Have a leather coral in my 14 bio cube has brown stuff or algae on it. Need to know what to do.?

Question

Will it kill it. Can i clean it some way. please help
The tank is about 4 months old

Answer 1

This sounds like an overgrowth of brown algae or diatoms. These will kill the leather (as will putting it in freshwater or in the dark for any length of time).

You will need to monitor and control nutrient levels in the tank. If you're using tapwater, this can be a source of both nitrate and phosphate which feed the algae, so just doing water changes may not be the answer. I'd advise that you switch to reverse osmosis water if you don't use it already - this will have nitrates and phosphates removed. You can get this in most Super WalMart stores (at the self-serve Culligan dispensers) for about $0.33/gallon once you buy the refillable container. You can also add a phosphate adsorbing pad that you cut to fit your filter. Protein skimmers are a help to remove nutrients in saltwater tanks, but I don't know if these can be used easily with the biocubes.

Do you have cleaners (snails, shrimp, kermits) in your tank? These will help keep the algae and other growth down by eating it directly (if it's something that they eat), or at least eating any food partiles in the tank before they decompose and become nutrients for the algae.

If you go to this site: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ and look under their marine maintenence section, there are some articles and FAQs pages dealing with the control of these (the site seems to be doing some maintenance at the present time, or I'd include the links for these here). Look up diatoms and brown algae/algae control.

Also be sure you aren't overfeeding - if you have fish in the tank, only give them what they can eat in about 2-3 minutes twice a day, and net out anything left.

Answer 2

i agree with what copper head said. he has a lot of good information to get it (diatom algae) under control. but in the mean time, for a short quick solution you can take a turkey baster, or a good (new) bar-b-q sauce brush that has really soft bristles and lightly brush, or in the case of the turkey baster, give the leather a slight squirt of water several times and you should see the diatoms disappear off of the leather, saving it from being smothered. i do this for my yellow ball sponge once in a while as it is needed. i use my turkey baster for a lot of clean up and debris removal. good luck on your leather!

Answer 3

Its probably some sort of algae. which means you should get rid of it before it spreads. the best way to algae on paraphernalia in a tank, in my opinion, is to remove it from the tank. put it in a bucket of pure water then leave it in a dark, cool place for a few days. then, the algae should have died as you denied it the 3 things important to its survival, nutrients, light and heat. Then rinse it and get whatever dead algae is clinging to it off, and it should be good to put back in.

Answer 4

sounds like an overgrowth of brown algae or diatoms. These will kill the leather (as will putting it in freshwater or in the dark for any length of time).

Answer 5

I would just leave it alone. It's called brown diatom algae. It shouldn't cause any damage to your coral!