Brown algae on substrate

[EllaMinnowPea]

Just saw in another thread that brown algae can be caused by over feeding (oops! Lol) so we've stopped that. I've had the light off the past few days and will be getting one of those scrubbers for the walls of the tank. Luckily only a couple spots.

What can I do to clean up the substrate though? I'm going to take out the plants and decor and boil them along with the larger pieces of rock/gems that are in there.

Also I guess it's time we add to our fish as well, tank is new-ish (about 3 months) but we've been going slow. What kind of algae eater is best. We have 28 gal with 5 skirt tetras and 1 mystery snail (who needs to get busy!)

 

[Mebbid]

The brown algae is diatoms. It is a type of algae that grows in almost every single new aquarium and then goes away all on its own. If you want good eaters of diatoms I would go with nerite snails as they are the best for it. I would also skip boiling things as it won't do any good in combating the algae.

The diatoms will go away as soon as the excess silicates in the water are consumed.

 

[mrvincent]

WCs, algea eaters, lower silicates, snails, shrimps, less light, etc.

You can use pond snails. They reproduce very quickly when they get a lot of food. Their population will reduce when there will be a lack of algea.