Diatomes in a New Tank

[Josie]

So I've started noticing a light brown "dust" coating the older leaves of my plants (it seems to grow up the stalk). I haven't taken them out to wipe them off or cut the leaves because I've heard that this can resolve itself or be taken care of with minimal changes to the aquarium. My tank is about 7-8 weeks old and I've only had fish in it for roughly 2 weeks (3 Trili Cory in a 10 gallon). You can see the exact specs in my profile, but I've got strong light for 12-15 hours/day, 100 gallons/hour being filtered, a water wisteria that's been exploding with new growth since I put it in (it's fast overtaking the tank, which I love; I can trim just fine when it gets too big) and I add a liquid fertilizer each week. I do regular water testing and while the tank's ammonia, nitrites and nitrates rose slightly when I added my fish (it had been cycling without fish before), they've since returned to 0.

I feed my 3 Corys half a Hikari Bottom Feeder wafer in the morning and at night, always broken into 2-3 pieces. The wafers are about as large as a flattened pea but they swell, which is why I break it up.

I'd like to know more about why "brown algae" appears in a tank and ways to combat it with minimal disturbances. My little Corys are cute, but shy, and I want them to be happy and stress-free.

 

[aqua_chem]

Brown algae in the early days of a tank is a completely normal thing, and is simply another cycle that your tank goes through when it's establishing itself. It's not harmful to your fish. If it is too unsightly for you, you can easily remove it using manual methods, but it will continue to come back until the tank sorts itself out, which is only a matter of time.

 

[Rivercats]

You can also get a couple nerite snails that will gladly consume diatoms. They can't breed in freshwater so you don't have to worry about a population explosion. They are actually nice little additions IMO.