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Brown fluffy algae

Joined
25 Sep 2017
Messages
72
Location
West Midlands, UK
I have new high tech planted tank, not surprisingly diatoms appeared after 3 or 4 weeks.

Tank is a 30cm cube, with a 6 hour photo period, pressurised CO2.

I seem to have 2 types, the usual brown ‘dust’ on rocks and other hard surfaces. I added ottos and amano shrimp that cleared that up almost over night. But I’m left with a brown fluffy algae at the substrate level, choking my HC cuba carpet and dwarf hair grass.

b63f11d3bd0b645a6c024d528d0925d1.jpg


The clean up crew don’t touch this, so I’m physically trying to remove it. But this means I’m just pulling up the HC Cuba that is trying to get established. I’m cleaning the canister filter weekly and doing 30%-40% water changes twice weekly. I’m now at about 8 or 9 weeks and no improvement is seen.

Thanks for any help!


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Last edited:
On robust plants wind a small toothbrush around any algae then siphon in this case ,carpet,use tweezers yto lightly wind and then syphon again carefully from slightly farther above so as not to disturb
 
Can't you siphon it off without affecting the plants? Usually brown diatoms only really attach lightly to plants as a kind of film and can be sucked off using a siphon.

I found the siphon used to suck up the Cuba plantlet straight out of the substrate

On robust plants wind a small toothbrush around any algae then siphon in this case ,carpet,use tweezers yto lightly wind and then syphon again carefully from slightly farther above so as not to disturb

Spot on . I learnt through trial and error that a toothbrush was no good on the carpet, a tweezers pinched together and then wound in a circle motion did really well.

So this mechanical removal, plus reducing light to 50% and adding a couple more amanos has really improved things. Things are looking much better

2979ef4b902fbac9feaf36a4a2316b24.jpg


Thanks for the advice.


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