Brown/redish death or life?

Scizzle

New member
I've had my tank up for around 2 weeks
Started with gulf water and live sand/crushed shell
Lights on 14hrs per day
Water 79.2f -77
we have 4lbs of live rock
10 of bleached rock from a past tank
Also have 6 blue legs 1 turbo and 1 emerald
7 bait shrimp
The skimmer is working very hard.
I need to empty 2 times/day

We have a brownish algae starting on the glass sand and rock
Is this ok?
What should we expect?
Should we magnet the glass or leave it?

Also doseing with nano A and B 2 times/wk
 
's okay.
Cyano, likely.
Just let it be. But the crushed shell is going to give you some trouble, and you should not have any snails or such in there for about 4 weeks. You're probably going to have an ammonia spike about then that could prove lethal to everything but the bacteria. I gather you're going from the ocean, and that's something I have no experience in, but I suspect your spike will be mild. Just don't think about fish yet. Don't dose with anything during your cycle. Do test daily for nitrate and ammonia, and salinity, which ought to be at about 1.025: top off with ro/di water to maintain it (fresh water, highly filtered); and when you see ammonia, then see it stay gone for 5 days, you're cycled and can add snails.
We have a how-to for a regular tank in the stickies. Read that and it will help you and answer many questions.
Cyano is normal, but a pest---it responds to sunlight, grows in light, dies in darkness.
 
Ps, for a 35 gallon, you'll need 35 to 70 lbs of rock, ie, the tank should be about half holey rock. Dry rock can take about 12 weeks to really come alive.

The better substrate would be aragonite, but you're in it now, and might as well continue. You can pull it later, cup at a time, and replace it with aragonite.
 
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