What type of algae is this and how do I get rid of it?

[Mattlikesfish36]

I have some brown algae that has been showing up on my plants in my 17 gallon aquarium. It is brown and seems to appear quickly. It is easily rubbed off and will float into the water if I give plants a shake underwater. Any advice in getting rid of this would be much appreciated! Thanks 

[Kurt Brutting]

What is your water parameters and light schedule?

To much light and excess nutrients could be the culprit. 

[anitstuk]

I've got this algae in my tank and I think it's some sort of hair algae. Like mentioned earlier, cut down on light and excess nutrients. You could also manually remove it with a toothbrush, scraper or hydrogen peroxide.  

[Mattlikesfish36]

On 8/24/2022 at 8:28 PM, Kurt Brutting said:

What is your water parameters and light schedule?

To much light and excess nutrients could be the culprit. 

@Kurt Bruttingi have a twinstar 600e running at 50% power for 7 hours a day on a timer. Dosing EI fry ferts from Green Leaf Aquatics by their directions for dosage. Nitrates never go above 20 and I am doing weekly 50% water changes. Thanks for your reply!

[nabokovfan87]

I think you have 2-3 different algaes shown.

Green Brush, Black Brush, and potentially hair algaes as well.

[Kurt Brutting]

Maybe try smaller water changes. I was doing 50% water changes every week and I was getting a lot of hair algae. I cut back on the flow, light, and water changes and it did help a lot.

[Mike]

On 8/24/2022 at 5:36 PM, Mattlikesfish36 said:

@Kurt Bruttingi have a twinstar 600e running at 50% power for 7 hours a day on a timer. Dosing EI fry ferts from Green Leaf Aquatics by their directions for dosage. Nitrates never go above 20 and I am doing weekly 50% water changes. Thanks for your reply!

That’s a powerful light, are you injecting co2? If not, you may need to lower the light’s power. I run a Twinstar 450e at 20% power for 10 hours on an ADA 45p with passive co2. Anything beyond that and I start getting excessive algae issues. 
 

Also, summer temperatures tend to bring me more algae issues as well. In the summer, I schedule a couple hours of lights out during the peak time of the day just to reduce the energy going into the system. It seems to help with algae control. 

[Mattlikesfish36]

On 8/25/2022 at 7:07 PM, Mike said:

That’s a powerful light, are you injecting co2? If not, you may need to lower the light’s power. I run a Twinstar 450e at 20% power for 10 hours on an ADA 45p with passive co2. Anything beyond that and I start getting excessive algae issues. 
 

Also, summer temperatures tend to bring me more algae issues as well. In the summer, I schedule a couple hours of lights out during the peak time of the day just to reduce the energy going into the system. It seems to help with algae control. 

@Mikethanks for the reply. I am injecting co2 through an in-line diffusor. When I lower the light intensity or shorten the timing it seems like the plants growth gets stunted so that’s where I’m stuck on what to do

[Mike]

On 8/25/2022 at 4:34 PM, Mattlikesfish36 said:

@Mikethanks for the reply. I am injecting co2 through an in-line diffusor. When I lower the light intensity or shorten the timing it seems like the plants growth gets stunted so that’s where I’m stuck on what to do

Ah, then your EI dosing is probably too heavy for the biomass in your tank. The 50% weekly change isn’t removing enough excess nutrients and the plants aren’t grown in enough to take up most of what you’re adding. If this was my tank, I’d probably try cutting my EI dosing by a third or half for a couple weeks and dose a bit of glutaraldehyde (liquid carbon) on water change days to see if that has any affect on the algae growth. In the meantime you’ll need to maintain some manual removal of it to keep it in check. 

[Mattlikesfish36]

On 8/25/2022 at 7:55 PM, Mike said:

Ah, then your EI dosing is probably too heavy for the biomass in your tank. The 50% weekly change isn’t removing enough excess nutrients and the plants aren’t grown in enough to take up most of what you’re adding. If this was my tank, I’d probably try cutting my EI dosing by a third or half for a couple weeks and dose a bit of glutaraldehyde (liquid carbon) on water change days to see if that has any affect on the algae growth. In the meantime you’ll need to maintain some manual removal of it to keep it in check. 

Thanks for the suggestion, I appreciate it! I’ll try cutting the dose in half to see how it goes. @Mike

Edited August 26, 2022 by Mattlikesfish36

[Mattlikesfish36]

On 8/25/2022 at 7:01 PM, Kurt Brutting said:

Maybe try smaller water changes. I was doing 50% water changes every week and I was getting a lot of hair algae. I cut back on the flow, light, and water changes and it did help a lot.

@Kurt Bruttingthanks for the reply! That’s interesting because you would think that smaller water changes would leave more nutrients in the water leading to more algae. 

On 8/25/2022 at 6:07 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I think you have 2-3 different algaes shown.

Green Brush, Black Brush, and potentially hair algaes as well.

@nabokovfan87thanks for the reply! The BBA has been an ongoing issue on my driftwood and I think I have just come to accept it because it doesn’t seem to be spreading to my plants. I have had some success with spot treating it with excel but it always resurfaces 

[kshrbkn]

I was just going to post these this morning!  looks like we have the same issue.

i have a 29g tank, with a stingray 24" lamp, but it doesn't have variable power. on 9 hours a day.  been using tabs and easygreen.  with 30$% water changes every few weeks. water chem is fine, nitrates bit higher than co-op recommendation of 50.  more like 60-70 (seems in between the two tabs on the api master test kit chart).

[nabokovfan87]

On 8/26/2022 at 10:07 AM, Mattlikesfish36 said:

@nabokovfan87thanks for the reply! The BBA has been an ongoing issue on my driftwood and I think I have just come to accept it because it doesn’t seem to be spreading to my plants. I have had some success with spot treating it with excel but it always resurfaces 

I used a literal algae scraper on mine.  (Video in my journal for the enjoyment 😂 )

I wish you luck.  When it blooms, you might run into issues. I sure did.