Why Are All My Plants Sooo Dirty?

[marieukxx]

In my 60 Litre it has fake plastic plants. Lights are on 4 hours a night and it's not by a window, fully established. But the plants are always so dirty every week when I clean them!!! It takes ages with a scrubbing brush and hot water scrubbing them clean of all the brown muck. My sister has a 125L and has fake plants which are crystal clean all the time plus she keeps her lights on a lot longer.

Why are my plants getting so darn dirty? It's been set up a year now.

 

[Box]

Might be down to your water flow
Might not be strong enough or needs the position adjusted

 

[zoeb2912]

I get this too. Would love to know how to prevent it. X

 

[CezzaXV]

The trouble with fake plants is that if you have no live plants in the tank, there's nothing there to use the nutrients that are in the water, so algae is able to thrive. When you have live plants, generally the plants use them up and usually stops algae from growing. If you have your lights on 4 hours a day, it may not be a bad idea to go for some low demand plants.

 

[marieukxx]

Yeah I have live plants in my two other tanks and do prefer them.