Brown alge making me bald

[madreefer14]

Ok, you've deduced that I have a diatome problem, Now what to do about it. Here are my H2O perameters (ppm)

Temp 78.1
SG 1.024
Ph 8.2 (needs a boost)
Alk 1.7 (needs a BIG boost)
Amonia 0.019
Nitrite 0.05
Nitrates 1.25
Ca++ 300 (also needs a boost)
Phos 0.1
Silica greater than 2

I've checked the RO water and it's still greater than 2ppm for silicates however the tap water is off the charts! Do I need to add a DI to the RO unit or will this make any difference.

Tank is a 45 gal half hex Just added water on May 30th. Cycled and added my first SMALL piece of live rock on it 6/15/06 with 10 mushroom corals. Then I added 3.5# of LR and 2 candy cane coral frags on 8/6/06. 8/9/06 added 2 percula clowns( please dont ask there names, just use your imagination), then on 8/12/06 I added 1 green star frag.

Lights consist of 1 18 watt actinic and 1 18watt 12,000k bulbs. The actinic is on for 14 hours a day and the 12,000k is on for 12 hours. Dont seem to be running in to any hair alge or cyano alge but I have found 4 small green buble alge which were removed. I am also starting to have a red buble alge bloom which I will remove later today with a 5 gal water change and a boost in water chemistry where needed. I am also getting a type of red leaf like alge on one of my LR pieces. Anyone know what this is and should I get rid of it.

Filtration is a HOB filter with activated carbon and a 6" DSB. There is no skimmer at this time but it will be coming soon. Areation is provided with two 7" diffuser bars hooked up to a dule outlet air pump.

Seriously considering upgrading the lights to t5's. One actinic and one 10,000k bulb.

OK so now you know my problem. Let the solutions rip! I'm sure there'll be some ripping on me for my lighting system and no skimmer but as I said this will be corrected very soon. Right now I am keeping the livestock to low light requiring specimines.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention that I am using a spectrapure RO filter with a TCS membrane rated at 98 GPD and a 2 stage pre filter. The membrane has only been used once to filter 90 gallons of RO water.

Thanks for your help. MAD REEFER





















:hmm5: :hmm5: :hmm5: :smokin:

[drillsar]

your tank is less then 6 months old correct? Adding a DI will help for your RO, Do you have a fuge? If you do add chaeto. Your phosphates arent to high but the algae can eat that so give you a false reading as well as nitrates. Brown Algae is usually caused by new tank syndrome.

Since I added chaeto my tank has improved dramatically.

[madreefer14]

No I dont have a fuge on this tank. I'm sorry but I dont know what a CHAETO is. Please explain. Yes the tank is less than 6 months old.

[drillsar]

chaeto is a controllable macro algae that eats nutrients, phoshates to have better water quality natural. This can help you beleive me but if your tank is less then 6 months old i wont worry about algae usually.

[madreefer14]

Ahh, Yes I do have a small amount of macro growing in the tank. Just enough to seed it though. My bio load is rather light at this time but the macro that I do have does seem to be growing and greening up quite nicely. It's seeding shoots down into the DSB/plenum so I hope to see a good bloom soon.