I need advice on "Brown Algae" Please?

[TiggertheOscar]

Hello! Nice to be here and thanks for taking the time to read my post and hopefully help me solve this issue!

To start with, I have 4 fish tanks in my house. Through trial and error all have had the same problem at one point in time or another. It's this reddish brown algae(slime) that seems to consume everything in my tank.

I started with a 29 gallon community for my first tank. After the tank cycled and I learned some very harsh and immoral lessons about fish keeping, I finally stabilized the tank and it is running efficiently now. During the course of this tank lesson learning process I had a time where the tank became overwhelmed by this reddish-brown slime, and still to this day it comes back mainly on the glass where I can scrape it off. No biggy right? Well this brings me to the other tanks, all of which have experienced this problem except for one. Another 29 gallon that was very slowly seeded by the water from a 75 gallon with perfect parameters. I unintentionally cycled it without fish just so that I would have a "Hospital" tank. And now it is more efficient than any of the other tanks(imagine that, it only houses a blue lobster,lol).

Which brings me to my current problem tank. It's a 125 gallon with 3 O's, a common pleco, 2 Bala's, a feather-finned cat, and a baby fire eel. I have 2 penguin biowheel 350's for HOB, and an FX5 to do the rest. For media I use only the common carbon cartridges for the biowheels, and for the FX5 I have ceramics in the bottom tray with some filter floss, the second tray has some peat moss pellets for softening my ever-so-hard tap-water, and the top tray has s different type of bio-ceramic along with some "clear-max" pouches I was advised to get by my LFS guy.

The algae problem came before the peat and the clear-max was put into the filters, the peat was a result of dying plants, and the clear-max was for this algae problem, supposively to remove phosphates.
I am not too familiar with this stage of care for my fish, I only have experience in keeping the parameters at the correct readings and housing fish and tankmates appropriately. This stuff is just plain nasty. It has covered everything in my tank, and killed pretty much any live plant I have attepted to keep. Through the research I have done I only have gotten more confused as to what it could be and now I am lead to ask for help verbally from the people that I deem as experts in the field, You.

Please help me, for this is getting really expensive and I am sure that removing the rocks and decor every so often to clean is only ticking my O's off.Here are some pics, I did just clean the rocks and plants a day or two ago, but as you can see, the filter mechs and the live plants are covered in the stuff.

Oh and the readings for the tank are PH=7.5, Ammonia=0, Nitrites=0, Nitrates=20-25, and GH/KH=about 230PPM(This reading is a few days old, I can update later if needed)




Tigger apparently wanted to have his picture taken,lmao.
Thanks again for any help you can give!

 

[TiggertheOscar]

Oh and the readings for the tank are PH=7.5, Ammonia=0, Nitrites=0, Nitrates=20-25, and GH/KH=about 230PPM(This reading is a few days old, I can update later if needed)

I just did a 40% water change and a few hours later the nitrates are down to 5PPM.

 

[bob965]

Sounds like diatom growth. In my experience, tanks that are pretty recently set up go through a phase where this stuff grows like crazy regardless of how clean the water is. Then it just disappears. In each of my tanks, it started growing at around the 2-4 month mark and continued for about 6-8 weeks, then went away. I didn't do anything special other than just keep cleaning it up.

 

[arkmann]

Flagtail

 

[mshill90]

"Brown algae" (diatoms)

This is often the first algae to appear in a newly set-up tank, where conditions have yet to stabilise. It will often appear around the 2-12 week period, and may disappear as quickly as it arrived when the conditions stabilise after a couple of months. It is essential to minimise nutrient levels to ensure the algae disappears - avoid overfeeding and carry out the appropriate water changes, gravel and filter cleaning, etc. Limiting the light will not deter this algae, as it can grow at low lighting levels and will normally out-compete green algae under these conditions.
If brown algae appears in an established tank, check nitrate and phosphate levels. Increased water changes or more thorough substrate cleaning may be necessary. Using a phosphate-adsorbing resin will also remove silicates, which are important to the growth of this algae. However, as noted above, it is essentially impossible to totally eliminate algae with this strategy alone. Due to its ability to grow at low light levels, this algae may also appear in dimly lit tanks, where old fluorescent bulbs have lost much of their output. If a problem does occur, otocinclus catfish are known to clear this algae quickly, although you may need several for larger tanks, and they can be difficult to acclimatise initially.
There are some very plausible theories as to why this algae often appears in newly set up tanks and then later disappears. If the silicate (Si) to phosphate (P) ratio is high, then diatoms are likely to have a growth advantage over true algae types and Cyanobacteria. Some of the silicate may come from the tapwater, but it will also be leached from the glass of new aquaria, and potentially from silica sand/gravel substrates to some extent. Later, when this leaching has slowed, and phosphate is accumulating in the maturing tank, the Si ratio will change in favour of phosphate, which is likely to favour the growth of green algae instead.

 

[TheCanuck]

i found changing my food stopped this.... dont know if it was related but some foods coat your sand and tank...