New lighting and algae

lovemybarbs

lovemybarbs

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Dec 23, 2006
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I upgraded my lighting last weekend to 130 watts over my 55 gallon.

I'm getting algae on my glass, which I can scrape off, but I'm also getting brown colored algae on my anubias plants, which looks pretty bad already.

I wasn't adding ferts, but I remember someone saying adding ferts at this stage would help with the algae.

I added flourish this morning.
 
You need to keep check on your nitrates, and your phosphates. With your new lighting, your plants could be using these up. If nitrates fall to 0 it can cause some problems. You are also going to need a source of carbon. If I remember right, you didn't want to add co2, so you are probably going to have to go with Flourish Excel. The Excel will help keep algae under control by itself, but you are also going to have to keep tab on your nitrates, phospates, and you will need to add some source of Potassium also. Read Rex's Guide:

http://www.rexgrigg.com/
 
Also, how long has your tank been set up? If it is reletavely new, then the brown algae may be diatoms. They will go away themselves eventually, but there is not any way to get rid of it, besides algae eaters(are your otto's eating it?). Could you get a picture of it?
 
My tank has been set up for almost two years. I've had diatoms before. This just fired up this week since the lights. I thought this might happen.

I have a liquid test kit, but it doesn't include those.

I'll do a big water change today and look into a test kit and ferts this week. There's a good LFS near my work.

The ottos and clown pleco have their work cut out for them.
 
Now I'm wondering if it was existing algae turning brown, because I don't see any algae on the new gravel I just added or the new growth.

I'm charging my batteries. I'll post a pic later.
 
The algae on the white gravel looks more green to me and the algae on the plants looks brown, so I guess it could be green algae. I scraped the glass and it looks much better now. :grinyes:
 
I had the same thing happen to my planted 20long when I added new lights. A Hagen CO2 system worked really well for me, and is pretty easy to take care of. I use a Dobie brand sponge (it's chemical free and has a bit of "roughness" to get at the algae) from the grocery store to clean teh anubias when the algae makes an appearance. I also cut my light time by an hour. Good luck!!!!
 
I've found that any time I make a change to just about anything (light, ferts, stocking levels, CO2), my tank needs time to adjust. After I got rid of my DIY CO2 about a month ago, I had what I thought was brown algae show up suddenly. (I had also not kept up with weekly water changes). I thought it was odd since the tank had been up and running for months. Alas, it turned out to be BBA (it turned from brown to fuzzy red/black over the course of a week and started covering the tank). I started dosing Excel daily, tweaked my fertilization regimen to improve plant growth, got rid of all the disintegrating and BBA-covered plants, removed and treated the driftwood with full-strength Excel and hydrogen peroxide to kill the BBA, added more healthy plants, added two bristlenose plecos and got religious about weekly 50% water changes, and I no longer have a problem.

With the light you've added, I would guess you'll need either pressurized CO2 or daily Excel dosing in addition to your plecos and ottos to keep it at bay.
 
If I added CO2 it wouldn't be some do it yourself thrown together thing. I don't want to buy some sort of contraption and it end up being the wrong thing. I'm really good at buying something and then getting advice that I bought the wrong thing again.

So am I reading this right that I would be going through a bottle of excel a week with a 55 gallon?
 
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