Hello! Reading this post, it sounds like the issue I'm having with my new aquarium too! I've recently added about 100lbs of (semi cured) live rock to my aquarium and have also started using my 2x250W HQI pendants as well. (Was this a bad combination to do all at once?) I have a 90g + 20g sump with protein skimmer.
Anyway... I'm now getting a fair bit of brownish algae coming up on the glass at an alarming rate. Some of it looks like brown smears whearas some looks like sticky brown snot-like
stuff. Plus there's other stuff that looks like theads. Here are some pictures:
Here you can see all three types on the front glass.
Here's a corner shot showing just the alarming amount of this on the glass.
A zoomed-out view. You can see that the algae seems to be pointing away from the outflow of water coming up from the sump.
I'm not sure if this is standard brown algae, red algae, dynoflagellates, hair algae, cyanobacteria, or something different altogether. Can someone help? What should I do?