Golden-Brown Algae, or dirt!?

[holidayrj]

I recently had a massive die off in my tank. All of my fish, snails, and crabs died after one of my heaters broke, and shorted out while i was away for the weekend. Luckily my circuit breaker eventually tripped, and my house didn't burn down... But, I'm not sure what happened in the tank after that if they were all electricuted, or what. But, after this I cleaned everything out of my tank. All the LR, and carcases of this horrible tradgity were removed. I cleaned the LR off, and drained all of the water out of the tank. i then filled the tank with 10 gallons of water, and drained that again. I repeated this 5-6 times. I figured this should lessen the Nitrate effects. I then reset everything, re-filled with salt water, and have tried to start cycling the tank again. it was going ok untill the other day i starting getting this layer of Golden-Brown starting to form all over the substrate. everywhere that my powerheads are not directly moving water over. it seems to be getting "thicker". if i stir up the water, or adjust my powerheads, i can stir this "dirt" up. But, what is it? is there something i can do to help stop this. I don't remember anything like this when i did the initial cycling, but that has been 5-6 years ago.

 

[reefer2b]

Sorry to hear about the massive die-off that really sucks. The brown stuff is the diatoms, I've got it all over my tank now too. More so in the back where I wasn't disturbing the sand with my constant aqua-scaping. Now that I've stopped it's getting up front too.

 

[yote]

Hate to hear about the bad luck.
Like Reefer2 said,the brown stuff is probably diatoms.There normal in a new setup which is basically what you've got now.

 

[Bifferwine]

I agree that it also sounds like diatoms, which is normal for a newly set up tank. You will get diatom outbreaks from time to time, but as your tank matures they will become less frequent.

 

[holidayrj]

anything I should do to help control these outbreaks?

 

[Oscarsdad608]

If it is diatoms it will go away on its own. Then comes the darn cyano and hair algae.

 

[Bifferwine]

Nothing you can do, really. Having a cleaner crew that moves the sandbed around will keep it stirred up. Nassarius snails do the best job of that.