Diamtoms on my leather finger coral!!

I have a 55gal reef tank and I noticed that I had rust colored algae on my sand bed and before I knew it it went on to my leather finger coral , all of my other corals are doing good and are healthy but this one coral is under attack is there anything I can do to get the stuff off of it? I have Tropic Marin pro-coral cure should I try and dunk it in that? Any help at all will be greatly appreciated

 

You don't need to dunk it. What you are seeing right now are dead diatoms. The brown is death.....so nothing to worry about. Don't get me wrong, it sounds like you have a diatom bloom going on, but the only time you actually 'see' them, is when they die and leave a brown skeleton. So take a turkey baster and blast the bodies off the coral and call it good.

Then you want to find the source of the diatom's food which are silicates. If your tank is new.....the diatom outbread a few weeks into it is completely normal and will resolve itself when the silicate in the water is exhausted.

If, however, it happens down the road, you need to find the source, which is often the use of tap water in water changes.

GL.......John.

 

He can also throw in some snails to eat the leftovers.
Using clean RO/DI water usually will eliminate diatom problems in tanks. I say clean because, changing the RO/DI filters is just as important as cleaning the filters in our tanks.

 

Thanks guys for your help! I cleaned up the coral and it back out and happy, I also ordered all new filters for my RO/DI setup so I should be back in business. Thanks once again!!!