brown on rock and sand

[fishcrazy101]

.wysiwyg { BACKGROUND: #eff3fa; FONT: 10pt verdana, geneva, lucida, 'lucida grande', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; COLOR: #44516a } .wysiwyg A:link { COLOR: #44516a } .wysiwyg_alink { COLOR: #44516a } .wysiwyg A:visited { COLOR: #44516a } .wysiwyg_avisited { COLOR: #44516a } .wysiwyg A:hover { COLOR: #44516a } .wysiwyg A:active { COLOR: #44516a } .wysiwyg_ahover { COLOR: #44516a } P { MARGIN: 0px } .inlineimg { VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle } Hi, just posted a question before because I bought a 150 gallon tank from someone that was established for 7yrs and they had crushed coral. We have been caring for it about a year now and decided to switch to a new 180 gallon tank and add sand instead of the cc. Well I have gotten the nitrates down to 20 by water changes and product called cycle. SOOOO here's my question, there is this awful brown stuff that is on the sand and is coming up on the rock what is it and can I get rid of it?

 

[MarineDream]

Just looks like a diatom algae to me. You might be going through a small cycle because of the upgrade and added sand. Typical and not harmful.

 

[Gerber]

I would suggest decreasing the light cycle for a couple hours a day if youre snails and hermits dont take care of it.

 

[Ace25]

Those are diatoms.. I don't know anyone who doesn't have to deal with it.. very normal. So, plan of action, short term, use a turkey baster on the rocks to clean them, and stir up the sand with your hands or a long stick. That will help get them into the water column to get filtered out.

Causes include: Too much light, old bulbs, overfeeding, high phosphates and silicates to name a few. My first recommendation is to get a reactor and use RowaPhos media. Completely my opinion, but my experience tells me a reactor with that media does wonders for that problem, which is usually related to high phosphates and silicates. I am looking at my sand bed right now, 6" DSB, and 1 month and 4 days since setup and the sand is still bleach white. I used to use Phosban media for a couple years but I discovered I had a silicate problem. At the time silicates were completely new to me and I had no idea what they did or how they reacted to sw tanks. I read that Phosban was supposed to take out silicates, and I got to the point of changing media out every 2 weeks because I wasn't seeing a drop in silicates. Turns out my source water, from a RO dispenser at a grocery store, had a serious silicate problem and that was were my source came from, and doing weekly waterchanges with that water wasn't helping. I switched to RowaPhos media to see if cost was justified, and to me it was. It dropped my silicates to zero is just a couple days. It proved to me right then that it works as stated, were as standard bulk GFO/Phosban does remove phosphates and probably does remove silicates in small amounts, it doesn't work nearly as well as Rowaphos.

You can get a decent media reactor here with pump for $35, and the media.

 

[fishcrazy101]

Hoping it is just a cycle because definetly makes the tank look awful. Ace, thank you for the link never knew there was such a thing but will definetly buy...Thank you

 

[Ace25]

Oh ya, how did I forget, other major cause is lack of flow. This is where spots of sand are brown and other areas white.. You solve this my either repositioning powerheads or adding more to remove any dead spots. What I have found to be an easy way to test for dead spots is throw in a frozen cube of cyclops.. those things are like tiny little bugs all over your tank when it thaws, and you can easily watch them to see if they land in the sand and stay.

Still, a reactor is always a good idea and I think a must have right after a good skimmer. For the price vs benefits it can't be beat.

 

[fishcrazy101]

Will definetly check that out, I'm learning so much today, thank you. Our mag 24 quit working in our sump so we used our only spare which was a 9.5 until I got the other one and it came in mail today. So I have a new mag 24 that just put in which helps with the flow. But will still try the frozen cube and see what happens then possibly adjust our powerheads. We have a compact lighting system that has 3 250w halides and 4 96w compacts in it, how long should I leave them running?

 

[fishcrazy101]

Also Ace, how often do you have to change the rowaphos?

 

[Ace25]

Lighting, I have my MH on 6 hours a day, and my actinics on 9 hours a day. Some people do 8/10 but I it depends on your light.. if I ran a 20k MH bulb I could probably go 8 hours but I run an overdriven 250w XM 10k bulb (runs at 372w) and 6 is more than enough on my setup.

I change my rowaphos every 30 days with my bags of chemi-pure. Everyone tells me I do it too much though, and that I could also cut it in 1/2, so only use 1/2 of the bottle and change it out every 45-60 days. I just started going 1/2 but I still think I will switch it out at 30 days.

 

[fishcrazy101]

Thank you for helping me, Ace. You have given me alot of info that I will definetly use.