Live rock

[hottievols]

I have had my tank up and running now for a few months. i have 50 lbs. of live rock and the rock started growing beautiful colors and looked amazing and now it has started to turn a brown color. Any suggestions as to why?

[Flake]

You may be hitting an algae burst. Can you wipe off the brown and is the purple still under it?

[match55]

will be better if you can give us a picture.

I will guess is Diatom, do u use RO water?
check your paraM, if there r too much nitrate, diatom will start growing.
as some pro told me in here, diatom will burn out once they don't have "food" which is nitrate and silicate (forgot how to spell, but if you just use tap water, that will have silicate in it).

[hottievols]

I will have pics later today. I use just tap water and my salt additive to when cleaning and doing water changes. i haven't tried scraping the surface of the rock but i will try it and let you know what happens.

[mandarinlove]

Sounds like diatoms...

Like match said, if you start using RO/DI water, it will eventually dissapear. Tap water is not a good thing to be using. Your nitrate and phospate levels will always be high!

Good luck!

[hottievols]

what is the best way to perform the RO/DI?

[Flake]

RO/DI is a filter. They're kind of expensive. A cheaper alternative would be to get a deionizer. It'll do the trick as well.

[melosu58]

If it was me I would get a RO/DI. You can get one on ebay for around a hundred dollars.

[thincat]

You would eat a lot of DI filters if you just went DI, The RO takes out lots of contaminates and in the long run would save you from buying the more expensive DI filters as often.

[mdaniel2882]

Check out www.bulkreefsupply.com new RODI for under 150