Brown sand and Bubbles

[Maintenance Man]

hello I have a questions ? Our sand bed is turnning brown And it has air bubbles on it . (a) are the bubbles Nitrate ? (B) is the brown stuff an algee? :shock:

[ron101]

B) The brown stuff is probably diatoms. They are common in newer setps; generally they disappear after a little while.

A) If your setup is fairly new the bubbles are likely oxygen. Established tanks with a good sand bed will also release nitrogen bubbles reduced from nitrate.

[Maintenance Man]

ron101 thank you for your reply :D Should I stir the sand bed or leave it alone ?

[EmilyB]

Never disturb the sand unless you really like the look of this stuff... :lol:

Can you share more about the tank?

[Bob I]

Because of the presence of air bubbles I would suggest you have Cyano (slime algae) The color is probably reddish brown. Cyanobacter can take on many colors including black. :(

[Aquattro]

Didn't Tony have brown bubbly slime recently? Some kind of Dinoflaggelates? Yuck!! Or it could just be diatoms....I had bubbly diatoms when I first started. Good luck with that!! :shock:

[BC_Grl]

The colour of this thing is nearly a rust colour. The 2 pictures were taken with 2 different settings on the camera.
1- with preset w/b to account for the blue colour from the light
http://www.members.shaw.ca/bc_grl/sand1.JPG
2- set to auto colour for w/b
http://www.members.shaw.ca/bc_grl/sand2.JPG

This is a 90 g tank and we've been running it since November. Here are the water parameters:
SG-1.025
pH-8.3
NO3-0
CA2-400
ALK- 1.94 meq/L; 5.4dKH
PO4-0
NH3-0
NO2-0
Hope this information helps. Thanks!

[EmilyB]

Hey Jeanna :D

You sure about that alk reading...looks really low :?

Looks like diatoms to me.

[BC_Grl]

Yeah Em, it did look low to me.. The hubby took the readings. We are using Seachem "Reef Builder Raises Carbonates" to combat this.
AFAIK, the readings should be at 3-4 meq/9-12 dKH, correct?

[StirCrazy]

Jeanna, what kind of kit are you using for the PO4 test?

looks like diatoms to me, i just had them a while ago and they turned into cyno... now both are gone and i am left with a turf algae :roll:

Steve

[BC_Grl]

Steve, we are using Salifert.

Also, Andy has mentioned that when he pushes down on it, lots of bubbles come up and it is quite clumpy. :(

[Michael]

[quote="BC_Grl"]The colour of this thing is nearly a rust colour.
<snip>


What would the rust color signify? I have rust color on one of my live rocks...but not on the other 2 and my sandbed isn't rust colored (yet).
-I just beat off slime algae (the stuff with bubbles) on another live rock. the 6 turbo snails did a good job on that one.

Michael