Is this algae or just dying plants?

[musekul]

Hi there,

I am hoping that some one can tell me if the stuff growing on the attached pic plant leaves is algae, or if the plants are just dying? The tank is only 4 weeks old. It is 10 Gal US and I have a 15Watt BioGrow (??) bulb that is on 12 hours a day. I have 5 guppies and 1 borneo sucker in there also.

I am fertilising with NutraFin Plant Gro once a week (about 1/2 a capful) and am changing about 20% of the water 1 to 2 times per week.

From what I have found on the net, it may be that the tank is lacking Co2, in which case advice on how to overcome this problem without installing a Co2 system will be greatly appreciated. Would a few hours less of light each day help?

Cheers and thanks,
Sarah

[Shiv]

hi sarah,
ive had a similar problem with some of my potamogeton varieties. i solved it by introducing co2. if you dont want to add co2 try increasing the lighting to 40-50 watts. also try some other nutrient. whats the substrate you are using?

[|squee|]

They look to me to be brown algae, which is the easiest to deal with.

If you do not have CO2, pack the tank with plants and stop doing water changes, only top-ups of water evaporated. Feed your fish as normal (alternate day feeding) and dose the Nutrafin you have once a week.

The plants will still grow, but everything slows down to a snail crawl. The good news is, algae grows slowly too, and you have time to remove the algae that gets induced.

[PeterGwee]

hi sarah,
ive had a similar problem with some of my potamogeton varieties. i solved it by introducing co2. if you dont want to add co2 try increasing the lighting to 40-50 watts. also try some other nutrient. whats the substrate you are using?

If its a carbon issue, adding more light is going to make things worst. Stop doing the water changes as well as adding some nutrients would help the plants more. (Plants at elevated levels of CO2 have higher rubisco than plants at ambient levels of CO2. They allocate more of their resources to food production and storage rather than uptake enzymes. The opposite can be said for plants adapted to low CO2 levels.). Give them time to adapt is the key as well as planting in mass will help them dominate.

Regards
Peter Gwee

[Aarzoo]

Hi musekul when I started on my low tech 2ft tank after 3wks++ Ive had brown algae all over plants & tank that thicken very fast, initially I bought a common pleco and 2 siamese algae eater and within days my plants & tank looks like its just been planted but I must say that the pleco is the most hardworking fish then SAE. I still do have to scrape some tiniest spotted algae on the glass occasionally for clear view on my tank but other then that nothing that my 'great workers' cant handle.