[jahorgos]

Some of you may know that I recently built my first salt water aquarium, its 125 gallons, dual over flows, 3 250 Watt MHs 10K Hamiltons, 2 actnics.

If you want to see the tank its in my specs. There are no current pics but you can see my setup.

3 weeks ago I started my cycling adventure I put in 100 lbs (2-3 inches) of live sand, a full tank of RO water and 100lbs of live rock covered with all kinds of coralline algae and other good stuff. Currently I run the MHs for 8 hours a day.

My rock first became covered with brown algae which I was told is normal and then alot of it turned green which I was also told is good. But now that I have all this brown / mostly green algae and my chemicals seem to have swung as much as they are which is not much being I added all that live rock, what do I do to get rid of this algae?

As well I added about 36 total different types of turbo snails, sand sifting snails and crabs last week. Is my tank now matured to the point where I should double my amount of inverts to handle this growth?

Wish I had some new pictures to show but my camera stinks.

Thanks!

[Reefland]

What are you test results for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate?

Algae is very common in new, cycling tanks. A tank that is 3 weeks old with new substrate and new liverock is expected to go through this algae bloom. This will continue until the nutrients are gone from the water.

[jahorgos]

Ammonia = 0
Nitrites = 0
Nitrates = 5

[Reefland]

Ok, definitely safe for the cleaning crew you have added. The important thing now is to keep up on the maintenance. Routine water changes, keep equipment clean, manually remove as much as you can, etc. It will eventually reside...this is a natural part of starting a new tank.

[jahorgos]

Alright thanks. I'm going to watch it over the next week and see if it shows any residing. Otherwise I may up my cleaing crew a bit.