recycling tank

Question
I have a 55 gal tank that recently crashed due to malfunction of a floating valve for adding fresh water (SG down to fresh water for several hours). I have moved fish and anemones to a local store and am trying to get the tank recycled. Currently it has sand and live rock only.  Nitrate is 20, nitrite 0, alk 200,ph8, temp is 77.2  sg is 1.023 there is  still a little debris but skimmer and filter working well. there is a brown algae covering everything. When I noticed the algae, I turned the lights off. . Should I continue to do water changes?, should I stir and clean sand while livestock is gone? any other ideas to speed recovery?.  My tank was beautiful and I am devastated as I am sure you can appreciate, but I dont want to put fish and anemone back until things are right.

Answer
Hi jean,

sorry to hear about your crash and 'rebuild', but it will come together quickly...although that might not be believable at this point in time....

the 'brown' alage is common in new tanks during this phase...  and there are a few points of view on how to deal with it...

My reccomendation is to basically not do much... as it really wont help and might perpetuate it a bit longer then if you do nothing...

I would turn the lights on, but jsut for a few hours, not like as if you had fish and corals in it, but to actually promote GOOD algae growth...  certainly you dont need lights on for more then 2-3 hours at this point...

the reduced lighting will help in minimizing the diatom algae, (brown).

If you have a big clump, or area of the diatom, then you can suck/sypphon that clump out, but I believe you should not stir up the sand, (actually i dont reccomend EVER stirring up the sand)

the diatom will eventually, (within a month or less) disappear completely, or at least 90% of it will be gone


IF your tank has been cycling for a bit, (2+ weeks, and your test results are what they are, then i would also consider adding some livestock...

Maybe you can join my new forum at www.thelittleocean.com and intro yourself and we can carry on from there