brown on rocks and coral
 

First post for me:

I inherited a 20 gal tank on Friday with two fish (yellow with white stripes clown and a blue with yellow tail). I had to transport the tank so I put 3/4 of the water into containers and took every thing home. The tank was covered in algae on the glass so I wiped it off before re adding the water that was drained for the trip.

The rock and coral are covered in reddish brown algae and the white gravel (is it gravel?) on the bottom was also this dark reddish brown.

I went into a fish store on Sunday and the guy told me to put my hand in the tank and stir it all up and the filter could clean it. He said to do this 2 - 3 times a day. I have swished it Sun pm and Mon am so far (today) but the stuff on the rocks doesn't look like it is doing any good. Do I just need to keep doing this? The bottom is looking better but it seems that now some of the red brown stuff is mixed into the gravel rather than just being on top.
Any other suggestions?

Could be diatoms forming because of mini cycle or cyanobacteria.

Welcome to Canreef Clownbob!!

A picture or two of your setup would help.
Are you running a skimmer currently?

I don't have a skimmer and I don't know how to put a picture on here. I am new to the forum and a 3 day old marinist (is that a word?) with not even a basic knowledge. I did want to rescue this tank and give it a shot of making it look good. The 5 grand daughters all love the 2 colourful fish.

At this point all the knowledge I have is from one visit to the store. They checked the water and said that every thing was OK but I needed more salt. It was at the lowest acceptable level and they said to raise it to the highest level. I am raising the level 1 notch a day.

While there they sold me:

Chlor-out
Essential Elements
Liquid Calcium
Strontium and Molybdenum
De-Tox
Frozen Shrimp

I inherited:

Ammonia Tester
ph tester
NO2 tester
Hydrometer
Ph indicator solution/Ph up/Ph down
Eclipse filer system
Heater
Coral life scientific grade salt
instant ocean
temp guage
lots of little stuff (algae scrapers, nets, etc)

The fish are healthy and have been alive for several years in this tank. It had only been neglected for the last short while before my friend passed away.

> Make sure your temp is at around 78 degrees.
> Use the hydrometer to test the specific gravity. This tells you how saline your water is. Aim for 1.023. Instead of dumping the salt into the aquarium directly, use a spare bucket and mix the salt in pure water.
You need to circulate the water you're mixing and aim for temperature a bit higher than that of your tank. So, you will need a heater and powerhead for this. Use your hydrometer to test the salinity once the temperature is at around 79~80. Aim for higher specific gravity if you have lower amount in your tank and vice versa.
You shouldn't be using tap water for the aquarium. So, you'll have to look into buying filtered RO (Reverse Osmosis) water. If you don't have a RO filter unit, look into buying water from your local fish store (LFS) or superstore.
> The two fishes you have are clownfish and royal gramma.
> Visit http://www.nano-reef.com/articles/ for useful info on how to maintain your tank you've recieved and a lot of information about saltwater aquarium.
> To post images, you can upload your pictures to website like tinypic.com and tag the url with

I think you mean 1.023.
Personally I like to aim for 1.025 (specific gravity of natural seawater)

Woops thanks for catching that. Wouldn't want to misguide up a new reefer. :)

The temp in the tank is 78

The specific gravity is presently at 1.022

My hydrometer has the numbers 1.020 - 1.024 in red. I was going to get it to the 1.024 line. Do you think I should go to 1.025? Will this help with red/brown algae problem?

Does the red/brown algae look like this?

http://www.melevsreef.com/id/cyano.html

kind of like that - there's a darker part on the right of the picture that looks more like mine - could be the lighting. there is a red slime on the glass behind the rocks (can't clean without moving the rocks).