Diatom breakout?

I have had my tank set up for 8 days now.... The Live rock I bought came right from an established tank at the LFS.... Is it possible that the cycle was extremely short or that there was no cycle at all.... I turned on the aquarium lights this morning and noticed that much of my rocks are covered in brown..(It was easily noticed because much of my live rock was white pink and red in color....

My parameters are

Ammonia 0 - .25

Nitrite 0

nitrate 0

Ph.... 7.8 (trying to raise this)

alk Normal range

Salinity 1.021 - 1.022

temp 80 degrees

I just want to know should I add a clean -up crew? I'm sure what ever the brown stuff is will go away... but i don't want to wait to long on a clean up crew if I need one now....Thanks in advance

~MEgan

do diatoms mean it the end of the cycil

yes usually diatoms mean that the cycle is 99% over

and I just tested my Ph is up at like 8.1 now... so that is much better

If the LR came out of an estabished aquarium, I'd say go ahead and add some clean up critters.

brown usually means high phosphates. Did u top off or w/c with no ro/di water? Id check phosphates and cut back on feeding and light cycle. Also your SG is a little low id get it around 1.025

I've been using distilled water.... and I am slowly raising the Salinity.... I noticed that lots of tiny critters were out when I had the lights turned out! Wish I knew exactely what they were

i read somewhere that the diatoms are caused by high nitrates and silicates.... but if I have no Nitrates! Can I still get a diatom bloom... this is confusing.... it seems to me that there has been no cycle... water params have been the same since I set the tank up..but like I said I got the brown stuff that looks like diatoms... can this occur with no cycle?

By the way I have the lights out pretty much all the time and I'm not feeding.... theres nothing in there to feed!

Anymore Advice.. thanks so much I'm gonna by a phosphate kit...but what is the cause of phosphates?

Diatoms is very common for the end of a cycle and will slowly start to go away with time and proper maintenance. Make sure your ammonia reading is 0 though. And I totally agree with budha about raising the SG up a few points.

And what about Phosphates...and silicates? do these cause the diatom bloom?

In short, yes. Here's a decent article on the brown buggers: http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/algaecont.../a/aa091100.htm

Good Luck.

Your tank is still pretty new. Before you do anything drastic you should add the cleanup crew and wait it out for a while. Diatoms will clear up eventually . .

Most live rock comes from an established system at your LFS but its not gonna instantly cycle your tank. I used all cured live rock from an established system when I started my nano but it still took a month or so for everything to stabilize.

d.

okay Well It said in that article that activated carbon could be a cause ... so maybe thats it.......well anyways i'm going to go ahead and get the clean up crew and then just leave everything be.... thanks Again

In your case I dont think the carbon has much to do with it . .