Removing Algae.

[Top Banana]

Evening,

Brown algae has started to appear on the corners of my tank; It's a curved front acrylic nano tank. It's really difficult to remove! I've tried scrubbing it as hard as I can with just about anything I can think of that's suitable and won't scratch my tank to buggery!

Does anyone have any suggestions? It's starting to look a mess now, even though I clean the glass every day in the corners this stuff just seems to collect and won't budge

Cheers!

 

[stu_]

Soft brown algae, wipes off easily ?
How long has the tank been running, it is a new set up ? =Diatoms
When you say Nano, how big is it ? Oto's will go through Diatoms quickly IME, but not necessarily advisable in a very small, immature tank.

 

[Andy Thurston]

Filter floss or bank/credit card. Curves are a pain in the backside to scrub

 

[ceg4048]

Brown algae has started to appear on the corners of my tank; It's a curved front acrylic nano tank. It's really difficult to remove! I've tried scrubbing it as hard as I can

This is most likely a form of GSA caused by too much light, and any combination of low CO2 and low PO4. You'll need to give more information about your tank, CO2 and nutrient dosing in order to determine root cause.

Cheers,

 

[Top Banana]

Afternoon all - thanks for your various replies. For some reason I could only view the replies today; last night I was getting email notifications but they were not appearing on the thread for me!

Sadly the credit card method didn't work, it removed some but not all; a novel idea though! 🙂 I had already tried the floss as well! My tank is about a month old, I had used some old filter media on start up and the original algae bloom seemed to have died down. I have only been giving the tank 5 hours of lighting a day; from 6PM until 11PM each day. It is also out of the way of direct light.

The tank is a tiny 15L nano - the plants seem to be growing very well at the moment and are looking healthy. After having faffed around with my co2 regulator I decided to use liquid carbon instead (Neutro CO2) and all in one fertiliser (Neutro +) since it's such a small tank. I have been dosing daily slightly above the recommended dosage, but not by much.

 

[ceg4048]

Hi,
Thanks for the additional information. Well, anyone that knows me will immediately able to predict that my response will be:
It's the "not by much" part that is causing the problem.

Change the;

"not by much"

to

"a lot more"

and this should help improve the situation.

Of course if you have fish in the tank then you have to think about possible toxicity effects of the Neutro CO2 but you should be able to double the bottle suggested dosing.

Cheers,

 

[Top Banana]

There are no livestock in the tank.

The recommendations were 10ml per 100L for the Neutro + and 5ml per 250L for the Neutro CO2. If my math was originally correct this should mean that the original dosing recommended for my 15L tank is 1.5ml per day of Neutro+ and 0.25ml liquid carbon.

I had up until this point been dosing 0.5 ml of liquid carbon each day and 2ml of Neutro+ each day. I presume that because I am already double dosing the liquid carbon that I should just start dosing 3ml of fertiliser a day?

Thanks!

 

[ceg4048]

If you have no livestock then add more of everything until the problem is cured.

Cheers,

 

[Top Banana]

Much appreciated! I'll double the fertiliser then; I'm a little cautious of doubling the liquid carbon though as I'm already double dosing.