Brown Algae everywhere :( **Pics**

[vexeclipse2007]

I've had tank running for 2 months now..and all of a sudden theres brown stringy algae everywhere..on sand and rocks...some spots theres a mat of the algae.. some of our polyps aren't opening up and couple of strings of the algaes on my toadstool..what can I do????

 

[Toddrtrex]

It sure appears to be cyano -- which is actually a bacteria.

What are your parameters? (( with numbers please ))
Are you using RO/DI water? If so, what is the TDS?

Cyano feeds on excess nutrients, eliminate them and it will go away.

 

[b2d2t]

i had that its called cyano , i just recently moved my tank from upstairs to downstairs and i ran my rock that it was on under freshwater and it easily came off , the quicker you get on the cyano problem the better it will be , use a turkey baster and suck all of it off the sand and then get rid of it and do a water change right after you clean it all off. be careful not to let loose pieces float around because if it lands on another rock it could spread on that as well, so try and get it it out without disturbing it too much, goodluck

 

[vexeclipse2007]

everything is good but our nitrates are at 20ppm

 

[Sk8r]

Fairly easy fix, if you have a fairly good skimmer, just takes some time. Turn your lights out for 3 days, go actinic-only on the 4th if you have mh, and keep your skimmer tuned. Do this once a month for several months and you'll see it go away. More on it, if you poke the blue number under my avatar: my blog posts have one entitled ALGAE, and that covers it. Everything under the bacterial sheet is completely unharmed, trust me on this, and don't take your tank apart trying to get at it. The stuff predates the Permian and is the basis of all green plants, so you will see it pop up now and again, particularly if a ray of sun hits your tank at a certain spot daily.

 

[vexeclipse2007]

is there anything I can get that would eat that? Turbo snails? Crabs?

 

[Toddrtrex]

There isn't anything that is guaranteed to eat it --- would be better off fixing the root cause instead of adding livestock.

 

[vexeclipse2007]

Fairly easy fix, if you have a fairly good skimmer, just takes some time. Turn your lights out for 3 days, go actinic-only on the 4th if you have mh, and keep your skimmer tuned. Do this once a month for several months and you'll see it go away. More on it, if you poke the blue number under my avatar: my blog posts have one entitled ALGAE, and that covers it. Everything under the bacterial sheet is completely unharmed, trust me on this, and don't take your tank apart trying to get at it. The stuff predates the Permian and is the basis of all green plants, so you will see it pop up now and again, particularly if a ray of sun hits your tank at a certain spot daily.

having lights off for 3 days wouldnt that hurt the corals and fish that I already have?

 

[vexeclipse2007]

I'm going to do a water change Tom..how much should I do for a 95gallon tank..this is a new tank so don't want to stress out corals and fish too much

 

[Toddrtrex]

Are you using RO/DI water, or tap?

 

[vexeclipse2007]

I go to grocery store for RO

 

[torero500]

This is just common tank cycling. You'll battle this brown stuff on and off for the next two months. Just try to keep your nitrates down the best you can, eventually your rock will all cycle, you'll build up your beneficial bacteria and coraline algae, and this will all go away.

You can do water changes, keep excess food to a minimum, remove any dead organisms, keep skimmer cleaned and dialed in, and you can vacuum alot of that stuff off the gravel to keep the amounts down. Besides water change vacuuming, I got one of those Eheim vacuums that doesn't require any water change and that really helped get through the brown diatom/cyano phase because you can do it everyday in about 5 minutes till the load starts to go down.

 

[vexeclipse2007]

Ill do a 10% water change and use a Turkey baster and suck them out

 

[Toddrtrex]

I go to grocery store for RO

If you can, burrow a TDS meter -- sometimes that type of water isn't all that pure.

 

[torero500]

To add to my prior post, although your tank is cycling, it can do a little better if better water quality isn't quite doing the trick. You can try a little
9w Mean Green Killing Machine UV sterilzer in tank for awhile and see how it helps. They really work well and are all self-contained. Also try a few dark days where your main lights don't come on. Algae won't like the double whammy. Also, I would turkey baste both the sand and rocks 2X per day, which both removes the algae off the rock and gets alot of the algae waterborn so the uv sterilzer can lower the algal load. Your sand will really start to look vibrant again.

Remember that in the end our saltwater aquariums are filter traps. Waste products are condensed in a pinhead of water compared to the size of the ocean. That unnatural concentration breeds excess. A light treating of convenient UV will help to reduce that excess to more background levels found in nature.

 

[mortis13]

i had it bad and every water change i would suck it all up with some hard plastic 5mm hosing, like vacuuming the carpet and it went away in a couple of months.

 

[Ntvper]

sounds like your new tank is still cycling. just do a water change with the lights off for 2 days or 3 wont hurt present livestock at all. its just part of the new tank cycling and with time and a lil effort itll go away as your parameters level off.

 

[torero500]

+1 ^, but if that doesn't work to your liking, you may need to ramp up the program as I described above. Worked for me perfectly when I had problems as you're describing that wouldn't go away with conventional treatments.

 

[headless]

There isn't anything that is guaranteed to eat it --- would be better off fixing the root cause instead of adding livestock.

I can guarantee (from what I've seen in the past in my own tank) that trochus snails and fighting conchs will eat it...ceriths and scarlet leg hermits will as well...