Does brown algae eat your leaves?

[Lithril]

Thought some of my plants were dying as the leaves starting turning black. Had a look today and the black is actually a brown slime that I'm presuming is algae, when I've rubbed my fingers over the brown area that patch rubs off leaving a hold in the leaf. Any ideas?

 

[Alien Anna]

How big is your tank? If it's at least 30 gallons long you could get some Siamese Algae Eaters to remove that.

It's hair algae, I'm afraid, which is very unattractive. It can kill plants indirectly by cutting off the light to the leaves.

 

[Lithril]

Yeah its the 30 gal, trouble is the Nitrite levels are too high at present to put any fish in there (thanks to adding too much ammonia ) and I've gotta be careful which fish I put in there as its gonna have puffers in eventually. Will be putting some ottos in at some point though so I don't know if they'll eat this type of algae???

 

[Lithril]

I'll try and get a pic of the damaged leaves at some point, but first things first I'm gonna do that water change ASAP. I also made one BIG mistake earlier this week, thought that the brown was damaged leaves due to something like light deficiency as I only had one light in there (pathetically dim) so I added more lights and some plant food ... Yup I know the mistake now and I really should have either researched a bit more or yelled for help with u lot...

Isn't brown algae caused by a lack of light and too much nitrates cos I think that would sum up the problem I had a treat

 

[Alien Anna]

Lithril - despite the fact that they're both brown, brown algae is not the same as hair algae (aka "red algae" aka "beard algae"). Hair algae grows in low or high light, but in low light the plants will do comparitively badly and the algae will take over. It needs very high nitrates and phosphates.

You can put some zeolite in your filter to reduce phosphates if that's the problem (it often comes in tap water) and nitrates will be less of a problem if you can get more light in that tank and do regular water changes with low nitrate water.

I did remove hair algae from my tank one time when the lights were out for 11 days - lack of light does kill it. But my plants still haven't fully recovered.

 

[Lithril]

Cheers for the help AA much appreciated, I'm going to remove all stems and leaves that have the hair algae on it and do a largish water change tomorrow, I've put some new healthy plants in today and increased the light levels earlier this week (although not as much as I'd like - still stuck on that one at the moment). Hopefully if I remove the visible stuff and reduce the nitrate levels things will improve. Only picked up my Nitrate kit today been doing the other two up till now so didn't realise that the levels were so high.

I'm also going to reduce the amount of ammonia I'm putting into the tank, I think I'm overloading the bacteria, hence the reason that the nitrite levels aren't dropping off significantly. With any luck by the middle of next week I should be ready for my puffers, so far got 6 caves (one home made - YAY). Will take a pic of the tank at some point.

Thanks for the help again though would definately have been floundering with out it

 

[Pasaba por aqui]

Hi, brown algae comes because of low light, you need 0.5 wats per liter at least if you want your plants to grow healthy, but if other nutrients are not present it won't be useful, cause new algaes will settle in your tank (different ones).

You may think that buying an algae eater will help, but if you don't have a balance in the water nutrients it won't solve the problem. and those algaes will finally take over.

Algae eaters are only useful when the algaes hasn't settle, in other words they are useful when you have a balance in nutrients and for one or other reason you leave your water unatendant for a while, they might help you prevent algaes to settle for a while until you balance again the nutrients needed for your plants.

Algae eaters do not eat old algaes.

There's only way to prevent algaes and its giving the plants all they need daily, in the correct doses. It's like the food you give to your fish, there's no point in breeding them once a week or even worst a month in high doses and forget them till next week. those extra doses will be use by algaes.

The most common mistake is not considering the plants as part of the Aquarium, with their own needs, actually it's not difficult once you understand their requirements, if you give your fish food on a daily basis, why don't you use some drops of fertilizer daily? it will only take you a minute more.

In order to help can you give your values of PO4, NO3, PH, KH, GH Fe, and if you add K to your tank, How many watts you have of light and the type and number of hours you have the light on.

Type of plants, number of them and hours of light.

PD Sorry for my English.

 

[H20-Cam]

...... woah ..... gj pasaba por aqui! youve done ur research. I also have that fuzzy stuff.... i dont like it!!! i thot my algae eater would take care of it... so you're saying : just add the right stuff ur plant needs and the algae will be gone??? sorry if im sounding stupid Thanks B)