Brown algae, and tap water at 2ppm...

[Sweet Sharon]

Hi.  My tank has been cycled for almost a year, yet the brown algae always comes back.  It's not so hard to clean up on the glass, but I've spent a lot of money on plants, and a lot of time buying oto's and watching them die one by one.  I checked my phosphate levels recently, and they are very high in the tap water and the tank water.  I bought Seachem  phosguard, and added it as recommended, in the filters, and that was two weeks ago.  I do substrate cleaning once a week when I clean the glass,(leaving one side of glass with algae on it for the oto's).  I just want to know if I'm on the right track.  And is there a good way to manually clean the plants without harming them?

[Guppysnail]

I’m not a plant nutrient specialist but plants need phosphate so the phosguard may not be the way to go. I have live with brown diatom for 20+ years in my home water. I switched to bottled for a few weeks to make sure it was not my doing and it went away. Back to tap back came the diatoms. I added UV and that helped a lot but some still remained.  I combat it using nerites bladder snails and shrimp. Increased flow helps me a bit. After adding my plecos babies to each tank it “vanished”. Wiping anything inside the tank does not help it just settles on other things it’s actually an organism not a true algae from my understanding. I remove my plants and wipe with a paper towel then put them back in. Sorry this isn’t more helpful but at least you know you are not alone. 😁

[Sweet Sharon]

Thanks.  So basically you added plecos to solve the problem?  You must have a big tank!  There are so many different opinions and information out there.  I did add a golden algae eater last week, and she's quite efficient, and pretty to boot.  When you said you added UV, was that inside a filter?

[Guppysnail]

On 2/10/2022 at 2:09 PM, Sweet Sharon said:

Thanks.  So basically you added plecos to solve the problem?  You must have a big tank!  There are so many different opinions and information out there.  I did add a golden algae eater last week, and she's quite efficient, and pretty to boot.  When you said you added UV, was that inside a filter?

I did not intentionally add BN pleco. Mine had a heard of babies so for awhile they even fit in my 10 gallon tanks 😁. Now they are grown and diatom back. I used green killing machines inside tanks some I used inline uv which are more of a pain to change than they are worth. I also used one gkm hob clip on uv. It does not rid the surfaces but as I removed plants to remove it and continuously wiped lass a good bit of it must have gone through the uv because it never came back with a vengeance the way it used to.