algae infestation?

[whitetiger_CJ]

I have a 55 gal tank decorated with drift wood, and live plants. there is a brown coating that grows like an algae, but it is brown in color, and there are thousand of little string like extentions that cover the objects. It started on the wood, but it has spread to the plants in the tank. can any one id this for me? and what ways are there to go about getting rid of it. I have a royal pleco in the tank, but he only cleans the bottom side of the wood, and there is no way to turn it. so I am in a jam, any help eould be greatly appriciated.

 

[mr86mister]

i feel a bit of otocinclus action going on, what other fish do you have in the tank

 

[whitetiger_CJ]

thats the problem, I have bichirs, bushfish, and a datnoid. all of which eat small fish.

 

[greenmaji]

it sounds like a case of diatom algae.. is it a new tank because this is normal for a new tank.. If thats the case you should be able to just wipe it off the plants..

 

[mitch86]

i love the my brittlenose catfish for algae problems. and they get pretty big if your worried about ur fish eating him

 

[BrianNY]

Sounds more to me like black beard algae. Does it also grow on the filter out flow and equipment? If it is, it is very hard to control. Algae eating fish normally don't touch this and it should be removed by hand.

 

[millym]

hi
we've just had an ongoing battle with horrible black beard algae & green stringy stuff too for about 4 months and im not sure if yours is like this but we were desperate with the state of our tank.
But finally we seem to have it under control by
1. put rowaphos in our filter (phosphate remover - our tap water has high phosphates in it here )
2. i cut down & strictly watched my feeding amounts
3. we now have a break in lighting the tank: on 8-1pm off 1pm to 3pm on again 3pm to 7pm - lights are on a timer
we have otos in our tank but they didnt seem to like the black stuff at all & our amano shrimps who did were completely overwhelmed by the amount 8O
anyway it wasnt until we introduced a break in lighting that we really noticed a difference so i dont know if that is the main thing that sorted the algae or just the combination of everything we're now doing, but its certainly made a huge difference - we have a small amount of green tufty algae on our rocks(otos love it) but no more black furry stuff or the long stringy stuff - thank god it was a real mess
good luck

 

[whitetiger_CJ]

I know that it isn't a beard algae, and when I looked up some pics on the net, it looks alot like the diatom algae, but the tank has been cycled for some time. The tank has beed setup for around 5 months. I have a royal pleco in the tank, and he does eat some of the algae, but what else can i do? I have never had this in my tanks before.

 

[BrianNY]

If it's just brown algae you can wipe it off easily enough. It shouldn't be a nuisance.