sick of brown algae

[walah]

hi,

my tank is covered (ornaments,glass and rocks) in disgusting brown algae, i did a 30% water change a week ago and washed the ornaments and rocks in tank water to get rid of the algae but its came back even more so and quicker.

i have read that brown algae is caused by high nitrates and/or not enough light....my tank has nitrates of 10 ppm and the light is one which came with the tank and is 18w.

do i have to get rid of the ornaments and rocks and buy new ones or just live with it? is there anything i can add to get rid of it......in the pet shop they only sell stuff for green algae

 

[Fishsmurf]

Walah,

I am fighting the same problem in one of my tanks, soo frustrating.... Grrr

It has ben mentioned to me that Brown Algae is normally associated with relatively new tanks (ie cycled but between 6 months to a year old). People have recommended Otto's (if you have the space), this might also help some:

Brown Algae

HTH.....

 

[Jamnog]

my tank has got snails in now so they should take care of the alge in time i went out and got some snails and put them in the interrigation tank and later on the same day was cleaning out my filter to find an allmost microscopic snail alive in the other tank. looks like snail eggs got in via the plants. snails dont bother me they have allways made the tank clean after a fashon and i also have an otto so if i wait for long enough the problem will go away.

 

[steve-0]

my first tank was bad for brown algae.....I had two types of white gravel in their and it only grew on one, and the glass.
I took all the gravel ouot and changed to a darker colour. THe gravel helped it hide somewhat and i havnt seen it at all in my 20 gallon

 

[Starry^]

All I can think of that is good for removing the algae is to get some sucking loaches, ours spend its life pacing up and down the glass and sucking the rocks, we donthave any algae , and our loache is a fatty - hehe

Starry^

 

[Fish_Dude]

i've got the same problem.

 

[mathman]

I had some brown algea in my filter intake tube...seemed the worst area. I fed a little bit less and lowered my nitrates and it started to gradually dissappear. I had a grow light to help some of my real plants grow but as the weather warmed the tank was getting too hot so I had to change it out to a flourecent bulb. The brown algea halved in 24hrs in that tube and on my plants! I wont say for sure but a combo of reducing feedings and temp seemed to have just about killed all that icky brown GUNK out of my tank.


Hope this helps!

 

[kevin007]

sigh, suddenly one day my tank became all algaeish( no such word) and the whole tank was green, what i did was that i took a great risk changing all of the water 100% cause my fish may die cause of the water change, and i put my fish in a bag, when i was cleaning the tank i say alot of algae every where, so i washed everything and i started putting in the water i saved for 3 days, then i filled the whole tank with water it was crystle clear then i put the bag in the tank, it should float and it did, i waited for 20 mins then i put the fish in the tank, remember not to put the dirty water in the bag in the tank, and the little gamble the i made worked i did it on wed and up untill now none of my fish died. one of the reason why i did a 100% water change is because my clown loach died of ich in that tank so when i did the full water change, the ich is now fully gone!

Kevin

 

[kevin007]

hope that helped!

 

[Feline]

looks like snail eggs got in via the plants

Jamnog, I hope you don't have a million snails in your tank now. I got 2 came with the plants and now I got loads of hatched baby snails crawling all over the tank!

I was worried on the Clown loaches eating them, as I don't know if the snails carry any parasites or bacteria. So I seperated the 2 snails in the smallest tank and now I got more than 100 I think...

As for the brown algae, I found tonight that my quarantine tank has the same problem, probably bcoz of the lack of sunlight...

 

[reg2k2]

3 watts per gal. (unplanted), so unless it's a 5gal, that could very well be the problem.

 

[Jamnog]

snails can carry bactiria but then again so can fish as for parasites they are normally different sorts. people get paranoid about snails because they cant get rid of them and they use bleach and probably guns to try and erradicate them ive allways decided on having snails in the tank as once i have snails of the sort that i know i like then they will keep the tank clean from algekeep the plants trimmed back just enough. if you look after things right then they are not a problem. grate pond snails are bad and have given snails all over the world a bad name. as for millions that would only happen from an imbalance i think. if you dont like snails asthetically then perhaps its best to quarantine the plants in another tank or perhaps treat them with chemicals (thus imo needlessly risking fishes health) but i for one wont do that.

 

[walah]

3 watts per gal. (unplanted), so unless it's a 5gal, that could very well be the problem.

the tank is a 20gallon and is unplanted so what u are saying is that the light is inadequate for the tank?

 

[Dubby]

walah, just add a few live plants. that should get rid of the brown algae.

 

[jumpman]

Walah,

I had some problems with this algae, and my clown loaches and catfish would not touch the stuff. A bought a load of new plants (one of those collections) so I now have around 80-100 in a 20 gal tank, and I have not had a trace of the algae since. It just can't compete with all the plants for the light (flourescant only) and also the fish love the environment too!