to green which is good. have you had your water checked lately? if so what are the stats?

 

[kingshrimp]

what does water test have to do with brown stuff on my live rock??
also how much live rock should i put in my 55gal

 

[von_rahvin]

anther thing that may help is . . Are you using tap water? this can spike your algea growth. Also you need to slowly add lights over time, this way you dom not burn your little critters

 

[mlm]

How long has it been since your tank has fully cycled. The brown is probably diatoms. Do you have a clean up crew?

 

[lordofthereef]

the brown isn't algea at all!! it's diatoms! the reason it is showing up is because of the new lights you added. it takes some time to go away, usually a week or two. get a good cleaning crew in there and you should be ok. mexican turbos do the best job from my experience. also, if you are using tap water in your tank, then the silicates in it helps the diatoms to grow. might want to look into a silicate remover and also a phosphate remover to help get rid of this problem.

 

[aggiebear]

If I'm not mistaken...diatoms are form of single celled algea with a hard silicate skeleton.

 

[wrassecal]

I upgraded my lighting 10 days ago and have the brown diatom outbreak, also white showed up. It is already starting to turn to coraline. You have to make sure your water tests are good and you don't have a phosphate problem so you convert to the coraline, I'm getting green and purple starting. The brown stuff is ugly but will go away.