Light Brown Dust

[TBrewerton]

Hey everyone,

With my tank still being in its first 6 months I have had swings of different types of algae come and go, usually I would scrub it off and syphon out but this last lot ran its course while i was away on business.

I now have a light brown dust over all my rocks and sand, I have syphoned out a lot but some is in hard to get spots etc. I am guessing this is just the die of from the algae...? I tried taking pictures but you cant see it at all sorry.

My best guess is it would just be the dead algae decaying. So my question then would be - is this an issue and will it mess with parameters much?

I will be keeping on top of regular water changes as normal - just curious more than anything, and will it eventually disappear on its own or do i need to find a way to get to the hard to reach areas and syphon it out - Its ugly lol

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Ted]

It should go away on its own. This is my ...I dunno 10 the time I have set up a salty....its always so nice when the day comes that you dont notice the brown...

 

[TBrewerton]

Thanks Ted, I guess this time around I was actually just excited it died off before i took to it haha - means something must be going right in there.

But very cool to know it should disappear on its own - exactly what I wanted to know - cheers!

 

[Ted]

If it makes you feel better ( I know it did me) suck some of it out when you do your changes. The hard to reach stuff try not to look there so much (ya right) The biggest thing about our beloved hobby is we need to leave it alone more...I struggle with it everyday...

 

[TBrewerton]

Haha yup - Im trying very hard to pull back more and just observe more! So hard to do though! But it was a huge eye opener coming home to see it all decayed like that and thinking wow i didn't do a thing haha

I've been reading Joyce Wilkinson's Clownfish book, and just reading that has been an eye opener - especially as far as how much water to change out in a water change - I was usually doing 20-40% and shes saying that is too much and to step back and do smaller more frequent changes of as little as 5-10% in order to not stress the fish as much.

Makes sense - but is so hard in practice lol

 

[RockStacker]

Look up Diatoms and see if they match the stuff in your tank.
They are a normal part of the initial stages of a maturing tank, specially if you have a significant silicate content in the water.
Silicates are usually bound to certain kinds of sand and rocks and naturally leach out as the tank water reaches certain parameters.
The timing on when they show up varies from tank to tank. Some show up within a week, some don't exhibit any significant blooms at all.

As the silicates are exhausted, the diatoms will fade out to non-significant populations - just make sure you are not adding anything that could introduce more silicates to the tank.