genetao

The plant grow bulbs usually has lighting focused in the blue and red wavelengths, which the plants prefer. However, because it's mostly missing light in the green wavelength (which is largely UNUSED by plants), it seems a lot darker to your eye, but to the plants (and algae) it's still quite a lot of lighting. If I'm correct, that was the mistake made by a lot of owners of the Solaris LED lighting system. The lighting seemed somewhat dark to their eye, so they cranked up the lighting. In the end, they were baking their corals.

But if your tank is doing well without any algae growing, then more power to you. Good luck with your tank.

mudboots

Thanks for that information Genetao. BTW - I removed the mega-lights and replaced them with twin 13's, so now I'm at 2.6 wpg instead of 4.0. My daughter doesn't like them because it looks more yellow than the bright white of the better bulbs, but I told her she'd get used to it until I decide just exactly what lighting to use.

The brown slime algae is getting pretty bad in this tank now, so it looks like I've got some work to do. Fortunately an experiment with hydrogen peroxide seems to have prevented some of the more difficult-to-fight algaes from taking over.

genetao

That's close to what I used for lighting before; 2X14 watt spiral bulbs. That is of course until Tex Gal told me that that was too much lighting for the tank that I have. So now I've swapped out those bulbs and instead use 2x10 watt (straight) bulbs (meaning not spiral). I've also put a piece of white paper underneath the bulbs to diffuse the lighting. I purchased these straight bulbs with the typical screw-in base at Walmart in the aquarium & fish aisle. The color temperature is 6500K, daylight. My algae problem seems to be subsiding for the most part.

If you are near a Walmart, they also sell 10 & 13 watt spiral bulbs for really cheap that are daylight 6500K color temp. I got two 13 watt bulbs for $2 there.

But if you are having an outbreak of algae, it still sounds like something is out of balance. The brown slime algae sounds a lot like, well, brown algae. If the tank is new, then that may be the culprit. From my understanding, in new tanks, the silicates from the glass slowly leaches out, which apparently is great for brown algae. But over time as less and less silicates leach out, the brown algae will slowly die off. That's what happened with my tank when it was new. The other cause of brown algae is too little light, but that's obviously not the reason why you're having this algae ;p

Go HERE for more info.

I've found that otocinclus go nuts over brown algae! This is why they were put here on this earth for: to eradicate brown algae!!! I had a pair of otos that did such a great job of cleaning up the brown algae, that in the end, I had to give them away because there was no brown algae left for them to eat!

The other algae it could possibly be, is Blue-Green algae (BGA) which is actually a cyanobacteria. If that's the case, then absolutely nothing will eat that. No snail, nor fish nor any living creature will touch that with a ten foot pole because it's really not an algae at all. It's a bacteria. BGA could possibly look brown especially if the lighting used is a cooler color temperature (e.g. yellowish light).

Case in point ,last weekend I did some maintenance on a friend's 55 gallon (He has a new born baby. Need I say more???) On one particular rock receiving lots of sunlight, there was a thick sheet of this dark red, almost brown algae. It came off easily in sheets just like BGA does, but the color didn't look like your typical bluish-green. I concluded that it was in fact BGA by the simply fact that you could peel it off like you do dead skin when you've been under the sun too long at the beach It smelled bad too. I did a nitrate test on his tank, and the readings were at about 120 PPM!!!!!! No kidding! They were through the roof! Amazing the fish even lived!

In the link above regarding BGA, it states:

"Excess organic loading is the real cause in many cases. Try removing decaying plant material and prune old leaves that are leaking organic nutrients back into the water column."

So make sure to stay on top of your water changes


In any case, I believe it's either BGA or or brown algae. Hope you are able to figure it out and go from there.

mudboots

Wow, that's a lot of information packed into one post!!! Playing around with it I don't think it's BGA. This tank is still really new, so I think a crew or 10 otos will be put to work as soon as I can track some down. Once they've finished I can let them retire to the 125 where they'll live a life of ease, eating all that junk on the driftwood that seems to outgrow the efforts of my pleco (GSA). Of course, she's been spoiled on shrimp pellets (never heard of this till this one little pleco) and simply doesn't eat until I feed the cories their treat.

On the lighting, I'll probably go with the twin 10 daylights. I like that color temp alot.

genetao

That's good to hear that it's not BGA. But just to be on the safe side, perhaps just purchase only a pair or even a trio of otos for a few reasons:

1. Just in the off chance that it's not brown algae, but some other type of algae, then you're not out that much money. There are a number of types of algae that otos WON'T eat including green spot algae.

