# Brown algae blooms



## DavidW (29 Aug 2016)

Ok, I know this has been covered lots of time and I've read lots of information on this a lot of which is contradictory. I've read on to turn the light off for a few day while others say keep the lights on turn up the co2 and add more ferts.

So here's my tank with the brown algae blooms, my CO2 id about 30mg/l I have 208 watts of T5 lighting in a 350 litre corner tank which is 60cm deep. My nitrate level is less than 5mg/l my nitrite level is 0.









So what's the best course of action. I'm going to be installing a UV steriliser soon which should take care of any bit's that are floating in the water but not the stuff attached to the plants and hardscape. I was considering SilicatEx but this removes phosphate I have read that some people have gotten rid of this brown algae with this stuff but then ad extra phosphate so that the levels stay good for the plants.

Honestly I read so may differing opinions that I'm at a bit of a loss as to what the best course of action is. Any help to clarify what I should do to tackle this stuff would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks


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## Planted Bows (29 Aug 2016)

How long are your lights on for?? 

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## DavidW (29 Aug 2016)

Planted Bows said:


> How long are your lights on for??


8 hours a day, the brown algae started on the wood then spread.


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## Planted Bows (29 Aug 2016)

Firstly I would reduce timing down to 5/6 hours. I had mine on for 8 and the Bloom started. Im not entirely sure in how I got rid of it however the lighting did help. I also upped my liquid ferts to double the dose. 

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## zozo (30 Aug 2016)

Looks a bit like Rhizoclonium which is a hair algae sp. (clado).. Can com in a green/brown fluffy and slimy appearance.. It definitely loves light, so working on that will help.
I do not realy know what caused the infestation when i had it, i had it around the same time as somebody who i shared plants with.. I had  it in a fairly mature tank and he had in a new setup.. But both cases heavily infected. 

In my experience it actualy doesn't realy matter what algae it is, i had quite a few different algae outbreaks by now.. Actualy never had so much algae experience before but since i run a high light intensity tank i do and had one after the other..  And if you do not grow plants which require high light intensity, lowering the light intensity is more effective than shortening the periode. It gives the plants also a better chance of competing with the algae, because as long they get light they grow, try to find the intensity the plants still happy with but the algae isn't. 

I think it's only kinda logical, only shortening the periode, you still keep the algae in favor only for a shorter periode, seeing it from a plants perspective, they need light to grow, you thus also shorten that cycle which you actualy need to compete with algae.  With slow growers it is beter to keep them growing as long as possible, the majority of slow growers also do not require high light intensity, but still need light to grow. Giving slow growers a higher intensity for shorter periode, doesn't make them grow any faster it actualy works counter productive, they still grow slow and over a longer periode of darknes even slower and it will take longer to get a decent amount of plantmass to compete.

So find out what plants you are growing and what their light requirments are and find the sweetspot between the longest dat and the best intensity aimed towards the plants with the highest requierments you grow. Sounds complicated, but it actualy isn't..  Fighting off algae with growing plants requiring high intensity now that is a challange where periode is more important. But still in both cases if you want plantmass you need to grow then in the longest periode possible, without light both, algae and plants don't grow.

Anyway, i did a 3 day blackout to eradicate most of the rhizoclonium, which works very effective also for other algae sp. in the tank.. After that lowered the intensity but kept the periode as is.


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## Dr Mike Oxgreen (30 Aug 2016)

How long has this tank been set up?

Brown filamentous diatoms like this are very common in a new tank for the first few months, and will eventually pack their bags and go. You might also go through temporary phases of other types of algae as well.

You have fairly high light intensity, and I'd say 8 hours is too long if your tank is in the early stages. Reduce it to 5 hours.

Do you have any algae eaters? Otocinclus would help keep it under control.


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## Manuel Arias (30 Aug 2016)

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:


> Do you have any algae eaters? Otocinclus would help keep it under control.



Amano shrimps (Caridina multidentata) love this stuff, too. In my opinion, light control plus algae grazers and the regular water changes should fix the problem. Diatoms are easier to control than other kind of algae.

Cheers,
Manuel


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## DavidW (30 Aug 2016)

I've adjusted the light and CO2 timers now so fingers crossed this will get rid of the blooms. thanks


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## Timon Vogelaar (2 Sep 2016)

Some tips;
- Like planted bows, DrMikeOxgreen and zozo said; Down with light intensity and durance
- Like DrMikeOxgreen said; This the brown algae is common in startup
- Like the others; Add a cleaning team to help.

