Help with brown algae bloom!

[chemistmike]

My biocube 29 has been running for about one week now. I was out of town this weekend, and returned today to find that my tank has a brown algae covering all of the rocks. I have not had a chance to check the water parameters, and I am doing a water change tomorrow (about 10 gallons).

Here are the current conditions:

Stock lighting, stock return pump, one maxijet 900, one maxijet 1200, approx. 40lbs. of live rock.

The tank is currently running around 90degF. I am ordering a chiller tomorrow. I also have a lighting upgrade to add this week, and the saphire skimmer as well. I also purchased an SEIO to replace the maxijet 1200 for additional flow.

Please point me in the right direction if you have any ideas about the brown algae. Is this a normal cycling phase???

Thanks.

 

[Illuminati]

It's diatoms, 100% normal and a tank maturity phase. Time to add the cleanup crew

About 10 Nassarius snails for the sandbed
5 Cernith Snails
3 Nerite Snails
Maybe around 10 Hermits

And your set....

I got my crew from premiumaquatics.com, they have what are called Baha Hermits, awesome hermits, they work 24/7.

 

[i2go]

Brown algae in my eye's is a good thing. You know your tank is on the right path. As colinadam said get a cleanup crew, be sure to get nassarius snails they help a TON.

 

[chemistmike]

Thank for the info guys. Does anyone have any idea why my tank keeps getting hotter. It was running around 84F towards the middle of last week, then by the time I left Friday evening to go out of town, the tank was running 90F. I have the same equipment as the beginning of the week, and my thermostat has been set on the same temp since the beginning of last week. Could the increased heat be due to the die off of material from the rock (biochemical release of energy)???

 

[Illuminati]

Has the ambient temp of the room stayed the same?

 

[chemistmike]

As far as I can tell, as I have not adjusted the thermostat in the past week or so.

 

[stephen sykes]

have you got a heater in the tank? dont worry about the algae blooms, my nano just cleared up from diatoms and it looks fantastic. i really started panicing about them and thought it would never go. keep listening to colinadam for advise, i cant thank him enough!! i think the nano rule is: bin sponges, rings and bio balls.

 

[YellowDesmo998]

sounds like a faulty heater...

 

[chemistmike]

Nope, no heater. I actually have one, but it is unplugged, as that was my first thought also.

Last night, I was working on my hood for the nanotuners.com 144W lighting upgrade, and decided to run an experiment. I have thought that the high temp. was from the additional pumps, since the temperature started to gradually increase after their addition. So, what I decided to do was to leave the hood off of the tank for the night (Just for the experiment, not because I did not finish the mod after 2 1/2 hours of trying to figure out nanotuners directions, and will now have to finish it when I get home after calling them today!! ). Sure enough, when I checked the tank this morning...78°F, my room's ambient temperature (thermostat setting). It seems as though the hood is not "breathing" well enough and trapping the humidity of the evaporating water, thereby increasing internal temperatures. This is the only conclusion that I can draw, since the water temp. would stay the same even at night when the lights were off, only dropping a couple of degrees.

I have a chiller that is supposed to be here on Thursday, so hopefully this along with the fan upgrade will remedy this problem.

Thanks to everyone for all of the help through these trials, and I hope to post some pics after I have all of my mods done.