Re:Maine planted tank

[Thomas Barr <tcbiii at earthlink_net>]

> Hello everyone,
> I decided to start a very simple marine tank a few weeks ago.
> A friend sent me some caulerpa prolifera. The tank is a 55gallon with quartz
> sand and a four foot shop light with a growlight bulb and a daylight bulb.

Might want to swap with CaCO3 based sand.

> I
> was trying to avoid the use of a filter to promote the caulerpa to act as a
> natural filter. So I don't have a filter yet, just strong aeration.
> (Flame shields activated)

This will work fine.

> The problem is... I have a terrible brown coating of algae covering
> everything. I even cleaned the tank completely two weeks ago but the stuff
> came back. I have two turbo grazers and a couple of tiny black and white
> damsels.

Diatoms: from a nutrient pulse of some sort. Scrub it off and it generally
doesn't come back well unless you add relatively high to moderate nutrients.

> Can anyone tell me how to get rid of this terrible brown algae?
> Perhaps more turbograzer snails?
> The brown algae is even choking the caulerpa.

Water change. Does great things for marine tanks especially the simple ones.
Easy but cost $ for the salt for the make up water.
More snails will help but it will not solve it completely.

Make sure you scrub. Also, blackouts work on SW tanks also.


I use 4-5 inch base of aragonite gravel they use for sub packing under side
walks here. Cost about 2$ for 100lbs. You might need to look around but this
will help.

The issue with many of the macro's is maintaining the Ca levels and adding
enough nutrients.

Add too much and you'll get blooms of the diatoms but these are not too bad.
Don't add enough and you'll get slime algae.

Regards, 
Tom Barr 

Got any extra jobs?

> Help! (please)
> Paul Jarvis
> Assistant Research Scientist
> Aquaculture Research Institute
> University of Idaho
> 208-885-5734
> pjarvis at uidaho_edu