I'd like to add;
- Try to manually remove as much as possible
- Maintain your tank more than usual and by that i mean;

When algae grows and you see it; remove it where ever it grows. [because it spreads itself like weed [and no i am not saying this because i'm from the Netherlands]]
Keep doing frequent water changes of 50% till 30%; this is because your setup needs to get stabilized.
After water change try to calculate how many ferts you have flushed away with it and add those again.
- You can try to dose liquid CO2 because algae hates it but keep in mind it does not work like air CO2. It's like a chemical wich algae doesnt like.
- Maybe others frown upon this one but up your CO2 level. You say it around 30mg/l, i say it is hard to tell if that is true because it depends on more factors then PH and KH combined or indicators colour. When you raise your CO2, do it with care, do it when your home, this is because then you can watch your livestock. I've learned to keep my tank algae free in long term and startup also because of high levels of CO2.


Good luck!


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## sgdiscus (6 Sep 2016)

Timon Vogelaar said:


> Some tips;
> - Like planted bows, DrMikeOxgreen and zozo said; Down with light intensity and durance
> - Like DrMikeOxgreen said; This the brown algae is common in startup
> - Like the others; Add a cleaning team to help.
> ...



I agree with Timon's recommendations. I would like to reinforce a few points:

1. There is a school of thought (the main proponent of this is Tom Barr) that if you take care of your plants by providing enough nutrients and CO2, the healthy growth of the plants will take care of algae. I belong to this group. Personally for me, I have more than 10 bubbles per second (for 7 hours a day) to support a lighting duration of 6 hours a day and also add in 40ml of Excel flourish (once every 2 days). I suffered from green spot algae on my drift wood when I had my LED intensity at 100%. I have since tuned it down to 80%. That seemed to have slowed the growth of GSA such that I only need to do minimal glass scraping once a week during water change. 

2. Based on my personal experience, if a tank has too much infestation of algae... restarting is the only way - especially against BBA/BGA.

3. In my own 495 litre tank, I added in 10 otos as clean up crew. I supplement their diet with dry flakes once a day. For your tank and considering the density, I would say 8 to 10 otos would fit right in. 

4. Lastly - you will need a huge dose of patience. Because the actions you do now will only take effect one or two weeks later. It is too tempting to change too many variables at one go and therefore you will not be able to ascertain exactly what were the right/wrong actions or right/wrong quantities of change.

Good luck!


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## DavidW (6 Sep 2016)

Manuel Arias said:


> Amano shrimps (Caridina multidentata) love this stuff, too. In my opinion, light control plus algae grazers and the regular water changes should fix the problem. Diatoms are easier to control than other kind of algae.


Hi I've got about 12 Amano shrimp with 5 more on the way, I've also got 8 Oto's was considering getting a few more oto's but think given my tank size 8 is enough?



Timon Vogelaar said:


> When algae grows and you see it; remove it where ever it grows. [because it spreads itself like weed [and no i am not saying this because i'm from the Netherlands]]
> 
> Keep doing frequent water changes of 50% till 30%; this is because your setup needs to get stabilized.
> 
> After water change try to calculate how many ferts you have flushed away with it and add those again.



I've been manually removing it, it grows really fast! I've been doing 100 liter water changes every other day. My water container is 100 litres and takes a bit of time to get up to an acceptable temperature for the discus. I'm going to switch off one of the sets of lights completely so that will take the light levels down form 208 watts to 118 watts.

I'm dosing all in one ferts every other day and my co2 drop checker is lime greeny yellow so I think my CO2 level is about 30. All my other water parameter reading are really stable now and don't fluctuate the nitrate is staying at 6mg/l nitrite is 0mg/l ph is 6.7 and tds is 321

I have a planted shrimp tank in my sump too and that isn't showing any signs of this algae.



sgdiscus said:


> Lastly - you will need a huge dose of patience. Because the actions you do now will only take effect one or two weeks later. It is too tempting to change too many variables at one go and therefore you will not be able to ascertain exactly what were the right/wrong actions or right/wrong quantities of change.



I know I want a quick fix but know there isn't one.


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## DavidW (8 Sep 2016)

Timon Vogelaar said:


> Good luck!





zozo said:


> Fighting off algae with growing plants requiring high intensity now that is a challange



Ok so I've done the following until the tank is mature and I'm hoping this will cure the algae issue:

Lights are now on for 6 hours a day
Light intensity has been cut from 208 watts to 118 watts
CO2 is turned off
Fert dosing twice a week with TNC complete
100 litre water changes 3 times a week with HMA filtered water which is also filtering through Silicatex

I've ordered some Easycarbo and I'll be dipping my moss covered driftwood in this and any other plants which are heavily effected. The wood is there the problem started. I'm also waiting for a wave maker to arrive to help with circulation.

