A few questions for a newly cycled tank.. Pic Included..

[Tetra84]

Can anyone give me some insight as to what these things are that are starting to show up in my system?

My tank just finished cycling a few weeks ago after 3 months of cycling (BRS reef saver dead rock, and dead sand, no live rock - just bottled bacteria/ammonia), in the last few weeks, these things started to show up..

In red: you can see some fine white hair.. about 4-5mm in length that cover all my rocks and sand. It's not hair algae, because I have some of that too.. it's green and much longer. This stuff restricts itself to just 4-5mm long and is white.

In green: These brown spots that are starting to form on the rock work.. anyone know what these are?

My parameters are: Ammonia - 0, Nitrites - 0, Nitrates - 0, PH between 7.9-8.1, and no detectable phosphates.. I did just come out of a nasty white bacteria bloom that lasted about 2 weeks due to overfeeding while I was out of town.

I only have 2 blue/green chromis in the tank at the moment.

I'm currently running carbon, is it time for GFO or would that matter at this point?

Any advice/input?

Thanks,
Paul

[Reefmedic79]

Did you have any live rock in the tank in addition to the base rock?

The hairy things could be colony feather dusters or sponge growing from the rock.

Do the brown spots rub off?

They look kinda like diatoms or maybe just a brown algea.

Either way they're both just your base rock coming to like which is a good thing.

[Tetra84]

no didn't have any live rock at all in this setup.. so the white hair couldn't be feather dusters or sponges...

[Reefmedic79]

Could be bacteria then.

[Tetra84]

if it is bacteria, is that something that goes away on its own?

[Jocko]

Looks like bacteria to me. Not mention, by process of elimination, we can pretty much assume that is all it could be. Is this your first tank? I'm wondering what is motivating you to take such an extreme approach to sterility and low nutrients. No idea why you are running carbon with practically no life in there. Although I'm sure the carbon supplier doesn't mind. Did you dose ammonia during the initial cycle? Are you carbon dosing?

[Playa-1]

It's hard to say what you looking at, but I wouldn't worry about it at this point. It's likely Algae or bacteria or some sort which are both common in new tanks just starting out. You will likely know what it is shortly

[Tetra84]

Originally Posted by Jocko

Looks like bacteria to me. Not mention, by process of elimination, we can pretty much assume that is all it could be. Is this your first tank? I'm wondering what is motivating you to take such an extreme approach to sterility and low nutrients. No idea why you are running carbon with practically no life in there. Although I'm sure the carbon supplier doesn't mind. Did you dose ammonia during the initial cycle? Are you carbon dosing?

Yeah first tank.. I chose to not use live rock for fear of undesirable things that would be difficult, and annoying to remove later.. I was using carbon early on because I had a bacteria bloom, and was hoping that would clear it up.. didn't really do much though. And no, I'm not carbon dosing. And yeah.. I did dose ammonia at the start.

[tmerf11]

I have a fairly new tank set up, (3-4 months) and have the same type of short white hair stuff. It grows on pretty much everything, snail shells included. I haven't been able to figure out what it is or how to get rid of it yet. I started with dry marco rock and a handful of live. I've been running gfo and carbon and it hasn't changed anything yet. I saw a thread where someone had similar stuff and defeated it with lights out so i may try that next.