[prostudent4life]

My 6 month old 75 gallon is struggling with a brown algae that tends to coat the leaves of my plants. I can rub it off with my fingers, but if it older, it's difficult to remove all of it.

I feel like I've tried everything to solve the problem, so it's time to turn to others for ideas.

Co2 injected
Finnex planted plus 24/7 on max for 8 hrs a day
Black diamond sand
Pps pro dosing

I'm considering adding a bristlenose pleco to help me with cleanup. May not be a bad idea as the rocks also receive a coating But I suppose I'd rather avoid that if I can.

Pictures to help with id:

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[nchmi28]

I had it on some leaves on a new plant I put in a tank. The pond snails went after it. But if you try this solution then you'll have pond snails that you'll never be able to get rid of.

 

[prostudent4life]

Yeah, I have two Nerite snails in the tank. In fact, you can see on the first pic where they went after the algae on a sword leaf.

I just wish I could solve whatever issue is causing it. I'm lost at this point. Co2, lights, ferts, I just can't figure it out. I've read that I may have too much light, others say it's caused by too little light. With just one 24/7 on a 75, it's hard to believe it's too much light.


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[Nordic]

True about the pond snails, they can actually clean those leaves, but you need to nuke the tank afterwards.

Can the light fixture go any higher, or maybe be dimmed? Those finnex lights are very prone to causing algae when too close or use too long.
I would take diminishing the amount of light but keeping the time the same over the other way around.

Really nice looking tank btw.

 

[prostudent4life]

The finnex 24/7 can be dimmed to any level. I'm just concerned about going that route, as I've read brown algae can be caused by too little light? I'd rather have this work...cheap to dim the light, expensive to add another!

Anyone have experience with the bristlenose pleco cleaning this stuff up? I'm not sure if I should go that route or add more Nerite snails.

Thanks for the compliment on the tank...certainly wouldn't have turned out without these forums.


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[Edward]

Few questions,
How did you make the solutions, how much and how often do you dose, how much and how often do you do water changes, how many CO2 bubbles per second, what is your tap water GH and KH?

In the meantime, I would start removing the infected leaves. There is no point in keeping them as they will not recover from BBA. Need to concentrate on new healthy growth resistant to algae. Read more

 

[Mr.Free]

I suggest lessening your daylight. I am running my 24/7 on auto for my 60g with little to no algae. and my plants are doing fine. Unless you have a high light requirement for any of your plants...daylight last about 6 hours if you are running on auto.

My Co2 runs for 5hrs(4-5bps) on after daylight starts and shuts off 1 hr. I dosed flourish excel every water change. Osmocote diy tabs.

 

[prostudent4life]

I made the solutions exactly as described on the pps site, using a calibrated digital scale. I dose 6ml per day of micro and 6ml of macro. These are dosed using a jeboa auto dosing pump. Co2 was set to 8-9 bps to get the drop checker a yellow green. Since then, I've added a ph controller to keep the drop checker the same color at all times. KH is high, around 17 or so...I haven't done a GH test, but can do one quickly.

I do a 40% water change once a week.

Also, I'm not certain this is BBA, as it is a brown film I can rub off. Perhaps I have a couple varieties.


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[Mr.Free]

Does the Drop checker need to be green at all times?

Mine drops to blue green overnight..

 

[prostudent4life]

Tap GH is 24, just tested with the API kit. KH is 15 right out of he tap. While the results may suggest otherwise, this is not well water.


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[prostudent4life]

Does the Drop checker need to be green at all times?



Mine drops to blue green overnight..

No it doesn't, but it was taking a lot of co2 and time to get the co2 up to where it needs to be. So I did some reading, and decided to add a controller to hold the co2 constant.


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[prostudent4life]

I suggest lessening your daylight. I am running my 24/7 on auto for my 60g with little to no algae. and my plants are doing fine. Unless you have a high light requirement for any of your plants...daylight last about 6 hours if you are running on auto.



My Co2 runs for 5hrs(4-5bps) on after daylight starts and shuts off 1 hr. I dosed flourish excel every water change. Osmocote diy tabs.

This is interesting. I was running the light in 24/7 mode when I first set it up. However, I switched to just using on/off due to this brown algae. However after a month on this schedule, it doesn't seem to be helping. My goal is to return to 24/7 mode at some point as it's much more enjoyable. The ph controller makes co2 management simple in 24/7 mode


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[Edward]

Did you check the real dosing pump outputs? Also, cut the Solution dose #2 TE to 1/10th and tell me about your water changes.

In regard to the tap water parameters there aren’t many high light aquariums with KH of ≈ 17 degrees. You can see the same problem here. The option we have is either to go low light with hard water plants or switch to RO.

With the algae infected leaves, I would remove only the ones that cannot be wiped clean.

 

[Mr.Free]

I had my C02 running at 9 hrs at one point and it pretty much suffocated my fish. They had to recover over night..lets just say..it was a vicious cycle for the fish at one point.

I am using a fluval diffuser with a powerhead.

Are using 4kdh water on those drop checker?

 

[Edward]

I had my C02 running at 9 hrs at one point and it pretty much suffocated my fish. They had to recover over night..lets just say..it was a vicious cycle for the fish at one point.

CO2 I set per bubble count 24/7 and forget about it. There is no need for all of this fish torture practices.

 

[sohankpatel]

On the subject of pond snails, i have a decent population of them in my tank, I have 100's of ramshorns that are small, and pond snails that live in my filter. They have not been an issue yet. and they have been there since day one (5 Months ago.)

 

[prostudent4life]

I had my C02 running at 9 hrs at one point and it pretty much suffocated my fish. They had to recover over night..lets just say..it was a vicious cycle for the fish at one point.



I am using a fluval diffuser with a powerhead.



Are using 4kdh water on those drop checker?

I am using a premixed 4kdh solution.


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[prostudent4life]

Did you check the real dosing pump outputs? Also, cut the Solution dose #2 TE to 1/10th and tell me about your water changes.

In regard to the tap water parameters there aren’t many high light aquariums with KH of ≈ 17 degrees. You can see the same problem here. The option we have is either to go low light with hard water plants or switch to RO.

With the algae infected leaves, I would remove only the ones that cannot be wiped clean.

I have checked the output of the pumps and they are spot on. I'm actually impressed with how well this cheap dosing pump holds its calibration.

I have been changing about 40% of the water once a week since the tank was set up.

So let me see if I'm understanding what you're suggesting:
My hard water isn't letting the plants use the ferts and co2 as efficiently as they otherwise would. As a result, I'm adding too many nutrients to the water and the plants aren't able to use them.(thus causing my algae growth?) Therefore, I should cut back on ferts, and reduce light, and probably reduce co2?

I should add that the plants are growing well, the sword sends up new leaves all the time, and the rotala need to be trimmed back every week. I've recently added Ludwigia to the back, and was able to cut it back and replant the tops after two weeks.

I did have a small 12 gallon fluval edge (with many of these plants coming from it) that was algae free. I'd have to do some research before I thought about switching to RO water...thats a lot of water to haul through the house.

 

[Mr.Free]

CO2 I set per bubble count 24/7 and forget about it. There is no need for all of this fish torture practices.

I have adjusted and have mine a 4bps at 5hrs atm.

It was a lesson learned kinda thing:wink2:.

 

[prostudent4life]

I just decided to do a Nitrate test...it seems to be over 40...my eyes cant do much better than that on the API test kit color chart. I'm still 2 days out from my water change, so perhaps I am over doing the ferts.