# algae problem :(



## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

i have brown algae all over my plants  i can rub it off but its back within a day or too. i've stopped adding my jbl daily fertiliser.. but theres still algae the top layer of my gravel was brown .. i have hair algae  and algae on the glass and plants! its doing my head in!!!! i got some amano shrimp but theyve made no diff.. any thing i can dooo


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## Corwin (May 23, 2010)

time to buy some more amano shrimp

or some snails

probably snails as ive heard amanos will stop eating the algae if you feed them


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

i tried dropping in an algae wafer but they never touched it so i fished it out, can you recommend any snails that wont breed rapidily or attack my plants instead >:/ i hate snails i guess i can come to like them if they wont become a pest..  apple snail?


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

i read up with brown algae it might disappear once the tank matures more, so hopefully the waters a lil cloudy too :/ i'm gunna do a water change tomorrow or thursday, and then wipe the plants down with my fingers in a bucket of the tank water. all my levels are ok tho. i wil invest in a snail or two if they might help control it too aslong as they dont breed rapidily and eat all my plants lol.


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## Revolution1221 (Apr 20, 2010)

charking said:


> i read up with brown algae it might disappear once the tank matures more, so hopefully the waters a lil cloudy too :/ i'm gunna do a water change tomorrow or thursday, and then wipe the plants down with my fingers in a bucket of the tank water. all my levels are ok tho. i wil invest in a snail or two if they might help control it too aslong as they dont breed rapidily and eat all my plants lol.


Here is some information i found for you it could be either of these. however i dont know if the information is 100% correct will need to wait for opinions from some of the other guys to. 
"Brown algae grows when light conditions are too low for most plants. Plants that survive well in low light, such as Java Fern (Microsorum pteropus), Dwarf Anubias (Anubias barteri nana) and Java Moss (Vesicularia dubyana), may be affected by growths of brown algae on their leaves but usually are not affected. A gentle wipe with a cloth may be all that the leaves need to clean away unsightly algae. Keeping suckermouth catfish such as Ancistrus sp. may help keep the algae under check. Increasing the light intensity will allow green algae to grow and replace the brown algae."
It could also be diatoms which is not actually algae it is a type of bacteria. We have it in some tanks at work and it seems to grow out of control in brackish water. Here is the information I found on this.
"Yellow-brown "algae" is a mass of diatoms forming a film on the surfaces. It easily wipes away and does not come off in sheets. It can appear as a simple dusting on the tank walls and substrate surfaces, or it can turn into an algal bloom that covers just about everything in the tank. This type of algal outbreak typically occurs when a tank is just completing or has finished the "cycling" process in new tanks. Diatoms are among the first organisms in the tank to benefit from the nitrates produced by a functioning biological filter.

If excesses are wiped away or disturbed by using a gravel cleaner (like a vacuum cleaner or bell on the siphon hose) then the build up of other, desirable algae and the growth of plants competes for the nutrients and the diatoms become less of a problem in your tank's ecosystem.

Increases in diatom population can be caused by several things, including; too short a daily lighting duration; lights are old and have lost their spectrum; floating plants, algae or calcium build up on the top of your aquarium block light; the water colour (stained by tannins) is too high; suspended particles are absorbing too much light (the filter is not working or the tank is dirty); the lighting intensity is too low. Remember that the deeper light penetrates into water, the more its intensity diminishes.

Octocinclus catfish are recommended for control of diatoms and algae but several fish will be needed for the task. Octocinclus are not difficult to acclimatize, in my experience."
this is the name of the website i got this information from http://watershed3.tripod.com/algae.html


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

thanks - my lights are on from 10 am til 10 pm so 12 hours. i usually add jbl daily fert (havent for the past 2 days) i have jbl substrate in there two. the tank has been running 6 weeks now.. it finished cycling after a month and now two weeks after the plants have been put in BOOOOM algae.. its deffo brown algae.. i also read that it happens in new tanks quite often and you just have to wait until the tank matures more. i cant use a vacum due to my substrate, but i will wipe the algae off my plants in a separate bucket with the tank water as i'm sure me wiping it in the tank is whats making it cloudy! i will also due some water changes and keep wiping the glass.. i have an arcadia light unit and i know the bulbs are actually marine bulbs i will have a closer look at them later ones blue and ones natural light..


