Algae For dummies

There are some tiny air bubbles trapped here and there, but the stuff seems to come off easily. I woke up this morning to severely cloudy water, and the brown stuff just absolutely proliferated over night. I've never seen any algae (or whatever this is) multiply that rapidly. Is the cloudy water related, or a different problem? I did a water test a few minutes ago, and here's what I came up with:

Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - <20ppm
KH - 23
Phosphate - .25
PH - 8.0
Temp - 77

A couple of things I changed yesterday:
Replaced the 4000K MH bulb with a 20,000K
Added about 8 oz Chaeto to the fuge.
I don't know if either of those things made any difference, but thought they were worth mentioning.

 

Sounds like you've got a dinoflagellate problem. Cloudy water could be a bacteria bloom. Either way, you've got to figure out what in your water this algae is feeding on and get it out of there.

Edit: I forgot that this was a new tank so it's probable that once your water stablizes, the dinos will go away on their own. I would still take steps to lower your nitrates and your phosphates but avoid water changes as your tank is still cycling.

 

Karma to Amcarrig. What you're describing is dinoflagellates and not diatoms. These are not uncommon to cycling tanks either.