live rock turning brown

[ninjatech]

Hi All my liverock is turning brown. What do i do. I have my tank for about 3 months...What I do is scrub the rock with a tooth brush is this good? Please help need.. evreyone's expertise.

Also my LFS is trying to sell me a sand siphon ..he showed me how to use it at the store. Based on what I saw it looks like the sand is being stirred like crazy..Someone told me never to do that with your sand...thanks guys

 

[pyithar]

diatoms? algae? or just brown? scrubbing the rocks is fine as long as the rocks don't stay out of water for very long time.

do you have dsb? or ssb? some hobbyists vacuum ssb, some don't. it's up to you.

 

[davocean]

Pretty common for clean white rock to turn brownish before coraline comes in, at 3mo that may be it but maybe post pics so we can see what's up for sure.

 

[ichthyogeek]

It depends on how the rock is turning brown. If it's turning a "natural" brown (gradually turns brown over a period of time), then that's fine. If there are brown splotches on white rock, that's different. TBH, I'd just leave it and do bigger water changes. If it's the "fuzzy" brown algae, a toothbrush works wonders, just make sure to have something that catches all the brown dusty stuff you brush off. I do it in the tank, and the filter sock/protein skimmer takes care of it. Then I do another water change.

SSB(shallow sand bed) owner here:
I tried doing a sand siphon once. It did suck out a ton of crap. However, you don't need a sand siphon, just a good old fashioned gravel vacuum. You just have to kink the hose and keep it kinked with one hand, controlling how much water is sucked in at one time. HOWEVER, I would not recommend doing a large sand siphon. Maybe just 10% of the substrate at a time (this allows for repopulation of the sandbed by other critters you like such as bristleworms, copepods, amphipods, bristle stars, etc.). You WILL have a nutrient and thus algae spike. I'm going to do one on my tank in a few months (about a year after it got established), so that there's not too much fauna-unusable nutrients in the sandbed. But if your tank is new, I don't think that siphoning the substrate is going to do much good (probably a lot more bad than good actually).

 

[CStrickland]

Like pithyar said, it's probs nothing. Your rock isnt supposed to be white, after a while it will turn purple with coraline algae but in the beginning all sorts of green and brown is normal. Reefers call this stage the "uglies" because your tank has to go through some phases before it evens out. If you have a filter sock you can use a turkey baster to blow the diatoms off the rock and catch them in it. I don't like to scrub the rocks too much, just superstitious that it will interfere with better stuff growing on them. I only do it if I really need to like some long algae is irritating a coral. When I do I try very hard to catch all my scrubbings and remove them from the tank, otherwise stuff just rots and fertilizes the next round of algae or whatev.

I vacuum my sand every week, it's like 1-2 inches deep. It's gross how much stuff comes out, and I don't have nitrate issues like many people do. But if your sand is deep, like 3" or more you don't want to stir it because there can be toxic gas pockets in there. Also if you have had the tank running for more than a couple months you want to start vacing slowly, like 1/3 at each waterchange because there will be a lot of gross in there and you don't want it all getting kicked up at once.

There's a good nuisance algae guide at reefcleaners.org if you want to compare your tank with some pics of diff algaes.

 

[ninjatech]

Thanks for the replies. to me it seriously looking like its turning to a rust color. I can tell easily because the live rock i have near the bottom are fine, they look pinkish red. the ones near the top of the aquarium looks like a rusty color.

I have a red sea 130c Stock everything ..

Also I have CUC in my tank which I purchased a few weeks back ...lately I noticed there are white stuff on the back of the glass of my tank.again I scrub them off with a toothbrush. What is it..dont have pics because I scrub them off when I try to touch it with my finger its kind of hard.. It looks like a dried salt ..

BTW my water parameters are good. I test it at least every 2 days . I also bring it to my LFS once a week. I do water change every Wednesday about 5 %, since I have the tank. I use RODI ..

 

[ichthyogeek]

"Good" water parameters tell us nothing, we need numbers dude.

Hard white stuff indicates a calcium something or other. Probably just a harmless animal growing. Aesthetically unappealing, but not something to worry about. Razor blades work wonders on it.

 

[pyithar]

a pic would help. rusty stuff is most likely diatoms and the white stuffs on the back glass are probably spirorbid worms.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Those white things you're scrubbing off the back glass could also be snail eggs.

I wouldn't do any scrubbing of your rock and just let it mature on it's own. Other than blowing it off with a turkey baster I wouldn't do anything.

LOL I bet it takes you hours scrubbing everything with a tooth brush :lmao:

 

[shyerdj]

haha yeah a toothbrush on the glass would take a long time. Try using the unused plastic membership card from petco to clean the glass! I do use a toothbrush to clean my rock though!

 

[Keithj32]

+1 on using a turkey baster to clean the rocks also second on parameters as mentioned above good does not help with how good your params are doing

 

[powderblue1]

When you baste or scrub off the brown diatoms, suck them up with a siphon during a water change. Keep doing 30% water changes bi-weekly with a Ca, CaCO3, Mg, Sr rich salt and RODI mix at 1.023 salinity until your tank is beautiful. It will happen. The reason the upper rocks are turning is because they are getting the most PAR.:fun2: