Algae Question?

[Luke & Penny]

In my Malawi tank, Ive started to notice that a brownish/green algae building up and its started to turn my ocean rock an off colour and not the bright white it once was. It builds on my glass quite quickly, although its not too bad but i can notice it on the front. Now Im wondering if im noticing it more in the malawi tank rather than the tropical tank as my tropical has plenty of plants in there along with bogwood, whereas my malawi tank has rocks and thats it.

Is this a common thing and am i worrying too much over nothing?

Also can i add that the bulbs im using are in a juwel double light unit with 2 x 38 watters in there. The bulbs though are not the original, They are both Arcadia Marine Coral lights for better brightness. One is a Marine White and I also put a Marine Blue in there to enhance the colours on some of my fish especially the socolofis and acei's.
Now I know with saltwater set ups that blue lighting encourages the red algae in a marine set up but i was wondering if using the bright marine white bulb is overdoing the whole light/photosynthesis thing and is what is encouraging more algae growth?.
I still have my normal beauty light i could replace with the marine white.

P.S, my ammonia and nitrites are both at zero and nitrates are reading at just over 20 with a PH of 8.0.

any help is appreciated
cheers
luke

 

[Ferris]

Brown Algae is very common in tanks that are relatively new, it tends to occur a couple of months after the tank has been setup. I agree that it doesn't look very pleasant but it will eventually clear up normally within a couple of weeks.

There seems to be some debate as to whether brown algae is affected by light buit i left my tank lights off for 1 week when i experienced it and it cleard up in that time.

The lights you have by the way are fine, i use a similar setup myself for my Mbuna tank.