cliffscorals
Member
Hi Everyone,
I have a small 50 gal reef aquarium with about 6 LPS, a few clowns, a tang, and a dottyback. Everything is going well with the exception of some clumpy brown stuff that forms on top of my gravel. I think that it is cyano bacteria rather than algae because I've seen similar stuff in my fresh water tanks but it was green (thin film covering rocks and gravel). The brown film traps large bubbles underneath it and is easy to break up but it keeps coming back.
My tank is well established - it has been up and running for 1.5 years. I am hesitant to get anything too big to sift thru the gravel (i.e. serpent or brittle star) because many of my LPS (hammer, frogspawn, torch, galaxy) are placed on top of the gravel rather than on the live rock. I would not like to have any critters blunder into them. At one time I had a large number of snails (cerith and nassarius) but a couple of blue-legged hermits did most of them in.
What is this brown stuff? How do I control it?
Thanks,
Cliff
I have a small 50 gal reef aquarium with about 6 LPS, a few clowns, a tang, and a dottyback. Everything is going well with the exception of some clumpy brown stuff that forms on top of my gravel. I think that it is cyano bacteria rather than algae because I've seen similar stuff in my fresh water tanks but it was green (thin film covering rocks and gravel). The brown film traps large bubbles underneath it and is easy to break up but it keeps coming back.
My tank is well established - it has been up and running for 1.5 years. I am hesitant to get anything too big to sift thru the gravel (i.e. serpent or brittle star) because many of my LPS (hammer, frogspawn, torch, galaxy) are placed on top of the gravel rather than on the live rock. I would not like to have any critters blunder into them. At one time I had a large number of snails (cerith and nassarius) but a couple of blue-legged hermits did most of them in.
What is this brown stuff? How do I control it?
Thanks,
Cliff