algae taking over!!!!!!!

[cmhadden]

My tank has been going for a good four weeks now and while the damsels seem happy and the live rock seems to be doing the trick there is brown algae covering the floor, sides and all in the tank. Is this a good thing or bad thing and if it is a bad thing, what might be causing it and how might i fix this problem. please help!

 

[crage34]

all new tanks have an algae bloom and your are probably goin through yours now

 

[ambulocetus]

fwiw : pick up some snails for the glass and hermit crabs for the sand, that should help you out, plus the natural die off and you should be doing great!

 

[Kohan Bros.]

i would try a clean up crew with hermit crabs and snails the number would depend on how big your tank is. if you have a cc bottem then you could syphon it off or you could try the syphon on sand but a little risky probly pick up a lot of sand to also for the glass try an algae magnet

 

[noone]

I too have started to get brown algae on my sand, coral, and glass. The algae magnet works great on glass.

When you say hermit crabs, do you mean the ones that are about the size of a finger nail? (If so, I have 4 and they don't seem to be doing much.)

 

[Gauge]

Nassarius snails and conches really help here. They burrow into the sand a lot and stir it up quite a bit. However, the ultimate solution, in my opinion, would likely be discouraged by the majority of the people on this site. I would get either a sand sifting sea star and/or a tiger-tail sea cucumber. Both of these will mix up your sand much faster than the algae and cyano can grow. Others would argue that they kill pods, but I value the cleaning service they provide over the pods they might remove.

 

[Overstocker]

If it is a brown dusty/grainy looking algae...it should go away in a week or two. Kinda outgrows the food source rather quickly.

 

[Sparky]

I have conch snails and a sand sifting star....the star works very good. I remember putting it into the tank for the first time and just watching it "sink" into the samd...it was really amazing. I have a 125 gallon tank with about a six inch deep bed. That should be enough for the star to work with. The conches on the other hand aren't much to look at, but they do the job...just very slow.

Mike

 

[kidkameleon3]

before we diagnose this as a cycle bloom and not hte beginning to a tank that looks like a fuge.Are you using ro/di water or distilled????