Bown Algae

[Underwaterfragglerock]

I have had fish in my 55 salt tank for over two weeks. Three weeks before I added them, I added around 30 lbs. of live rock. The tan kshould have cycled, but somebody told me to keep doing water changes to drop amonia levels. Obviously, this was killing whatever biological filtration that was trying to breed. So I took another person's advice to let the tank "run its course". Now I have all this brown algae ( I guess) on the sides of the tank and on the power head in the tank.
Here is my filtration:
30 lbs. live rock
Fluval 340
Seaclone 150 protein skimmer.

Is this brown stuff good or bad, and if you have any suggestions about cycling the tank, I am all ears.
-Joe

 

[ostrow]

Probably diatoms. If you haven't read up on reef tanks, you have some catching up to do!!! Read, read, and read some more. And then start reading!

Anyway, your new tank is going to have waves of algae growth of all sorts. They'll come, they'll go. Keep your water parameters high.

If you aren't already, use only ro/di water, topoff with kalk regularly (or always if you can swing it!), and keep testing the pH, kH, calcium levels above all.

Be careful with frequent water changes as that can really muck up pH and sp. gravity. You don't want to destabilize either.

But without more specific info on water parameters, exactly what's in the tank, and just what the thing you are concerned about looks like, anything else would be rank speculation.