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Is this algae or biofilm?

C

chrispp

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7
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London
Happy new year!
My tank was set up 6 weeks ago and it is currently covered with a layer of brown substance. On the substrate, they peel off like skin if I tried to pick them up with a forceps. Those ones of the spiderwood would come off when I brush them. Are they algae or biofilm? My light setting is 8 hours a day and the pH is 7.6. Ammonia reduces from 2ppm to 0ppm in 24 hours but nitrite in 48 hours.
Thanks in advance!
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It also looks like a red/brown-coloured version of Cyano to me. I have not seen that variation before, personally. I can also see green algae and also some hair algae.
 
chrispp said:
It smells earthy and swampy. What should I do if it was cyano? Light off for a fee days? Thanks
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I think you have biofilm - wood - and cyanobacteria - substrate etc.,. Remove physically as much of the cyanobacteria as possible, do a big water change, seed your filter if possible with some gunk from a well established tank, and add a load of floating plants, I suggest frogbit and or hornwort, and maybe only illuminate the tank for 6 hours. Without a good plant mass Nitrite is likely to hang around. Once you get a good plant mass you will be fine, cheap and cheerful works well at the start, egeria, vallis, hygrohila. Good luck.
 
Yes, looks like some nasty cyano outbreak. If your attempts to control it fail, you can bomb them with antibiotics. Not ideal, but very effective.
 
LMuhlen said:
Yes, looks like some nasty cyano outbreak. If your attempts to control it fail, you can bomb them with antibiotics. Not ideal, but very effective.
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Not in the UK. Antibiotics are prescription only in the UK and definitely not available to control cyanobacteria. Erythromycin is the antibiotic of choice to control cyanobacteria in some parts of the world, reserved primarily for pneumonia treatment in the UK and the EU. Part of the drive to reduce the development of antibiotic resistance.
 
Connswater said:
Not in the UK. Antibiotics are prescription only in the UK and definitely not available to control cyanobacteria.
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Think I’ve told this before. Many years ago I bought some fish medication on eBay which were basically antibiotics. The seller (who I believe was American) was very keen to tell me that the medication was exactly the same as prescription antibiotics and that he gave them to his kids. I was like I’m going to treat fish with them and I don’t think he believed me.
 
Connswater said:
Not in the UK. Antibiotics are prescription only in the UK and definitely not available to control cyanobacteria. Erythromycin is the antibiotic of choice to control cyanobacteria in some parts of the world, reserved primarily for pneumonia treatment in the UK and the EU. Part of the drive to reduce the development of antibiotic resistance.
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Yes, same here. But I guess it's the same in a very different way. I explained the problem to a doctor and he prescribed it to me. It seems like Erythromycin has been unavailable for a while, making Azythromycin the current option.

But if I remember right, you do have some anti-algae available that supposedly is secretly an antibiotic, right? Or is that gone too? Chemiclean or something like that?
 
Interesting, I have never used a chemical treatment for cyanobacteria, there seems some internet comment on Chemiclean that it is inadequately/misleadingly described and that it may contain erythromycin, if it does, it is does not meet legal restrictions in the EU or the UK. Never seen it for sale in an aquarium shop, it seems available however, from Amazon and eBay, which is very worrying.
 
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