Once the algae issue has gone I'm going to reintroduce the CO2 and start EI dosing.

How this sound?

Thanks


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## zozo (8 Sep 2016)

DavidW said:


> CO2 is turned off



Why is that? Rather keep it running, it will only help the plants grow faster and use the ferts you throw in. Even in lower light co2 has still it's benefits.. Does that algae come loos easily, can you syphon it out? If so then you should do that if needed every day.

To me it realy looks a bit like rhizoclonium, which is a hair algae and can have brown color. If it is that it should be easy to syphon it off the plants and moss. Hard to see, but search the name and compair the pics..

Be carefull with dipping plants in liquid carbon, specialy mosses do not realy like it and are easily killed and take long time to grow back.



DavidW said:


> I know I want a quick fix but know there isn't one.


Anyway if it is Rhizo, then manualy clean out as much as possible for a few days with syphoning everyday which obviously results also in a waterchange. Check the filter and clean it, this stuff can float around and end up in your filter.. After a few days vigorously cleaning it out, do a blackout for 3 days.. Cover the tank with towels or blankets or cardboard what ever you have to make it completely dark in there. Turn off lights, turn off co2, no ferts, no food, add a double dose liquid carbon, no peeking, leave pitch black dark for 3 days. Fish and plants can handle it.. After that, do a water change again and clean out whats left.. You'll probably notice a lot of algae will be gone, but it wont be death. From that point on you need to go on with your new schedule, but keep adding co2. It might come back a little and go away again completely in matter of days if you keep cleaning it out, but if you are lucky it doesn't come back not at all. This will give the algae a major set back, it is the safest and fasted way for most algae (not all)..

Is it still clean after a few weeks you can slowly up your schedule again if you think you need more intensity or longer periode. But do it slowly in small steps with every week a little more..


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## DavidW (8 Sep 2016)

zozo said:


> Why is that?


I read that one of the guys who was also have a brown algae problem did this and it worked.

Anyway since cutting the amount of light I can see that the algae is growing much much slower. Last time I cleaned as much algae off as I could 2 days later it was twice as bad, now it is still growing but not as bad as before. I've also noticed some of the blooms are greenish now as well.



zozo said:


> Check the filter and clean


The filter isn't sowing any signs of the algae blooms and my planted shrimp tank doesn't have any algae on the plants at all, just some standard green algae growing on the glass which the shrimps are happily eating. I do have a lot of mechanical filtration in the first part of my sump, I think there is about 3 litres of eheim mech pro and 2kg of ceramic rings then 2 layers of filter foam.

I'll try the 3 day blackout, I'll start it tonight once I've done a water change and cleaned as much of the algae as I can.

Thanks


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## kadoxu (8 Sep 2016)

Wouldn't a few floaters help?


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## zozo (8 Sep 2016)

DavidW said:


> The filter isn't sowing any signs of the algae blooms



It never realy does, it is dark in there nothing but bateria grow in there.. But it;s the tiny pieces and spores which accumulate in the filter. When cleaning and rubbing and pulling etc. it floats around and ends up in the filter.. So not cleaning it out, the filter will keep spreading spores again.


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## Timon Vogelaar (8 Sep 2016)

zozo said:


> So not cleaning it out, the filter will keep spreading spores again.



That's why i always suck the algae up with a water change. But i must say when you for example brush your stones from algae it is inevitable. It makes you get less spores in the water


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## DavidW (8 Sep 2016)

zozo said:


> So not cleaning it out, the filter will keep spreading spores again.


I've got a UV steriliser which will be fitted on the return pump, should kill any spores in the water , but I'll give the media a clean too. thanks


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## DavidW (13 Sep 2016)

Ok so 3 day off blackout later and I'm happy to say the tank has significantly improved -




There's still small patches of the brown algae and i'm going to manually remove these. I have now noticed some blackish treads coming off the anubias and microsorum and some sort of browny grey fungus -




Anyone know what these are and the best way to get rid of them?

Thanks


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## SeanOB (13 Sep 2016)

glad its clearing up for you, I am tackling the same brown bloom as you at the moment. 
To help ID the stuff, I'm not sure if you have already seen these but they were recommended to me on here and have helped a lot:

http://aquariumalgae.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.greenaqua.hu/en/alga-tajekoztato


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