2. A pair or trio should be more than adequate in controlling the algae problem if indeed it is brown algae. IME, by the third day of introducing my pair of otos, more than half of the brown algae was gone, and replaced with lots and LOTS of oto pellet poop. No kidding! They must have eaten like half their body weight in algae!!! They rival goldfish or even oscars with their poop-to-body weight ratio. My guess is that the otos were starving at the LFS until I put them into my tank. It got too much for me to bear, and did a water change / gravel and poop vac mid-way into the week ( I normally do weekly water changes).

3. Throwing in 10 fish all at once into your 10g is going to wreak havoc on your tank. With an insufficient amount of nitrosomas and nitrobacter bacteria to compensate, you'll have an ammonia and nitrite spike for sure! Especially at the rate the otos are gonna poop. And chances are, you're not gonna need the help of all 10 of them, unless of course you enjoy seeing a field of poop pellets strewn along your plant leaves, rocks, decoration, and gravel. Lovely -_^

4. One other thing about otos, is that the vast majority of them are wild caught. Because of this, there might be an incidence of DIE-OFF, which is another good reason to not buy 10 of them.

Go HERE for more info on otocinclus feeding.
HERE's an article on algae in that same website. Worth a look.

BTW, plecos are the suxor when it comes to algae eating. They are great at destroying and uprooting plants while leaving your algae perfectly intact, and if you get the standard, run-of-the-mill pleco, they can grow way longer than a foot in length! Perhaps, that is why you still have GSA. To rid yourself of GSA, get a few freshwater nerite snails.


As for the lighting, THIS what I purchased from Walmart. The bulbs are great because they're low profile, 6500K daylight (or there about), slightly longer in length compared to the stubby spiral bulbs, (which of course means slightly better light coverage), and screw right into your standard light socket. But at $5 a pop, they are a bit pricier though than your run-of-the-mill spiral. So buying two will cost about $10, which is getting close in price to replacing a 15 watt fluorescent tube light.

I hope this points you in the right direction

armedbiggiet

trimm off the plants with algae than figure it out one at a time. Your lights are strong but I think you can start reduce the fert first. Alot of the plant glow bulbs are for none aquatic plants so there kelvin should be different and that is why they look dimmer.

genetao

I just wanted to update you on the progress of my algae problem.

I replaced the 2X14 with a 2X10 CFL bulbs (because I had these bulbs lying around). I then put a sheet of light-weight paper under the CFLs to reduce the amount of light. On top of that, I removed the hornwort since it was sitting directly under the lights, which were great conditions for growing algae. Tex Gal was right in guessing that a majority of the algae was growing in the top-half of the tank. I still double dose Excel at 2ml for the 10 gal. tank. I kept the photo period for 9 hours. I trimmed off any leaves with fuzz / brush algae on it.

I've given it a few weeks for everything to settle in. And I must say that almost all of the algae has packed its bags and decided to move into another neighborhood. Any other neighborhood is fine, so long as it's not mine There are still remnants and stragglers here and there, but nothing that a quick wipe won't cure.

I just wanted to thank Tex Gal for her advice, for it has given me a new understanding of aquariums. Lesson I learned from this? DON'T always listen to the plant "guru" at your LFS, especially when they say that 3 wpg is needed for the likes of anubias or crypts

mudboots

Good to hear you're back on the path of the fun part of aqua-keeping, which does NOT include battling algae. I rescaped my 10 gallon (see Abby's 10 gallon Betta "Bowl" in the journals forum - it's starting to finally come along pretty well as of yesterday with noticed plant growth), and have the twin 10 watt bulbs over about 5 gallons of water. I'm not real concerned with algae at this point in there becuase half the light hits a rock.

I went ahead and bought a dozen otos, along with a dozen Apisto. macmasteri, 8 agasizzi cory cats, and 21 Trig.espei's, but only 5 otos went into the tank (the rest were for the 125). They cleaned up what little algae I left behind in no time and now there are 3 left in there (the other 2 are a clean-up crew in the 3 gallon pico).

I still have GSA in the 125, but I am going to "hire" some nerites, as you mentioned earlier, to help me out with that little problem. Other than that things seem to be working themselves out. I had heard that patience with NPT's is all it really takes, but I was skeptical until recently.