Advise on how to brown alge growth

nport19 · Apr 1, 2015

i asked a guy at my petstore I go to about this and he just told me its part of the aging process and there's really no way to take care of it other then to suck it out. I have been doing this when I do my water changes every 2 weeks and it seems to get worse. Corals are growing like crazy so I'm not sure what the problem is. Any advise would be really helpful.

mike007 · Apr 1, 2015

Where Is this algae growing? How old is the tank? Have you tested your water parameters? Tell us more about your tank so we can help.

Reefing Madness · Apr 1, 2015

Your LFS guy is not very bright then.
Many things will take care of algae growth for you, Turbo Snails, Sea Hare, low nutrients, low Phosphates, things like this will help keep it in check. I can't remember the last time I had to deal with any Hair Algae in my tank. Been forever it seems.

nport19 · Apr 1, 2015

The alge is growing on the sand bed of my tank. It also seems to just be brown not like hair alge. The tank is about 14 months old. Water has been tested and all seems well. The tank sits by a window that gets a fair amount of sun. I have 4 snails and 2 hermit crabs as the clean up crew as for fish I have 2 clown fish and a sunrise bottyback. I'm running a flow vent canister filter on it as well. No skimmer on tank.

Reefing Madness · Apr 1, 2015

Brown on the sand bed tells me its Diatoms. You recently change lighting?

nport19 · Apr 2, 2015

I havnt changed my lighting recently. It's has the same light since I started up the tank. It's a flow vlow led light too.

Reefing Madness · Apr 2, 2015

Interesting. Can't tell ya what it is without a pic.
But you could get a bigger clean up crew, more sand sifting snails. A Sea Hare perhaps.

nport19 · Apr 2, 2015

There's the pic. Let me know if it doesn't show up and I will repost it.

saltyphish · Apr 2, 2015

Looks like Hair algae to me. The extra light from the window may not be helping, but my first guess would be excess nutrients causing it. What are your nitrates, and phosphates testing at?