Cycling Question

[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!

 

[Brian5000]

My tank did this as part of it's initial cycle. Everything was covered in brown fuzz and it looked awful. Then, I added an assortment of snails and hermit crabs and the slowly "mowed the lawn." 125 gallons is a little bit bigger than mine, so it might take a few more critters to do the job, but it'll get done.

My LFS told me at the time that I needed 1 per gallon. I brought home half that and it was more than enough. Plus, once they eat up the algea from this bloom, I don't think it tends to grow back as fast, so food could get scarce if you buy too many.
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hash oil

 

[trido]

I agree with Brian5000. If your not overfeeding and adding too much PO4 the algea should subside all on its own. If you double your snail load and they run out of food some will inevitably die. It is just one of those things that you have to play by ear.

 

[jahorgos]

Yeah all my readings are good, I will let it play out this week and see if I need to increase the inverts.