In my 75 reef I am having an explosion of little tufts of brownish algae. They are small (less than 1cm) and generally round in shape. also bubble algae in numerous areas. The thing is my water chemistry is great.
Nitrate- 0
Amonia- 0
Phosphate- 0
Sal- 36 ppt
temp 78- 80
pH- 8.2-8.4
I do not feed heavily. Fish 1xday corals 2x a week.
What are these little tufts? Why are they growing so well?
Also my lighting is 500 watts MH on for 4.5 hrs along with T5 actinics. Also 190watts of actinic and 10k combos for @10 hrs. Mh comes on at middle of the span.
Do you use RO water? What kind of salt do you use? What are you feeding the tank. How old is the tank? Is all your media clean, is your Skimmer adjusted correctly? Brown Algae is usually Diatom, it normally happens when a tank goes through a cycle, has anything changed recently in the tank, the bubble algae may have come from something you recently added, I have not seen bubble form on its own, usually is comes in from a new addition of somesort, and then it spreads
I use Ro/DI, instant ocean salt. The tank is 4 months old. skimmer is producing a nice dry skimmate @ 1 cup every 3-4 days, the liquid is dark green and smells terrible. I do water changes every 2 weeks @ 5-10 %. The algae is not the classic diatom algae, i've been thru that. Nor is it cyanobacteria, been thru that also. This algae is more like a tussock of grass. It sort of looks like mini pom-poms. I see shrimp eating at it all the time but they are slowly being overwhelmed. Bubble probably hitched a ride on a recent addition, but it is spreading. How do I get rid of it? The fish are fed spray dried plankton and ocean primes prime reef. Cyclopeeze is also used alternately. Fish load is -I think light- 1yellow tang, 1 small clown fish, 1 fire damsel, 1 algae blenny. 2 fire shrimp. 5 or six grass/feeder shrimp very small.
Algae Tufts
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