I found a very interesting article through About.com that originally came from a forum post at Reeftank.com concerning controlling algae in a salt water aquarium. It discussed the three most common kinds of algae and how to eradicate them from your trunk. I’ve decide to make this into a two part series, covering brown diatom algae today and green hair and red slime algae tomorrow. I hope you enjoy!
Brown algae is considerably easier to control than the other two common types of algae. But don’t be duped, it is still quite difficult to completely get rid of brown algae in your salt water aquarium. The most common way that brown algae enters your tank is when new species are introduced. Most likely these species are carrying algae spores on their skin or inside of their gills.
The easiest way to get ride of brown diatom algae is to introduce either Trochus or Astraea snails to your aquarium. These species will eat the brown algae and effectively eradicate it from your tank. Another simple way to stop brown algae from growing in your tank is to perform regular water changes. This gets rid of excess nutrients and silicates which actually increase the growth rate of the algae.
There are a few other ways to get rid of brown diatom algae, but they are a bit more involved. First of all, if you don’t own a good protein skimmer go out and purchase one immediately. This is the most effective way to remove nutrients from your tank and cut down on algae regrowth. Another way to stop the algae from growing is to cut down on light intensity and use. Any light is going to reinforce the photosynthetic properties of algae and make them grow faster. By using less intense light bulbs or by using your lighting apparatus less time during the day, you could cut down on algae production.
The final step that you want to take to get rid of brown diatom algae is to introduce chemicals to the filtration of your tank. Most often you’ll introduce carbon to get rid of excess nutrients in the water, but this could have adverse affects on other species in your tank.
I hope this was helpful! Tune in tomorrow for part two in this super fabulous series! Post a comment if you have any other helpful algae killing information!