What kind of algae is this?

[Deadeye]

Looks like brownish black cyano.

It’s the stuff coating the gravel, it’s very hairy.
Always sort of been there in small amounts, but never really took off until I turned it into a planted tank.

Any ideas?

 

[Fat Homer]

Can’t say for sure what type of algae it is but a good gravel vac should help clear a lot of it out...

Also are you dosing ferts in the tank? Coz if you are thats probably why it started taking off...

 

[Deadeye]

I actually haven’t been dosing anything, so far it’s only been low maintenance guys like Javas anubias. Lighting has increased from just sunlight to 12 hours a day though.
Tomorrow is cleaning day so I’ll try to suck it out then.

 

[Fat Homer]

I actually haven’t been dosing anything, so far it’s only been low maintenance guys like Javas anubias. Lighting has increased from just sunlight to 12 hours a day though.
Tomorrow is cleaning day so I’ll try to suck it out then.

In that case its the added hours of light causing you the outbreak...

You have two ways you can combat this, either A) reduce the amount of time the lights are on or B) do a siesta time in between... so for example have the lights on for say 3 hours, off for 2 hours then on again for 3-4 hours...

However, the siesta approach wont probably work too well if its still getting a lot of natural sunlight during the time the lights are off...

 

[Deadeye]

I’ll try taking an hour off the end and see if that helps.

 

[Fat Homer]

Honestly, if they are on for 12 hours thats quite a long photoperiod for low light requiring plants... i think at max i used to have mine on straight for 8 hours a day on my 200G...

However, with that said every tank is different and will require experimenting to see what works, so try reducing it by 1 hour first and if the out break still seems to be bad, then keep reducing it till you get it under control or maybe try doing more gravel vacs in between water changes...

 

[Yuki-Rihwa]

You can add more plants, the faster grow rate plants, snails, algae eaters fishes, once you have enough plants to consume all the nutrition then algae will vanished. My tank running full day/night cycle light that mean the light is on 24/7 and I don't have algae outbreak and nitrate is always undetectable under API test (my tank extremely well overstock bio load and heavy planted).