Brown Algae

[Little_Orca]

I have two tanks that are crawling with brown algae. The first tank is a five-gallon that holds my black moor and the other is my ten gallon that is housing my orandas and a feeder fish. (I know the tanks are a bit small for them, but I can't have anything bigger than these in college and my mom wont care for the fish at home).

All of my fish are doing well, even Mitshu: my oranda with a tumor. They are feeding and swimming normally and are as active as ever, but there is an algae that wont go away. It is a brown algae, it's exact type or if it is really in the brown algae or red algae family I don't know. I have cleaned their tanks out completel before, washed all the plastic plants (they eat the live ones so they have plastic now) squeaky clean, and used some Jungle "No More Algae" pills. The tanks were clean for a day or so before the algae started to grow back.

I am frustrated with this and I have been cleaning the tank walls with an algae scrubber. Are there any suggestions out there on what to do? Will it hurt my fish to simply leave the algae on the plants as snacks for them and get rid of the algae when I clean the tanks or what?

 

[black angel]

as the tank matures the algae starts off as brown and over time it goes green. You are getting rid of it before it has time to establish itself. If you dont want the algae then you will have to remove it manually but it is good for the fish and they will browse it.

 

[Little_Orca]

All right. I was not sure if it would be harmful, but if the fish will benefit from it a little then I will let it be on the plastic plants between cleans. Thanks Angel

 

[bribones]

how often do you feed the fish ? try not feeding them for 2 days out of 7 ,when i had my tanks i found this forced the fish to forage for food in the gravel and around the glass and plants

 

[superjalami30]

Do goldfish eat diatom?
I didnt think they did, even so, if its diatom algae you have you probably have a tonne of it and theres no way one or two or even three goldies will eat it all, let alone keep up with it.

I had a huge problem with diatom algae when I rehoused my goldies in a new larger tank awhile back, some plants I bought were loaded with diatom algae as well and that didnt help the problem.

I know oto's love the stuff, so after some research I decided to try housing a few oto's with my goldies, within days the diatom algae was gone.

That was a month ago, the oto's are doing fine and the goldies seem to like the little guys wipping around the tank.

I dont think you should house any oto's in those small tanks, but you could get rid of the diatom by cutting back on feeding (I feed my goldies 3-4 pellots or the equivalent of something else, once a day), shortening the photo peroid, and simply cleaning the glass more often.
You could also use algae removers such as algone, but as a last resort I would say.

And fasting your fish is a good idea as well, every saturday I fast all my fish and let them take care of the maintenance for at least one day.