[illnino]

why does this always happen, it gets on the baby and the larger shorter leafs of every amazon sword plant i have gotten, it also has these wierd little brown wormish things that i guess eat teh crapp off the leafs because where they are, there is no brown crap within .25" of them

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[illnino]

the wierd thing is that the lower long leafs dont get any of this crap...

 

[Gumby]

You sure they're worms? Looks like common diatom alage to me. Does it wipe off pretty easily with your fingers?

If that's the case, pick up some kind of phosphate/silicate resin. I had the same problem with the stuff attacking my wisteria and cabomba so I picked up some of Seachem's PhosGuard... We'll see how it works this weekend when I go back home.

 

[illnino]

the majority of it whipes off well, but comes back in a day, it sticks good in on the veins and crevecases of the leaf. i ripped off all the nasty leafs for both of them today and moved them to my 125 along with my piranha

 

[HighOctane]

Gumby please keep us updated on how the PhosGuard works out. I am interested to know as I have the same problem with brown algae when I leave my lights on for more then 5 hours a day.

 

[Davo]

this is a damn pain in the ass. i have the same problem. What can we do?

 

[Gumby]

I'll be sure to update ya on how it's going. My lights stay on anywhere from 12 to 16 hours a day, and I've got 275 watts of Power Compact lighting on there, so when I have an alage problem, it gets out of hand pretty quickly.

If you guys don't have killer fish in your tank(ie: cichlids, piranhas).. Just run by the LFS and pick up several Ottocinclus. They love eating the brown diatom alage.

Octane: did you end up changing your gravel? Notice any improvement? Also, are you using tap or well water?

 

[elTwitcho]

I'm going to be trying the phosphate/sillicate resin starting tonight as well. I've also got a bit of brown algae cropping up and my rhom wouldn't be good company for a pleco

 

[elTwitcho]

Hey guys, just something else to toss out that I came across in my research last night, another cause for brown algae may be brown/dying/dead leaves in your tank. I personally think this is my cause right there because I had vallisneria I bought from the lfs in really sad shape. Not knowing the leaves wouldn't heal themselves I left them on the plant and had a gradual slow death of the affected leaves. Every once in a while I'd pull dead leaf matter out of the intake on my filter but wasn't too dilligent about it. My plants underneath the filter output suddenly started blooming with this nasty brown algae. For me it would make sense that the algae has been caused by plant matter just based on the location of it being near the output of decayed plant matter, and how much dying plant leaves I actually had in my tank. I did some heavy pruning last night and took out the resins from my filter to see if this helps, and I'd advise everyone else to check around for dead leaves if they've got a brown algae problem. I doubt this will be a solution for everyone, but I'd think some people will find it useful for sure.

 

[Gumby]

I think I found out why my tank went apeshit. Came home this weekend after adding the PhosGuard, alage was still out of control.

...I think I may have over fertilized. I used the reccomended dosages, but the piranhas are so messy that there's a high chance that there are already enough nutrients in the tank for the plants, and what I added was just over the line. I scrubbed the tank and did a 75% water change-- I vaccumed the gravel where I could and it didn't look bad at all. I also finally got around to putting my lights on a timer. As of right now the lights will be on 10 hours a day. I also left the PhosGuard in the sump(which was starting to take on a yellowish color, which means it's working.

Hopefuly when I go home this weekend I won't have any alage issues.