otos or wait?

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justrelax

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Feb 26, 2006
Messages
919
Location
Grand Haven, MI
i came home after a weekend away to find everthing covered in brown algae. am i correct that this is a normal stage in a new tank? my 55gal is has been running for about 3.5 months now, and this is the first real obstacle i have encountered. anyways, i've read in some places that the brown algae will just go away eventually on it's own. is this true? if so, about how long does it take without any encouragement? if not i will get some otos which presents another problem though. i wanted to put in a school of 9-10 rummy-nose tetra's. will i be over-doing it if i put in 3-4 otos also? tia
the serpae's in the sig are no longer with me...
 
nah you should be fine with the ottos, but as for brown algea, it never goes away, at least for me it doesn't, its odd though the tank that has it has less phosphates, less nitrates and still gets covered in it, I even have snails anda red tailed shark with a clown loach in there at it still never goes away, now my 10 gallon has outrageous nitrates and phosphates with 2 plecos, a bala and skirt tetra in it and it stays crystal clear, test your water and post the results, if your nitrates are high cut the feedings in half, your fish will be fine but it will starve the algea, also you will want to keep the lights off for about 3 days, you can also wrap a blanket around the tank with the lights out and this will do a black out killing the algea
 
Its diatoms and yes its to be expected at this stage of a new tank.

I too have read it will go away on its own,but I had to clean my tank...it just looked to rough for me.I just wiped it all down when I changed water....eventually it stopped reappearing.

I have ottos...but I'm not sure the will help with diatoms.For some reason I won't to say no,but they help with green algea.No where near 100% sure of that though.
 
They will eventually go away on their own. I'm not a big fan of telling people to add fish to take care of a tank problem.
 
Diatoms are not the same thing as brown algae. Daitoms will go away on their own. Brown algae will not.
 
my water tested 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 35 nitrate, pH 7.8. i did a 25% pwc before adding the oto's. i've been running the lights 9 hours a day and it gets a little natural light from a nearby window. i'm going to just run the lights for 7 hours and see if that helps at all. i don't want to have to black it out, i like looking at it too much!
here's a pic of what i'm talking about. maybe "everything covered" was a little dramatic, but it's enough to be an eyesore. i went out to look at some oto's tonight and ended up coming home with five. they seem to like their new home. unlike all the other fish the oto's have right off the bat made themselves at home without any hiding or schooling. whatever that brown stuff is they love it.
 
Otos are one of my very favorite fish species. They are cute, gentle, playful, and oh-so-useful. They are one of the few types of algae eaters I've found that have no downsides: they don't eat my plants, attack their tank-mates, nip fins, dig up my plants, or grow huge. And they are VORACIOUS algae (and diatom) eaters! :)
 
IceH2O said:
They will eventually go away on their own. I'm not a big fan of telling people to add fish to take care of a tank problem.

lol, most people add algae eaters to... eat their algae. A lot of times a person will be drawn to an algae eating fish or a snail eating fish because they have a problem, but in the end enjoy having them in their tank anyway. I bought otos to control my algae but now I love to watch them dart back and forth across my tank.
 
I'll be adding some Otos this week to take care of a diatom problem. Been wanting to get some anyways and now this gives me a darn good reason to!

Problem is finding the suckers, everyone carries those CAE and Petco was sold out of Otos.
 
Thats kinda surprising, Petland told me they never run out of ottos cause nobody ever sees them.
 
well i can see the attraction to oto's. very fun fish to watch. it's impressive how bold they are in their new home right away. everyone else took some time and cautiously checked everthing out, did some hiding, didn't eat right away.... but these guys were like LOOK OUT I'M HUNGRY!!! now if my lfs will just get in some rummies... :)
 
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