Brown Alqae/Diatoms

[Reef Man]

Hi, I've had a a brown algae bloom in my 55 gallon main tank. The tank has been running since mid October 2006. I reduced the lighting to 8 hrs/day. I let the tank run for almost a week and still had the algae/diatoms. Next I added protein skimmer and a resin absorber in the filter 3 days ago. The algae is still there as of today. I noticed the algae goes away at night and I was thinking of suspending the light for a few days. Does anyone have any pointers/advice and/or experience in getting rid of this type of bloom? Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks

[bouraganes]

Hi Reef Man are you using ro/di water? An heavy bioload (or heavy feeding)can also encourage this but your tank stats don't seem to reflect that-here is a nice article that may help:
About Brown or Golden Diatom Algae - What Makes it Grow and Solutions for Eliminating This Problem in Saltwater Aquariums
and this one:
About.com: http://w3page.com/fishline/micro.html
I hope this will be of some help

[TheDuck]

Well, I read that too because I have a slight brown algae thing happening in my tank. I think I just need to change out my filter material and clean the glass since the tank hasn't been running for a month.

Am I on the right track?

[milesm4]

I bought a book afew years back and if memory serves me correctly it said the main cause of diatoms was an abundance of light and water chemistry being off. I'll check and see if I can find a PDF to post a link to.

[Reef Man]

I took all the rock out and cleaned it really well, the same went for the substrate. I syphoned out so much krap from the substrate it was unbelievable. I used a sponge to get as much of that brown algae out of my tank as possible. I then perfomed a 50% water change. At this point the tank looks beautiful!