What is this nasty brown stuff that plagues my tank arghhhh

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luv2ride

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Feb 17, 2004
Messages
14
Location
Harley-Country -- Milwaukee
Tank 155 gallon
Lights 2 110 Compact fluorescent 50/50 actinic
130 lbs live rock
tank has been up for a month

What the hell is it? If I restrict the lighting to 5 hrs per day the problem goes away. Now yesterday I had the lights on for 10 hours (company) now it's goin brown again! Where does this come from?

Help the newb
 
Can you give some more info about the tank? What kind of substrate do you have and how deep? What kind of water are you using...tap, distilled, RO, RO/DI? It sounds to me like the usual diatom bloom that occurs with a tank that's about this age. Is it a slimy looking brown/red mat forming on the LR and substrate? If so, it might be cyano. We really need some more info.
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mansiz said:
whats a cyano? Is is a kind of algae? Will it cause harm to fishes?

Take a search of the site for cyano and you should get well over 100 links describing it.

luv2ride, if the alge does not form sheets then its quite possible a diatom issue and algae and diatoms are not uncommon on new tanks. I konw you dont want to hear this but its very possible your tap water is helping contrabute to this as well. Most of our water sources are not near as pure as they should be and then when we mix up our saltwater mix into it the amount of minerals and nutrients increases beyond normal saltwater levels providing fuel for the algae.
 
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