Brown algea...making my tank ugly!

[freshwatergal]

How do I get rid of this? I have two ramshorn snails in the tank, but they aren't really helping. It is mostly on my plastic plants. As a matter of fact I have it in all of my tanks (2-10 gal betta tanks, 20 gal puffer tank & 46 gal community tank). Anyone know how to get rid of this ugly stuff?

 

[tkos]

I believe it is supposed to be caused by excess silica in the water, though this may be wrong. Either way I combated it with more frequent water changes and gravel vacuuming. Witrh the fke plants you can do a dilute bleach wash to clean them up.

If there is room for new fish in your tanks then ottos are supposed to be the brown algae kings and they stay quite small. My ram's horns never ate any of it.

 

[ferret]

I had this problem months ago in my 29 gallon, everything was brown algae. There wasn't an algae eater in the tank. I grabbed three black mystery snails and they had it cleaned in like, 1.5 weeks. Even off the plants and ornaments. Haven't seen it since.

 

[freshwatergal]

Thank you for the quick reply. You are right about the silica. While sitting here bored I decided to do a quick search on the net and I came up with this article.

http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/maintenance1/p/algaebrown.htm

I will have to look into getting some of the silica absorbing stuff.

Thanks again tkos.

Tiff

 

[tkos]

This is usually a case in newer tanks as well (from what I have heard). And the older and more established a tank gets, the less brown algae is around. I don't have it anymore now that my tanks are a year old, so maybe there is something to that.

 

[QTOFFER]

I have this too in my 3-month-old tank, but it is slowly improving using the suggestions made by tkos.

And thanks, Ferret - I'm going to look into getting some black mystery snails since I've had trouble getting otos to live past the Q-tank stage.

 

[ferret]

The black mystery snails, IMO, are the hardiest, and hardest working, of the commonly found snails for FW.

 

[myriam]

I got 4 otos to clean up the brown stuff, and they did it overnight! But one of them just died this week from something I never figured out. I posted here about it and others have had similar experiences. Now 2 of my 3 remaining otos are getting that big belly as well, and I'm wringing my hands in despair because I don't know if they are constipated, pregnant, or have dropsy or something else.

Anyhow, good to know about those black mystery snails, for future reference. Do they multiply like crazy, though?

 

[grimlock3000]

My 26g tank is crazy with brown algae currently. It all started when I changed the bio media in my canister filter. I thought I took the right precautions but I guess not, oops. Now my tank is cloudy and brown algae is everywhere. Luckily the water conditions have never waivered so my fish are fine. Also, my Pleco can not get to it because of the plastic plants I have. I am going to toss the plants in the trash once the water clears up.

Pics are now later in the thread...

 

[tabitha]

Oto's eat brown algae i just got some sooooo cute.. anyway before i had them when i had a brown algae outbreak outta nowhere, i just used an algae pad to scrape it off everything and sucked it up with the siphon.. then i got the oto's and they ate what i missed. all gone now.

 

[grimlock3000]

nm

 

[QTOFFER]

grimlock3000, that is exactly the same algae(diatoms) I've been battling. It looks like brown powder and it's a royal PITA to get off bristly plants like the ones you have.

I like your tank setup - especially the slate.

 

[grimlock3000]

Every so often I catch my Pleco eating algae off the small plants with leaves, but nothing can get at the stuff on the bristly plants. It is hard to tell from the pics, but the small purple plants hardly have anything on them. I am going to let the brown stuff take over the blue plants and get different plants once the water clears up.

I made a new thread and move the pics here:

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=16900