Help, brown algae on my live rock

[Craig Manoukian]

If its brown, chances are its diatoms and will disappear when the silica in the sand is precipitated out of the tank. *Will clear up on its own. *Not uncommon in the first year of tank maturation.

[hottielover14]

how long until it went away in your tank and how long have u had your tank up. How long does it take until the silica is gone.

[Craig Manoukian]

My tank wil be two years old on May 7th. My brown diatoms lasted about a month or two. Went through the green algae, brown diatom, and red cyanobacteria stages the first year. Have just a small amount of cyanobacteria where my Maroon Clown tails the sand down to the screen and releases phosphates from the substrate.

Relax, relax, relax! Go slow and let it grow!

[chrischick]

Update..brown has subsided......Now it is a massive take over of light green algae all over my glass...live rock...as well as red algae with bubbles in it....i hate thisstuff it looks soooo nasty....

[inwall75]

Chrischick,

There's a lot of good info on cyanobacteria on this link. http://www.3reef.com/cgi-bin/yabb/Ya...=;action=links

[Craig Manoukian]

Take a chill pill! As I explained above, this is all part of the normal tank maturation process. Not to worry!

[chrischick]

Alright, so I just wrote a short novel and i wasnt freakin logged in so it delted it...well, things are going well...I took the media out of my fileter and the green algae is almost all gone now. Now the only problem i have is the massive Cyano(Ithink its cyano..Its red with bubbles in it) problem im dealing with. It is red, all over my live rock and sand bed wherever it is in contact with light...So I have 6 blue legged hermit crabs...and just picked up a trochus snail which is unreal....it is scrubbing my live rock cleaner then ever and removing all the red algea...it has alot of work to do however..so im thinking im going to pick up 5 or 6 more of these...to help the poor guy out...Also on my up and coming purchase list is a emerald crab, 10 more blue legged hermits...2 cleaner shrimp...and 6 trochus snails...as well as a KNOP excalibur protein skimmer.

Do you guys have any recommendations for something that would keep my sand nice and white..i hate how it looks now.....here is what i have to choose from.....

http://www.jlaquatics.com/static/livestock/janitors.htm

Thanks guys...

[Craig Manoukian]

Here you go Cyanobacteria 1, 2, & 3:[/b]

http://www.athiel.com/lib/cya.html

http://www.athiel.com/lib/txtfiles/cya2.html

http://www.athiel.com/lib/txtfiles/cyano3.html

[hottielover14]

I ordered 50 nass. snails for my algae problem and to control it in the future. I've had my brown diatoms for about 4 months. I just started getting green algae.

[Craig Manoukian]

Patience grass hopper, your tank ids maturing. Will take a year to two years to get settled as you are adding livestock.