brown spots appearing

[surfingdude]

appearing everywhere...High flow areas are minimal, low flow more. I have a fair amount of flow going everywhere and just ordered another wavemaker to add more flow. The brown is getting on my polyps too. Not sure if its diatoms, brown algae, cyano or what. I would take a pic but lights are out and dont want to spook the fish. I had it yesterday too, but not as bad. When lights come on in am, little if any brown spots and it just starts appearing a few ours later and thicker, darker, and spreading the longer the lights are on,,,but its spotty. Iam sure by morning, they will be gone. Today, I only had the lights run from 4pm - 11pm. Yesterday they were on 10am-11pm.

parameters are ok...

amonia - 0
ni - 0
nitrate - 10
phosphate - .1 I hate reading this darn number. I need to get something better. Using salifert. Could be less then .1, its darn near clear with a small hint of blue. Think Iam gonna get a hanna

system 5-6 weeks old and cycled less then a week.

Maybe its the new tank syndrome...has me worried. Did a water change last week. Think Iam gonna do another one this sunday.

Should I be concerned...? Worried about it being the base of my polyps? The three corals, tho very small, look excellent and well extended.

 

[whosurcaddie]

Sounds like a diatom bloom. Whats your source water?

13 hours is too long for a lighting period. 10 hours or less is ideal.

Does the algae have strands or air bubbles in it? Does it look like a dusting? Does it scrub off easily?

 

[surfingdude]

Sounds like a diatom bloom. Whats your source water?

13 hours is too long for a lighting period. 10 hours or less is ideal.

Does the algae have strands or air bubbles in it? Does it look like a dusting? Does it scrub off easily?

A small turkey baster will just blow it away off the rocks. Nothing on the glass and comes off very easily on everything. Didnt see air bubbles and I don't think it's stranded. I definitely made a rooky mistake when I started, which just dawned on me. I used tap water (on a well) to fill tank...iam now using ro and distilled which gives me tds Below 5, not perfect. Going to get di soon. Did a water change last week...gonna do another one.

This morning, it's all off the rocks and one small spot in the sand. Amazing the difference when lights first come on. Will be running lights about 7 hours a day. Very little light hits the tank...mainly 30 minutes when sun sets...in another month, no natural light will be on the tank.

 

[whosurcaddie]

Sounds like diatoms, definitely an excess of silicates. You may end up having to degas your well water before sending it through your RO unit. CO2 will eat up a DI canister in minutes. You basically just run the water through your RO unit without the DI into a container with an air stone running. Leave for 24 hours then run that via pump through the DI into a second container.

Spectrapure has a system to deal with CO2 yours wouldn't need to be this advanced but I'm sure you understand the concept. Its not as difficult as it looks.
http://spectrapure.com/manuals/CO2_SYSTEM.pdf

In the case of natural light it isn't that big of a deal. It just needs to be calculated in to the overall time you light the tank. So if it hits the tank while the lights are running don't worry about it.

 

[surfingdude]

Snails are AWSOME! Got a pretty big diatom bloom going...newer tank. Bought 2 snails but they just couldnt graze enough. Bought 5 more and most of my rock scape has been cleaned. 7 total in a 60 gallon tank. Cool critters too...they leave a clean trail until rock is cleaned. May buy a couple more.

 

[surfingdude]

snail getting it done on the right side.



left side all cleaned up

 

[Higher Thinking]

Almost certainly diatoms. Young tanks will always go through this phase and they will disappear as fast as they showed up.

 

[mcgyvr]

Diatoms... Totally normal for a new tank.. It will go away on its own..