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## Corwin (May 23, 2010)

regarding snails

Apple snails are very interesting but you have to ensure to only get one (they breed)

or you could look into nerite snails, they require brakish water to breed so you can guarentee that the number you put into your tank is the number you will stay at


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## Revolution1221 (Apr 20, 2010)

Corwin said:


> regarding snails
> 
> Apple snails are very interesting but you have to ensure to only get one (they breed)
> 
> or you could look into nerite snails, they require brakish water to breed so you can guarentee that the number you put into your tank is the number you will stay at


do nerites eat plants and how big do they get?


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

The brown stuff is the normal plague of most new tanks. New tanks have an abundance of excess nutrients of the sort that other plants and algae don't want, and so the brown diatoms are able to use it all for themselves and grow like crazy. Eventually this crashes and they disappear.


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

TheOldSalt said:


> The brown stuff is the normal plague of most new tanks. New tanks have an abundance of excess nutrients of the sort that other plants and algae don't want, and so the brown diatoms are able to use it all for themselves and grow like crazy. Eventually this crashes and they disappear.


thank you thank you thank you! i'm so hoping this will happen XD


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## dan3345 (Jan 27, 2010)

I have three nerites in my tank, and other than the occasional odd piggy back ride, they act normal.. I have a freshwater tank so I dont know if there actually mating or just weird. But they do a good job keeping my algae under control, and I have had them for three weeks and they have never lay'd a clutch of eggs. Also I could be very wrong but I have never fed mine. They seem to survive soley on algae, and I tried feeding them algae wafers in the beginning but my fish would eat it, so then I tried removing them and putting them in a seperate empty tank with water in it and they would just slither off of the wafer and ignore it.. Btw the tank was cycled and was growing plants. so not empty just no fish.
they keep algae levels down really well, so I would recommend you grab a few. because as someone else posted they dont reproduce in freshwater.


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

i think the only ones i can get hold of are apple snails  i rubbed the algae off of my plants and glass today and done a water change i also added a touch of liquid fert half my usually amout (i've had 3 days of no fert) the algae seems to have slowed down abit, i wont know how much until the next few days.. last time it appeared like out of the blue so i'll watch it closely. i also turnt my filter flow up abit more


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

apple snails have sexes, you could keep all one sex. But I have no clue how you sex them. 1 per tank works. But they lay their eggs above the water line and they are pretty visible (looks like bumpy toothpaste) so you can scrape them off the glass and remove them to control the population. Ponds snail eggs seem to be a clear, adhesive goo that they stick in the tight spots of plants and decor. You will never find them all. Once you have ponds snails, you pretty much always have pond snails.


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

emc7 said:


> Once you have ponds snails, you pretty much always have pond snails.



i managaed to rid them once.. i tried that anti snail and all it did was knock them out so they would all fall to the bottom to be siphoned.. but it dint work on the lil ones i used tht once and then i just kept pulling them out the tank.. took a few weeks but it worked!!  this was going back about 2 yrs ago


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## Corwin (May 23, 2010)

Nerites won't eat your plants and there's a few kinds. The kind I have, which is zebra nerite snails only get to be an inch across


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

i'll have a gander tomorrow, thanks


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## charking (Aug 12, 2009)

ITS GONE!! yaaaay! just a little green now due to abit too much light! using API Fertiliser Leaf Zone and within the first dosage 2 days later POW gone.. i also did a water change with water from a maturer tank and popped in my small filter which has been running awhile with a big decent bacteria cologny  also my baby guppies helped.. they liked to munch on it


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