Black/brown stuff on fake plants

[fishy_sean94]

I’m wondering if anyone could tell me what’s causing these dirty looking brown/black marks to appear on my fake silk plants in my tank.
I have had the plants for a few months now, but in the last few weeks they rather quickly start getting this muck on them which I don’t mind scrubbing off but it can be rather hard to remove it all so doing that every week or so is going to make the plants not last very long.

Nothing has changed in the tank and I do regular water changes and cleans and the stuff only seems to appear at the higher end of the plants and only on them.

 

[Anonymous Fox]

it could still be alge, do you have fish in the tank yet? could be fish poopoo

 

[PheonixKingZ]

Looks like diatoms to me. Give this a read: https://modestfish.com/brown-algae/

 

[AbbeysDad]

It's algae. In spite of routine water changes and good housekeeping, nearly all aquariums will see some algae due to light and nutrients in the water. (Mulm, Algae, and Snails, Oh My!)

Back in the day when I had plastic plants in my 60g I would periodically run them through the dishwasher with either some white vinegar or a cup of bleach. You might soak in a bleach/water solution, then rinse well to clean.

 

[fishy_sean94]

Happy to hear it’s nothing to worry about or anything that seems to cause any harm to fish.

I will get some white vinegar and hope that it cleans them better without as much need to scrub them so much.

Thank you!