Need Help.at My Whits End!

[mbu man]

hi,ive had my marine tank going for about 20 months now and all has been going well.
fish,corals etc are all growing and doing well.
over the last 4 months or so,i have been getting loads of brown all over my sand and the rocks.
thought that it was my t5 tubes,so i bougfht new ones,and now iy is alot whiter and looks alot clearer.
had them now for about 2-3months,and still i get he brown everywhere.
i have a 300 litre tank,plenty of rocks,powerheads a uv and a skimmer,aloso have 2 exterenal filters that are loaded up with rubble rock.
im now doing gravel cleans with my gravel cleaner for about 2 weeks now,50 litres every 3 days.
still now i have the brown appearing everywhere.
not so much in the mornings but more at night.
my 2 blue t5`s come on at 12pm,then i have 4 white t5`s come on at 3pm,the white go iff at 10.30pm and the blue go off at 11pm.
i have done nothing different to the tank as i have been for the last 20 odd months,but im having this brown appear all over??
gets annoying and makes the tank look dull.
what can i do??
why is this the way that it is??
any help would be great!!

 

[N1z]

Have you tested your phospates in both RO and ur tank? Try decreasing the light time to 6-8 hours see if any change.

 

[mbu man]

Have you tested your phospates in both RO and ur tank? Try decreasing the light time to 6-8 hours see if any change.

i have dropped the times down from wghat i used to have them,thing is why would this be doing this after all of this time??
will it get to the stage that i can only have the lights on for a couple of hours??

 

[ben1987]

Could also mean one of your powerheads is blocking up/ failing. 20 months could be a long time if you have done no maintainance.
Poor flow can contribuite to problem alage, diatoms or cyano.

 

[mbu man]

Could also mean one of your powerheads is blocking up/ failing. 20 months could be a long time if you have done no maintainance.
Poor flow can contribuite to problem alage, diatoms or cyano.

all of my powerheads are cleaned every month,i have actually put 1 more on their about 3months ago.
wierd thing is,is ive not done anything different,and i posted on here sometime ago and was advised to cut down the amount of lighting time,i did this and still is the same??
also right at he top at the front of my tank i have a clump of haie algae growing,odd

 

[JP-79er]

Some quick thoughts, i had a bad algea problem which caused me grief for months, i carried out the following changes to over come this:

Changed RO Membrane (Rember to always change the flow restricor every time you do this as this can reduced the performance or damage the membrane as the pressure on the membrane becomes to great)

Reduced time between water changes

Added a refugirum with Calpura under 24 hr lighing to increase nutrient export

Increase flow by adding circulation pumps

Reduced lighing times

Bigger CUC to get rid of build up detrious material (left over food and stuff).

 

[xxBarneyxx]

What are your phosphate and nitrate levels?

 

[mbu man]

Some quick thoughts, i had a bad algea problem which caused me grief for months, i carried out the following changes to over come this:

Changed RO Membrane (Rember to always change the flow restricor every time you do this as this can reduced the performance or damage the membrane as the pressure on the membrane becomes to great)

Reduced time between water changes

Added a refugirum with Calpura under 24 hr lighing to increase nutrient export

Increase flow by adding circulation pumps

Reduced lighing times

Bigger CUC to get rid of build up detrious material (left over food and stuff).

just bought a new ro converter a month ago.
i shall check and post my phosphate levels of ro water and my tank water in a bit

 

[mbu man]

Some quick thoughts, i had a bad algea problem which caused me grief for months, i carried out the following changes to over come this:

Changed RO Membrane (Rember to always change the flow restricor every time you do this as this can reduced the performance or damage the membrane as the pressure on the membrane becomes to great)

Reduced time between water changes

Added a refugirum with Calpura under 24 hr lighing to increase nutrient export

Increase flow by adding circulation pumps

Reduced lighing times

Bigger CUC to get rid of build up detrious material (left over food and stuff).

just bought a new ro converter a month ago.
i shall check and post my phosphate levels of ro water and my tank water in a bit

right just done a phosphate test on my ro water,its bang on 0.
the tank water is between 0 and 0.25.
bearing in mind ive not done a w ter change this week,im just about to do a 50 litre change now.
o and my nitrate is a very deep yellow say12.5mg/l

 

[rabbut]

Nitrate is OK, but the resolution of the Phosphate test kit is too low to say if that's your issue. Phosphate generaly becomes an issue above 0.03ppm, so a kit saying between 0 and 0.25 isn't realy any help to you You don't have the acuracy to read to 2dp from that kit by the sound of things, so you cannot say if Phosphate is the issue for definate.

This said, brown diatom algea is commonly associated with high silicates, so it might be worth stabbing at finding someone with a silicate test kit

All the best
Rabbut