WHY? brown algae during tank cycle

[daisy]

Hi all -- so my new 55 gal is cycling with a new dsb and about 150 lb LR with all kinds of life clearly evident (tons of worms, large pods, small pods, feather dusters, sponge of all colors , shapes and sizes, lots of pink, purple and green coraline algae, and sadly, aptasia...) and after about two weeks, there is now an explosion of brown algae on the sand... should i do anything about it? It's RO/DI water... under a PC fixture...

-daisy

 

[bad coffee]

Daisy,

It's probably diatoms. Part of the cycle. Do some research and see what you come up with.

Also, how deep is your sand bed? Too deep and it can lead to problems down the road.

B

 

[daisy]

Hey - thanks for responding...

The sand bed is 3 to 5 inches (it changes throughout the tank with the aquascaping)

The light strip is from my old tank, and is one foot too short (waiting on a new light fixture...) And the brown is only where the light is directly above, which is why I thought it would be algae.

 

[nanoreefer22]

Sounds like a part of the cycle to me too. I started getting them at around that point and now they're starting to receed. Sucks too look at but regardless of what we do its going to happen .

BTW what type of lighting are you using?

 

[daisy]

Need to buy new lights. Have a PC unit now - one blue, one white - which needs to be replaced. Can't tell you the specs on it, as I don't remember right now.

Let's just say that it's great at supporting a tank full of softies, and I replaced it about yearly, but have not done anything since last June, when I left for three months to Israel (husband took care of everything while I was gone...)

But while there, the tank broke, and I've been writing my master's thesis, so I went from being super-involved with my tank to praying that it could hold out till my thesis was done.

Now the thesis is nearly done, and I'm getting back into my tank....

I'm thinking of outfitting this new tank with a T5 unit.

 

[Chris5]

T5s would be nicer, but nothing beats a good 20k MH bulb lol ...The blue-ish tint will blow you away!! And corals that dont open up as much blossom like you wouldnt believe...

As for the brown diatoms don't feel bad everyone goes through that at one point during there cycles, but be careful you could get it again if you have old PC's running on your tank, it happened to me occasionally before the switch to MH....

Also just another piece of advice, on the DSB take it from me when i say anything more than 2.5-3" of sand can cause you a BIG headache in the future..In a nutshell toxic gases build up under the sand and can crash you tank at any given time...happened to me and what a nightmare, just the smell alone of the sand (rotten egg smell) was enough to tell me something wasn't right...

Just my 2cents :scratchch
Good luck.....:party: