diatoms?

[Jim_Leyland]

today when i was cleanin i noticed some brown spots on my glass and my rocks had a light brown cover on them.. is this diatoms (sp)? if so how do i get rid of it? snails? im orderin a clean up crew today or monday.. my tank has been up for like 2 weeks now.. any info would be great! thanks

[MCary]

Yes its probably diatoms. If your tank is new, you'll have to live with them for a month or two. Its a normal process. A bunch of snails will take care of them pretty quickly.

Mike

[TekCat]

Your tank is 2 weeks old. Are you done cycling your tank? If you can detect ammonia and/or nitrite, then you'd have to put on hold any type of critters, it is not safe for them yet.

Diatoms, then green hair algea, then cyanobacteria - these are normal stages of getting new tank established. They will come and go, just keep your water params in check.

REEF-ON!

[Jim_Leyland]

my tank allready cycled i used allready cured rock 70lbs.. and i allready have a pulsing xenia (free) and a coral beauty.. my water tests fine. i test every day.. how many snails and what kind?

[sir_dudeguy]

then you've most likely got nitrates...i dont know if the diatom blooms are from nitrites..but i do know high nitrates = red slime or brown algae...check those.

people often say that its just because the tank is new...i dont that thats the case tho...it has to have stuff to feed it...which is usually nitrates/phosphates....granted new tanks usually have that just because the person setting it up is still getting used to maintainence, but simply being a new tank wont cause it.

[sir_dudeguy]

for snails i'd get about 5 cerith snails to start...prolly 4 turbos or so...start light.

[Jim_Leyland]

thanks for the info on the snails! im gonna do a 10% WC tomorrow morning hopefully that will help get rid of it untill i can get the snails..

[sir_dudeguy]

what are your nitrates/phosphates at? those will likely be the problem...and if your tank does what mine did you wont be able to add any snails just yet...i came home from vacation to 100 plus nitrates, and the brown was everywhere (rather have that than what i got now tho..). But i couldnt add any snails cuz the 100 nitrates. So i just did a couple water changes and took out the media in my fluval (not all at once) and the nitrates went to barable levels for snails...then i got 2 ceriths and they took care of pretty much all the brown stuff in my 55 in about 4 days.

[johnjjk]

As TekCat posted Diatoms are part of the "natural" condition.

My experience was Diatoms were a part of my tank for months.

I bought snails but the Diatoms grew faster then they could eat them.

Just clean them out and wait for the Hair Algae, Cyno.

The amount of growth of these critters will be dependent upon your bio-load, skimming and water changes.

It is all part of a salt water tank.

[bertoni]

I agree that new tanks often go through a series of blooms like this one. If there aren't any snails in the tank, 4-5 cerith snails likely will be fine, though. Personally, I'd wait for three weeks of zero ammonia before adding any animals.

[sir_dudeguy]

ya what bertoni said...that will give plenty of time to make sure the tank is stable

[TekCat]

I'd second, third, and forth cerith snails.
However, Slow down a bit, for 55G tank that is two weeks old you already loading it with higher life (coral beauty). Your bio-system is trying to catch up with bio-load while haven't gotten established and stabilized in the first place. I doubt that a few small cerith snails would throw things out of whack, but I'd stop there for a few weeks. Otherwise you might end up dealing with "New Tank Syndrome".

REEF-ON!!!