Brown Substance On My Plant

[MissT]

I have a few plants in my tank, but this one (Elodea Densa) keeps getting covered in a grainy (I presume) substance. If we knock the plant - trimming, stirring the sand around - it comes off and floats around the tank until taken by the filter. The best way to describe it is to say it looks like dark soft brown sugar in colour and texture.
The other plants aren't afflicted with this and I only have 4 Bristlenose (and a lot of snails) in at the moment.

Anyone have any ideas?

I feed algae wafers, so it's not residue from flake foods and the wafers are the only thing I add to the tank.

 

[Blue Ramirezi]

yep, my friend has the same problem (lets make it sound complicated even tho its not hehehe) basically (actually complicatedly) the fishes anal excretions drop to the the bottom of the tank which contain bacterias (ammonia). the ammonia is eventually converted into nitrate which then, repeated, is converted to nitrate, the excretions are then stirred up and the nitrate stimulates algae growth. all in all the algea is quite literally grown on ur fishes crap and eating away at it, killing the algea and turing it brown. long story short, it sounds like crap to me (dont forget the algae )

 

[MissT]

Oh ok. At least it's not a disease!
Anything I could/should do?
All of the test levels have come back zilch, apart from the nitrate, but it's the same level as the tap water, so that's as low as it'll go. I need the algae to feed the fish, so I don't want it to be killed off! And it looks horrible.

 

[Blue Ramirezi]

a pity that, just regularly stir it off