6 week old refugium....some brown/rust algea coating mud

Is this normal for a new setup: I have a spotty light coating of brown/rust colored algea on the miracle mud...Just added cholerpa yesterday; any help appreciated

 

diatoms

 

Yes, that is quite normal for a new setup (and for not so new setups sometimes as well! )

Keep your water quality high, get that macro growing, and don't panic...it will go away

 

Thanks much!!

 

I cycled the tank with some existing rock and sand from a good friends setup and dont think ive experienced any spikes at all; I inadvertantly had the light(on a timer) on the Miracle Mud for 2 weeks w/any macro(Cholerpa) and I think that may have caused the brown algea growth;

Do you agree?

 

Sure, algae needs nutrients and water.

I keep my fuge light on 24/7 and while there is always some sort of algae growth that I did not intentionally put in there, it never gets out of control as long as the water is pretty good quality.

My display tank has relatively minimal unwanted algae and I assume the photo period has some effect on that.

 

hey there,
Cholerpro is growing well now, but the brown stuff seems to be all over the Fug and starting very lightly inside the tank; any suggestions?

5th week cycling....0 levels across the board.....light on Fug 12 hours a day.....fish only tank w/live rock...aqua c 120

thanks much,
Ken

 

snails-and cut back on the lighting in the main tank. what kind of skimmer are you using? Depending on what kind of calupera you have-you might want to do 24/7 in the fuge so it doesn't go sexual(describe the type)

 

i have a question about the 24/7 fuge lighting, even though it makes it so the macros dont reproduce wont u still get a diatom problem?

 

Yes...diatoms are from the silicates in the water. It is very normal for them appear during the cycling of a tank. It's even more likely to happen to Miracle Mud users as it has huge quantities of silicates in it.

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/mm_analysis.html

You just might need to wait it out for a little longer. There are polyfilters, silicate removing compounds, and most phosphate removers also remove silicates. This article by Thiel recommends that you do not use products that remove more than one compound but that isn't really necessary. The article is quite old and the products have improved since then. http://www.netpets.org/fish/reference/reefref/diatoms.html