Brown gunk in tank! Please help!

[ahult]

I have had my 55 gallon freshwater aquarium going for about 2.5 years now. I have recently noticed a lot of brown gunk on the plants and decorations. I have a farily large pleco and several snails in there to help keep in clean. I have a Magnum 350 filter system, too. I have never had this problem before and don't understand what's going on. The plants are relatively new, by the way. Do I have some sort of a disease in the tank? What do I need to do?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!!

 

[NJ Devils Fan]

Well, you have to remember that when a lot of plecos get older, they do not like to eat algae as much as they did when they was young, hence the need for feeding fresh vegetables. You can either get a pleco like a bristlenose pleco who will pretty much always eat the algae, some otos who do wonders in eating algae, or you can just clean everything off every week.

 

[auxout]

Here is some algae info that is pretty good. I used to get this brown gunk that would grow on rocks, glass, and decorations. I think it was because I fed my fish too much and didn't do enough water changes. My new tank so far has been crystal clear with no brown junk. From the reading I think it was the brown algae however it wasn't on a fresh tank and definetly didn't dissapear by itself.

http://www.aquaticscape.com/information/algae/algae.htm
http://www.dupla.com/e025.htm
http://www.vectrapoint.com/main/manual/bm36.html
http://www.drhelm.com/aquarium/algae.html

 

[FishBait]

Not a disease at all. Just an algae growth. As suggested you could simply clean your decorations every so often. If this has not been a problem before, then may be experiencing elevated nutrient levels. Obviously take car of the usual like cleaning the filters and gravel, making sure not to overfeed, and doing water changes. However, another possible cause that often gets overlooked in older tanks is the size of your fish. Depending on what species you keep and how big they have gotten, the larger sizes and subsequent apetites could be responsible for added organics that are serving as "algae food."