# slime



## nige2473 (3 Jul 2008)

i have very small amounts of a light brown slime of some bogwood in my tank,also small amounts of brown dust type atoms on the glass the tank is newly set up 5 days old heavilly planted lit 9 hours a day gh6 kh6 ph7 nitrate 0 phosphate 0 co2 2/3 bubles a second no ferts added,plants growing incredibly any ideas what it is please advice would be appreciated??


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## LondonDragon (3 Jul 2008)

How big is the tank and how much light you have in there?
First impressions could be the lack of ferts! specially if you have high light and CO2 no ferts is a bad idea!


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## Egmel (3 Jul 2008)

This type of algae is quite common in a newly set up tank.  See this page and the section on diatoms/brown algae.

I'm with LD though, if you've got high light and CO2 then you're going to need ferts relatively soon.


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## Matt Holbrook-Bull (3 Jul 2008)

nige2473 said:
			
		

> nitrate 0 phosphate 0



well theres yer problem!  You need to dose, especially if your adding co2.  Co2 allows the plants to take up nutrients, but you have none! so the algae uses it instead


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## nige2473 (6 Jul 2008)

its 180 ltrs with 80 watts light dosing 2ml of tropica plant nutrition plus every day thought it would be a bad idea to over do it early on


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## Matt Holbrook-Bull (6 Jul 2008)

nige2473 said:
			
		

> its 180 ltrs with 80 watts light dosing 2ml of tropica plant nutrition plus every day thought it would be a bad idea to over do it early on



your problem is definitely no ferts. TPN+ is ok for low light tanks, but youre running about 2wpg.

light > co2 uptake > nutrient uptake > growth.

at the moment, you have the first 2, expecting the final growth stage, but you have nothing for the plants to 'eat'.  So instead, the algae, which needs far less of everything, is winning the fight for nutrients.  For the algae to be 'beaten back', the plants need to be out competing it.. with no nutrients to provide building materials, that aint never gunna happen.

Have a read of this article EI Ferts. This is where you need to start


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