algae

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by brotherd

Thats funny! Ok no vinegar.My params are ng at the moment.As of this morning in the cycle my amonia is zero but nitrites are off the scale...I think I will try scrubbing it off and give that rock a stern warning.

Honestly I think that's a bad idea. It's growing on your true live-rock, and it looks like you have a lot less live-rock relative to your marco rock. Taking the live stuff out of the water for any length of time and highly disturbing it is not what you should be doing at this stage. By now, that algae has already released enough spores to spread to every other rock in your tank, which it very likely will do over the coming weeks, so scrubbing it off now isn't necessary.

The algal spores were already on your rock when you got it, and are capitalizing on the fact that available nutrients (plants can use ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate for food) are sky high at the moment. Let it do what it's going to do. When things stabilize, it will very likely reach an equilibrium. If you have a good nutrient removal strategy in place, it will probably die out on it's own, or at least be kept in check by the herbivores you're eventually going to add to your tank.

Again, this is a totally normal part of cycling a tank the way you're doing it.