Problem with brown coloured Algae in 350 Litre tank!

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J

jamesgjatkin

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 29, 2011
18
0
0
Bedfordshire, England
Hi all,

I have had my tank set up now for about 12 months.

In the last few weeks it has started to grow some really ugly algae (brownish in colour). If I syphon it off the substrate (crushed coral), it regrows in about 1 day! It also covers the rock. I have done a water test to check that the Nitrates / Phosphates have not suddenly increased and I get:

Nitrates 0
Nitrites 0
Phosphate 0
Iron 0
Temperature 26 degrees
1.026 - 1.027.

The tank is 350 litres and has about 45kg of live rock in it.

It is lit by a 250 MH with a T8 Actinic and T8 Marine white.
T8s run 8am - 8pm
MH runs 9am - 7pm

I have ran out of ideas as to what is causing it!!

Can anyone please help me :-(

Thanks a lot,

James
 
Maybe your tank is near a window. If so sunlight would allow it to grow. maybe you leave the light on too much. Hard to tell. It is hard to tell why nobody is replying too. I would think more people would reply. If it near a window you should could get blinds to cover the windows. You could leave the light off most of the time. If the tank is big enouf and you could fit one you could see if a pleco would eat it.
 
I have the same problem. My water parameters are perfect and my tank is on the opposite wall of the window and i just had a nasty bloom last week.
 
I'm working on the same problem right now. It's a very fine algae almost like a powder, and it blankets all of my tank. I've been doing some research, and have read in a few books that brown algae is caused by not enough light, where green is caused by too much. I went out and bought some new t5's and have been leaving them on all the time. I also happened to peer into my filter and it was overloaded with gunk so I took it out, and cleaned it. Also have been doing more frequent water changes and it appears that those steps plus the addition of some more plants are slowly winning the battle.
 
A few years back I had a brutal breakout of similar algae. I was equally frustrated with it, the brown seems to me the most resilient. It grew on a couple of tank decorations so incredibly fast there was no way to keep up. I did the same thing as above, I left my light on for a more extended period of time. I had to get rid of one decoration that seemed to really be covered but the light and that decoration removed was enough to get rid of the growth. Shortly after I had a green outbreak but it was simple enough to find balance.
 
I made the same complaint after having a new lighting system on my tank for a year, water was fine, and I tried shorter light periods which helped a little if I only had the light on three hours a day. I was told that the lifespan of a florescent lightbulb may be 20,000 hours or whatever but the internal gases breakdown over time and hours used. In the end replacing the bulb is what fixed it.
 
Hi,
Thanks for all the suggestions...

This is a marine tank, so I think I will start by getting a Sea Hare to munch on the algae covering the rocks.
In the mean time, I will also change one of the T8's as this is quite old now, but the other T8 and 250W halogen are virtually brand new.
The MH is running for 10hours a day, so I do not believe that it is lack of light that is causing this but I guess this is why the world of Marine tanks is so 'intresting' :-D

I'll let you know the results...

James
 
Thanks - I do not have a silicate test kit yet. I'll check out the LFS to see what they have.

One think I did not mention is that I use the Red Sea NO3:PO4-X in the system to maintain the Nitrate & Phosphate levels
 
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