My Tank Is Dirty Already?!?

[coycub]

Hi Guys.

Just wondering what I could have done (or not done) to my tank.

It's a 5 x 18" x 18" with 3mm gravel substrate, some driftwood, a universal habitat latex 3D rock background, some elodea, ambulia, 2 small black ghost knife.

It has been set up for a couple of weeks now, fish went in soon after and are all happy as larry. I washed the gravel thoroughly before adding water and although it was cloudy, with the canister filter (cheap asian brand doing 1600 litres per hour (filtering the whole tank about 5 times an hour I think) it cleared up fairly well.

The thing is, over the last week a light brown/olive green dust has settled on everything, the substrate, background, plants etc. At first I thought it was where I maybe didnt clean the substrate enough but it appeared while the water was clear? I thought it might be algae? The room is not overly bright and I keep the lights on about 8 hours a day. This brownish stuff can easily be brushed off rocks etc and the background but it reappears.

Any idea what it could be? Should I completely re-do the tank? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Btw, ph is 7, GH is 9, Ammonia zero, Nitrites zero, Nitrates about 20ish?!?

Thanks in advance.

 

[soritan]

If the tank isn't cycled, you could likely be experiencing a bacterial bloom of some sort -- probably in the form of diatom algae, from your description. Heck, even if your tank is cycled, you could have diatom algae.

May I ask, have you done a water change since you've added your fish?

*edit: And, have you cleaned the filter at the same time, if you have?

 

[coycub]

Hi and thanks.

I have done water changes, about 20% each week. I cleaned the filter today, I wasnt sure if I should have, so I just rinsed the filter pads in tank water and didnt clean the bio balls etc, they looked clean anyway.

I checked out some photos of that Diatom algae, and it doesnt look the same, it looks like a powder almost, but water current doesn't remove it.

Should I keep the tank lights off for a while? I also read that Otos will eat that stuff, but I don't particularly like those fish, is there any other fish that will eat diatom algae if that is what it is? Bristlenose or Borneos? SAEs?

Cheers!

 

[dwarfgourami]

I wonder if it is some sort of brown algae. They are common in new tanks, and can be related to lack of light, rather than to too much light. Should sort itself out in time. I had a lot of brown algae at first, but my livebearers ate some, and the rest just seemed to go away as the tank matured. Now I've got thread algae instead- you just can't win, can you? I comfort myself with the thought that the lived-in look probably does no harm to the fish; in fact, in nature crystal clear lakes are often totally devoid of life.

 

[Asmp41]

Algae may look bad however i suspect like germs in our enviroment there can be a healthy balance, some maybe even good.
Fish as you say live in water that we would not drink so..... you have a point the lived in look is good. I guess too like birds it may cushion the area they lie in ...

 

[beux]

Could it be from the wood?

 

[Chri$]

did you wash the wood before putting it in the tank and where did you get it from??

 

[coycub]

Hi guys, yes I have washed the driftwood thoroughly before using it in the tank, as with everything I put in there. I am not sure if I can attach photos here but here are a couple of close ups of my artificial rock background (latex), and you can clearly see the olive-green/brown dust like stuff growing on it.

If it didnt look so ugly I probably wouldnt worry about it but it has seemed to grow/settle on most things in the tank including the substrate.

I have my intake (for canister filter) at one end of the tank and the spraybar at the other pushing water towards the intake end angled more towards the surface of the water. Should in spraybar be angled downward a bit to push water across the substrate perhaps?