This is my first attempt at Salt Water. I'll be soon setting up a 72 gallon tank, I have the tank already, but curing my live rock in a 55 gallon I have extra from when I had fresh water fish.

I've been keeping an eye on these two tubes that are growing right next to each other. They shot about two weeks ago, but seemed to have stalled. I rotated my live rock today and noticed more growth. I've been noticing purple algae, which have been spotty the last week and growing. But these new reddish brown bumps have been regrowing exactly where previous death and decaying are still happening. There's a patch on two different pieces of rock. And some sponge like growth.

Sorry about the bad pics, I only have a Cannon SD. But this shot is of those reddish brown bumps. I haven't checked through my books yet to figure out exactly what it is.

Here's that sponge growing right in the center of the pic.

congrats on taking the jump to sw. i set up my 1st saltwater tank 20 months ago and now my house is full of them. i took the plunge and went straight into reef too and am very glad i skipped the fo thing. i'm also glad you found us early on. this is a great club and the people are very helpful, even though you've had 20 views on your post and no replies.... nudge.

anyhow. you will be amazed how much life you will find in your tank here in the next few months, especially right when you turn the lights on. when i set my system up i made it a point to get lr from many various places, and i have a lot of variety of pods and such in my sump, if you come to the cr area i can hook you up. and i've got tube worms like crazy, they are literally overtaking parts of my sump.

so get use to random stuff growing in your tank, it's free food, and most of it serves a purpose. i have managed to never have any aptaisia problems or bubble algae problems. i've made it a practice the few times i have accidentally come across them to dip the rock in hot fresh water and just kill everything on them.

as for the top pic, i can't tell what you got growing on it. but if you feel like it is something that could plague you, then i'd kill it using the above method.

one thing that can really help with controlling a lot of nuisance stuff is strong current. and corals don't mind. every time i add a new power head the corals just keep asking for more.

Actually, B-RAD, that guy that lives in town here has 40lbs of rock left and some sand I'll pick up from him.  I just got the message, so I have to put some more water in my 72 since my 55 gallon incident.  I'll let it age for a few days well circulated and see from there.