My Tank - Getting Yukky

[Liliano]

Hi

I have a 10 gallon, fluval tropiquarium jobby with a fluval 2plus filter. Its a planted tank with granite rocks, my water perametres are AM 0, No3 0, No4 30, pH 8, kH 10, dH >7.

My fish are listed below, are fed sparingly twice a day, and the light is on for about 10 hours (sun glo light - just today swopped out for a aqua glo light)

I cycled my tank doing a fishless cycle and introduced my first fish (3 rainbows) apprx 2 weeks ago, the remaining fish were added about 5 days later after a close eye on the water chem to ensure AM and No3 were stabilised.

So my family have all been living together for about 8 or 9 days.

Last Saturday I did a 25% water change, trimmed the plants, hoovered the gravel etc I checked the filter and it was a little mucky as snails kept eating my plants and they was a lot of plant debris, so I rinsed the filters in the syphoned water.

Over the last couple of days I have noticed my water starting to smell, it used to have a pondy/dirt type smell, but now is starting to pong (like pooey)

All over my plants and rocks is a brown substance, it looks more like dirt/poo rather than algae but i could be wrong. The windows seem fine, except one patch where the natural flow from the filter would stop (ie on the glass next to the filter) where it definately looks like brown algae, my oto's have tried to eat it but they cannot get behind the thermometre (its quite funny really as you have little mouth shaped bits where they have been trying)

Oh PPS the oto's are not eating this mucky looking stuff.

So what can I do about this muck and pong? I am doing a 25% water change every weekend anyway.

Any help appreciated

Many Thanks

Lil

 

[ScuabaDuba]

Couple thoughts....

A- Brown Algae- algae means you have a healthy tank, so if everything checks out right, this could be it. Try feeding onlyonce a day, tiny amount. Keep the light on for only 7-8 hours. After a week, see what happens.

B- Fungus- might smell, looks like brown stuff. Check fish- if any seem down or sickly, coudl be this. Check Nitrate nad Amon. Solution for this would be water change 50% and fungus tablets.

Bring water to pet shop for them to test. Go from there and good luck!

 

[tstenback]

I find if i add a carbon insert to my filter it takes away the smell and you can manually clean the algae with an algae brush or scraper. Sounds like quite a cleaning sometimes when we do large cleanups strange things happen but they are usually short lived. The brown algae is quite common in newly established tanks and as mentioned can be wiped away or it may be a result of too little or muted/blocked out light. Keep us posted.

 

[Phantom Thief]

Just to mention it, brown algae is caused by a LACk of light, not excess light.

P.T.

 

[Liliano]

Thanks

I have been keeping an eye on the fish, they all seem healthy, bright eyes, erect fins etc.

One thing I forgot to say, I never trust LFS's so I have been treating the tank for white spot since I put the last lot of fish in (just in case! - my friend bought a fish from an LFS which had white spot and it killed off his tank including a 5 year old panda cory)

Hope this won't be affecting anything

 

[ScuabaDuba]

Brown is? Oh....so is it only green that is caused by light?

 

[Liliano]

I managed to get a snap of the "brown" stuff covering the plants last night - see below

Tstenback - I did get a carbon insert with the filter so I will add that in when I do my water change this weekend, I think the box said not to leave it in there for more than a week (or was it two). How long do you leave yours in for?

 

[Liliano]

OK

Firstly I forgot to attach the pic, but it appears that the box where I usually add the pic in isn't there

 

[tstenback]

I managed to get a snap of the "brown" stuff covering the plants last night - see below

Tstenback - I did get a carbon insert with the filter so I will add that in when I do my water change this weekend, I think the box said not to leave it in there for more than a week (or was it two). How long do you leave yours in for?

I usually put the carbon in just long enough to correct the symptom, in your case the odour. Then i remove it to see if the cause for that was corrected. In your case it may just have been that the good cleaning you gave the tank stirred up something and caused the odour. if the carbon removes this then take the carbon out and see if the odour comes back. I would say it shouldn't take any longer than a few days to a week. Good luck and keep us posted

 

[Liliano]

Ok - had it confirmed in the pictures forum - I do infact have an algae problem

Course of action

Reduce amount being fed (to lessen wastage hanging around)
Water changes as normal every weekend
Insert carbon filter to get rid of pong
Reduce amount of time light on (was about 10 hours - have reduced to 8*
Also bought aqua-glo light rather than sun-glo light.

Anything else I need to consider How long should it take to clear?

FYI I think the reason this has happened was because I was using those sinking algae wafers - my otos didn't get a chance to get at them because my platies and rainbows sit there and nibble at them, and there seemed to be a lot of waste submerged in the gravel so I assumed my oto's didn't like them

Have now switched to tetra bottom feeder tablets which are smaller and my otos seem to like them so they get eaten up.

Thanks for your help