Ugh

[Stillness]

Hello again,
Long time no talk. Well it has been a while, I've been busy and haven't been keeping up with my tank. Sorry. Anyways, in my tanks neglect it has developed some nasty brown algae. Its got so bad that I'm taking the fish out giving them away and re-cycling the tank. Any tips about how to keep this nasty stuff from coming back? Thanks in advance.

BTW It's a 20 gal tall unplanted that had 4 cherry barbs and 2 guppies.
Thanks

 

[Lotus]

Regular water changes every week, and scraping, as necessary, will keep the algae away.

To be honest, the tank is probably salvageable if you do a few larger water changes and scrape the algae that's there. It takes some work, but it's definitely doable.

 

[homebunnyj]

Don't do that. Have you already done it? It takes so long to cycle the tank!

New tanks often go through a brown algae period (usually several months in). I don't know why, but they do.

What you need to do is to evaluate the lighting. Your fluorescent tubes could be old, in which the light they give off is not the same quality as originally. Inadequate lighting can lead to brown algae breakouts. You need to replace the tubes every six to nine months, I believe.

Also, overfeeding can as well -- too many nutrients (esp nitrates) in the water. Have you tested for nitrates lately?

Excess silicates can contribute to the problem. Sometimes this can happen due to 'topping off' instead of doing water changes, and some substrates can leach silicates.

Too little oxygen can be a factor too. How's your filtration/circulation?

Also, otocinclus catfish eat brown algae and are cute too. You could probably put three in there.

I wish you had come and talked to us first.

 

[Stillness]

Right, sorry. Umm, I already did it but I wanted to redo the aqua-scaping and stuff. Thanks a lot. I'll definitely make a point of keeping up with the w/c's. Thanks! And yeah the water parameters were a little off but not bad.