Brownish-orangish algae appearing all over

I_Smell_Fish

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My tank is about 2 months old, water parameters are good. I have this brown/orange algae appearing on the sides of the tank, on top of plant leaves, on rocks, pretty much all over. What the heck is it and how do I stop it?????
 
Diatoms, they are an indicator of low light levels, or increased amounts of silicates in your tank, overall 2 months is quite new, diatoms tend to pop up here and their in younger setups, I would ramp up water changes 10-20% each day, make sure your paremeters are stable too.
But pictures will help us access this problem
 
I have a high output light on 6 hours a day. Is that too little? Is that what you mean by "indicator of low light levels"? Here are pictures -- one is of the algae on a rock and the other on a plant. It has grown noticeably in just a few hours! Help!


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Indicator: indication of something…

This specific type of algae is indicating you have to much low light and haven’t achieved a balance in your tank.

What are your parameters and whats the PAR at substrate level?
 
Looks like diatoms which is just part of a new tank. It'll go away on its own. May take a couple of months up to almost a year. Should wipe off the glass easily
 
I know what an indication is. lol I was asking if you meant the light was too weak, or I had it on for too short of a time. "Low light levels" was ambiguous to me.

I have no idea what my PAR is anywhere in the tank. Don't you need a special device to determine that?

My parameters:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5 ppm
Ph: 7.5


I can't deal with this in my tank for a year!!!!! Ack!!!!


Thank you!!!!!
Darrien
 
doesn't last but a month or so........
 
It'll be less as the tank matures. Usually after a couple of months it won't be as noticeable
 
I got a silicate remover. I'm hoping that helps.

Thanks,
Darrien
 
As others have said it is common in the first few months but there are some tips to know that you might benefit from.

1 - algae is nothing but beneficial for any tank, the algae acts very similar to plants in that it removes toxins from the water column, it usually doesn't become problematic until it envelopes a tank to the point that plants aren't getting any light through the thick coverage of algae. This being said I do understand than some people consider it unsightly and prefer to not see it. I personally only ever clean the front glass and allow the algae to cover the sides and back as it gives a more natural look and helps with water quality.
2 - if you do want to fight off algae there are a few points to note. First being that most fish and almost all invertebrates eat algae and stocking them for the purpose of eating it is by far the best way to keep algae in check. Further still algae does NOT 100% of the time mean that you have too much light going on. Algae growth can be a sign that you have either too much or not enough light as well as possibly either too much or not enough fertilizer. Generally excessive growth of algae just tells us that the ratio of light/ferts is in some way imbalanced. This means that you have to experiment with tweaking these conditions yourself.
3 - lets say you run your lights 6 hours a day and don't dose fertilizers at all, in this scenario your plants aren't getting enough nutrients to grow, but the algae doesn't require as many as plants and some little amounts of nutrients in you tap water are enough for the algae to outcompete the plants, in this situation adding ferts may assist the plants in out competing the algae and as a result may cause the algae to recede.
4 - in another scenario, you run your lights for 8 hours and dose the recommended amount of ferts on your bottle, your plants are growing but there is an excess amount of nutrients because maybe you only have one Anubis in your whole tank, in this case the plant has everything it needs but there's so much extra nutrients that algae begins up taking the excess and begins growing itself.
5 - or maybe you're dosing just the amount that your plants need but you have so much light going on that the plants don't need that much and so algae begins to grow to utilize the excess light as well.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that your specific tank may have any variation on an imbalance between ferts and lights and we on the forums are unable to give you accurate advice because we don't know your tank like you do.
I hope this makes sense and is of use to you. Good luck with you tank and if you need more detailed information feel free to reply or PM me with more details of your set up.
 

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