I've searched, what is this stinky brown algea

Are you certain that it is algal and not fungal/bacterial? It reminds me of the funk that grows on my airstone at the end of my CO2 line. Mine is snow-white at first but turns tan/brown with age. But it doesn't seem to hurt anything or spread.

PS- Quite off-topic, but congrats on first post after 17 months being registered!

THANX, What part of houston are you in? are you a member at houstonfishbox.com?

And this mess is spreading. I suck up a big blob of the stuff every time I do a water change.

I haven't ruled out anything, could be bacteria i suppose.

Does the stuff produce gas bubbles during the day when the lights are on? I'm just thinking you might help IDing the stuff if you knew it was definitely photosynthesizing. I've seen a lot of mat algae that traps the bubbles, I guess with your lights and dosing it should(?) produce bubbles if it does. Of course not seeing them doesn't rule anything out.

I'm sorry I can't be of more help.

I'm over on the west side of town, near (or perhaps in) the Westchase district or slightly west of that. Relatively near the West Oaks mall. I've only been in this city/state for 5 months. I hadn't heard of houstonfishbox until now, I will check it out.

As far as I know there's still no name for this kind of algae.
There's a thread on APC also about a members fight with this monster.
I had it in my tank a while ago. It started right after I did a total rescape.
Someone suggested less iron/micro dosing and shorter light duration so I tried and it helped a little. I also started doing daily waterchanges, sucking all the algae I could see with a phyton hose. A couple weeks later all the algae was gone. I'm back to my old micro dosing routine and the algae hasn't come back.
Just my 2 cents.
Rafo

I actually had that junk in my betta boys' tank a while back... I sat here and tried to remember what I did to get rid of it.. but thinking of it, all I did was put some pond snails in. I'm not sure if that fixed it really, or if it went away on its own, but there is no longer any of that brown crap in my tank...

('course, NOW I have that... green hairy algae on my driftwood 'cause I let riccia die in there... But I'm thinking of just starting a tank for some fish that eats it and tossing it in... goldfish maybe?)