Having problems with brown algae

My tank has been up for 4 months now and i am having some problems with brown algae. It grows on my live rock and completely consumes it. It gets my substrate dirty and my glass dirty as well. I have to clean the tank weekly and pull the live rock and scrub it with a tooth brush it seriously gets that dirty. I think it has something to do with the fact that im using gravel as my substrate instead of sand which was a terrible idea. It also gets hit by sunlight when ever the blinds are open because our window is so massive. but we try to open the flaps so it doesn't hit the tank directly. Will this go away when i switch to sand or over more time. its a big time annoyance.

 

Your tank is cycling and the brown algae is diatoms. Everytime you pull that rock out and scrub it your making it worse. Your tank doesn't have enough nitrifying bactetia, one of the problems with having gravel instead of live sand. This is one of many problems your gonna experience as stated in your other thread. Check your params because if your stirring it up you could be causing water issues. Diatoms indicate the end of a cycle but in your case it will get worse. More live rock and live sand. I said before, the more live rock the better.

 

Solid answer.

My thing is, if you know the gravel is a bad substrate, and you know the tank is getting hit by direct sunlight, why not fix the problems you have already IDed?

Move the tank and get ride of every last piece of gravel

 

Is it gravel, or crushed coral, (I know, not a lot of difference there) but standard store bought gravel can be smooth, and possibly coated, while CC is porous and not painted. I know lots of tanks that use CC with no issues. As stated, please stop taking your rock out, as it is killing the "live" aspect of it.

First, what livestock do you currently have, what size tank do you have, what type of filtration are you using, what type of lighting do you have, How many hours are you running the lights, and how much are you feeding each day?

What are you using for water movement? Any Power heads in the Display tank?

Also, in order to further help your problem, you'll need to list your parameters to the best of your testing ability.

Ammonia -
Nitrite -
Nitrate -
Phosphate -
Alkalinity -
Salt Gravity -

 

Did you or do you work at Petco? Kidding but what you're experiencing is exactly the same reason why Petco can't keep their tanks healthy and fishing are always dying.
Every time you clean, you also destroy. Without a doubt you should either bare bottom the tank or use live sand. Personally I have no problems or issues feeding my tank any sun light. My Corals loved it and I never seen them extend out as far with any type of artificial light as I seen them do with the real deal betting down on them.

 

FISHING : I know whats on my mind

 

Gotta quit scrubbing the rocks. Unless your trying to keep your rocks white. Which most of us strive for purple. But brown is just the stepping stone to having great Coraline algae rocks. You can put tint on the window to block some sun. I use reflective tint along with blinds.

 

Another important factor is the water you put into the tank... are you using RO/DI water? If not then the water might be high in nitrates/phosphates which will also contribute to the algae.

 

Diatoms use silica to build their cell walls. It comes from the plastic things in your tank, also can come from water if using tap. Once the available silica is used up they will die off. It just has to run its course.

 

I put 3 Mexican turbo snails in my tank and they just chow down on the brown stuff. Had it under control within a week.