brown algea
 

my tank has been running for 18 months now and has been doing good but now i have an uncontrolable outbreak of brown algea. its covering the sand and lower 4in of rock two days ago i cleaned it all out and now its back is there anything i can do

Sounds like diatoms to me, but it could be cyano bacteria. Either way a good place to start is to increase the flow in your tank a buch.

How is your water quality? I suspect that might have something to do with the problem. Do you have high nitrates?

How old are the light bulbs?

S.

i am going to do a full test tonight and i replaced all my bulbs last weekend so it may be water although i do weekly water changes

my nitrates are hi i've never had this problam before how do i correct it

i have my water under controle by doing 50gal waterchanges every 3 days for two weeks but i still have that brown crap growing uncontrolably and it is hurting my corals aswell as looks discusting need advise in controle or if someone who lives in mission can come over and give a suggestion or two would bee a great deal of help

A picture of your algea problem would really help.

It sounds like your have some sort of problem algea or diatoms. I am betting that there is a high level of nutrients in your water which are feeding the algea. Water changes will make your water quality better, but they will not cure the source of water quality issue. I wouldn't waste money and time doing so many water changes.

There are many things you can do to. If you want to do some reaserch and reading, I would google "green hair algea" or "algea" because there is so much material out there on that, and it likely has the same cause as your brown algea.

The main thing you want to focus on is getting rid of nutrients from your water ie, nitrates and phosphates and making sure they don't come back. There is many things you can do to achieve this.

Have less fish and feed just enough to keep fish alive.

The fastest fix is to run a phosban reactor with GFO like rowaphos in it.

Grow some sort of macro algae like cheto

You could look into a good protein skimmer to remove stuff frome water before it adds nutriens.

Really good flow keeps crap from settling.

Don't use bio media or canister filters.

All these are a really good start. Good luck!

turn off your lights. only give your tank a little amount of light per day. maybe like an hour. it wont harm really anything just these diatoms feed off of light it will slowly decrease and then a lawnmower blenny will take care of the rest

Turning the lights off will help, but that is like doing water changes in that it dosn't get to the source of the problem.

Another thing to consider is the source of your water. I have read that non ro/di water can contribute to diatoms. Somthing called silicates are fuel for diatoms, and they can come from unfilterd tap water and non arragonite sand.

There is also always the chance that they will just go away in a little while. I would try some easy fixes and not get too frustrated. Once in a while I will notice that I am getting some diatoms, then they just go away.

ive been doing treatments for weeks now and its still there. reserching for days and finally found the culpret its dinoflaggelates if anyone has any info or experience with this please let me know