For The Last 2 Weeks Or So My Tank Has Gotton Brown More And More Everyday. Didnt Think It Was A Problem Till I See My Beautiful Mushrooms Fading Away, In Otherwards, Dying!. I Havnt Done A Water Change In 3 Months. Could That Be It? Ive Gone Longer Without A Prob. Its A 55g With About 12 Fish And Snails And Hermet Crabs. All Doing Fine.

I would do a water change and check nitrate quickly if it was me. Sounds to me like over time you nitrate has been building and is now feeding the algae bloom you are having.

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Sounds like a nutrient probelm to me. But, what are your water parameters? This will take out all the guess work. You can do a large water change to export some of the excess nutrients, but we have to find out what you have in the tank or it will come right back.
Ammonia
Nitrites
Nitrates
Phosphates
Calcium

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thanks...im gonna do some tests to see where im at. ill get back to you guys soon.

55gal with 50lbs of live rock, 200 WATTS OF T-5 LIGHTING which is on about 8 hours a day, water temp is good, coral and about 10 fish, hermet crabs ,snails. sump tank with chaeto and caulerpa (no skimmer), 2 koala circulator pumps in main tank. all was doin fine for months. SUDDENLY MY TANK STARTS TURNING BROWNER AND BROWNER EVERYDAY LIKE I SAID BEFORE. I MADE A 20GALLON WATER CHANGE AND I HOPE THIS SOLVES MY PROBLEM. MY NITRATES BEFORE WATER CHANGE WAS AT 40 TO 80 WHICH IS PRETTY HIGH. EVERYTHING ELSE WAS FINE. BUT WHY DID MY NITRATES SPIKE SO HIGH? DO I NEED MORE CHAETO? I HAVE ABOUT 3 SANDWHICH BAGS FULL IN SUMP BUT CAULERPA LOOKS LIKE IT COULD BE DOING BETTER. I HAVE A MACRO-GLO LIGHT WITH A 13 WATT BULB AT 5500K. DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS?

3 sandwich bags doesn't sound like much to me. How long has the cheato been in there? without a skimmer I would think without a really vaset amount of Cheato, your parameters are not going to stay stable. you may need to do more frequent water changes, or get a skimmer.

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chaeto been in there about 5 months or so and hasnt grown much...ok....thanks alot..i may just buy a skimmer at this point...fist pick show how my nitrates was about three days ago. the second shows todays nitrates after water change three days ago. the third is my caulerpa and chaeto. give me your thoughts.

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Well, your Trates have come down, but with that sump you should not have an issue. What kind of light are you using on it and what kind of flow? That stuff should be growing like mad.

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macro glo fixture with a 13w 5500k bulb. and a small pump i put in about 10 days ago to circulate(photo shown). can you tell me a good bulb to use that you know will work great? should i get more chaeto to keep nitrates down. my nitrates did go down and my coral are responding well.

1. should i get more chaeto
2. can you tell me a better bulb to buy
3. should i get a protein skimmer. 4. still have brown in tank. i put timer down for light from 8hrs to 6 and a half hrs. should i buy something to help remove it.
5. after my water change of 20 gallons out of 50, all my snails died. just have hermit crabs and fish. should i buy more snails?

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Cheato is lookin a bit rough there, lots of brown. You don't need a big fancy light for Cheato, just use a 16-Watt (65W) R30 Daylight CFL Light Bulbs (2-Pack)-ES5R316250K at The Home Depot that will do ya. Cheato will grow pretty fast if it has neough lighting. You can get a protein skimme, they are always a good thing to have, they save you a headache like you rgoing through now. The Diatom bloom in your tank will go away by itself, no need to do anything else, its not in the water, its on your surfaces.

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when i get this bulb how long should i leave it on and how far should i keep it overheadin inches.

Its a spot lamp, compact flourescent. Keep it far enough above the sump to get light spread. Keep it on 8-10 hours a day, opposite of your tank lighting.

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You don't have to get that exact light, you can get most any of the compact flourescent lights for your sump. The lil curly cue lamps grow algae well. Anything 60w equivilant in compact flourescent form should do ya.

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