Keeping myrio dust free?

[gogomarigo]

How do you keep feathery plants like myriophyllum dust free?

I keep getting light brown dust (I’m guessing from the substrate?) on the leaves. It just feels like biofilm when I rub it off, not like diatoms. Maybe it’s just a type of algae...? I use Fluval stratum.

I have three Amano shrimp, 6 blue velvet shrimp, a nerite snail, and 7 Pygmy corydoras. The shrimp aren’t adult sized yet and they tend to eat some of the food I feed to my Corys. I was thinking of getting 10 more blue velvets but more so to build up a colony rather than the goal to address the dust issue.

It’s a 10 gallon tank with a nano sponge filter from the co-op.

I have a Chihiros C2 at 60% on a timer for 10 hours a day so I’m wondering if I should up my fertilizer. My nitrates have been between 5 - 10ppm. I was using NilocG Shrimp formula but recently switched to Easy Green. I’ve been doing a water change the rare times it reaches 20ppm but I’m wondering if I should leave it until it reads over 20ppm...? I’m concerned that’d be toxic for my livestock though.

This is a photo where I tried to rub most of the dust off but there is still some on the edges of the leaves.

[gogomarigo]

Also, the taller stems keep leaning sideways so I’m wondering if the light is too intense

[Daniel]

Here is what Myriophyllum looks like in the wild. This was a ditch full  Myrio in early October 2020 in eastern North Carolina. Notice that the it leans sideways naturally. You can see the stems in the red circle as the plants are growing sideways:

The reason this Myrio it is dust free is because this ditch has very poor quality sandy soil so there are very little nutrients which results in very few particles in the ditch water.

 

[Fonske]

17 hours ago, gogomarigo said:

How do you keep feathery plants like myriophyllum dust free?

There is a park near me with calm ponds full of myriophyllum which is covered with silt and does not look very good. However, there is just one special bush of myrio that is emerald green, very dense and awesome-looking. It grows right in front of the opening of the huge pipe that pumps clean water into all the ponds. The substrate there is just rocks and sand. So yes, very clean water seems to be the key for dust-free myriophyllum.