It's all gone brown :(

duggy

duggy

Registered Member
Jul 15, 2007
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We just replaced our 24watt cold flourescent with a 96 watt 50/50. Suddenly, the tank is overtaken with brown algae. It was on the glass (I cleaned it), it is on the rocks, the sand, and the live rock. It is also on the shells of the hermit crabs, and anywhere else that it can be.
Knowing that a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few thousand bytes of pictures.
Also, can live rock die?

duggy

btw, what is that clearish gooey looking stuff in the first picture?

brownrock.JPG brownrubble.JPG brownsand.JPG
 
Looks like diatoms algae to me. I am assuming this is a new tank? If you do a search on diatoms you will see tons of posts on this topic. It is a natural part of SW tanks and it will go away eventually. You can help the process along by researching and purchasing some clean up crew that will eat or sift through this type of algae as well as adust your power heads to blow over areas where it is settling which should keep it from over collecting in any area. I don't know what you have for flow, but you should get it up into the 10x your tank size in gph flow.
 
Hard to tell what the gooey stuff is you mention, maybe a sponge. Can you get a closer shot of it?

Yes, live rock can become dead rock but that won't happen just due to diatoms. How long has the tank been set up? It looks like a normal bloom with a new tank.

And are those rocks on the substrate from the ocean or from lakes/rivers? Looks like you have some FW colored gravel as well.
 
The tank is over a year old and has been doing great. No problems what so ever until we added the new light.
 
Typically when diatoms occur on an established tank I typically see water quality due to overfeeding as the causation. Not sure if bulbs would do it but I'd think it would be possible. Have you done any googling yet to see if any link has been mentioned?
 
we just added a puffer fish, but the brown started a day after the light was on all day. We feed a bit more, but not much more than what is being eaten. We have done some googling and one thing that is mentioned is that our light is on too long. We have it on for 14 hours and someone suggested only 10. We will do some more frequent water changes to try to stop it, but it is just wierd that it started the day after the new light which is a light that is recommended for salt water tanks.
 
Well, you went from basically no light to a good amount of light, which is probably what did it. It'll probably totally go away within a week. Until then, you're just going to have to hold the course...maybe check your water params.
 
I agree with Sub here, it is quite common for a tank to be effected when changing from one type of light to another, escpecially when its on for so long..

8 hours for main lights is more than plenty..

Niko
 
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