Brown Stuff

by **2tall** on Mon May 02, 2011 6:56 pm

Can anybody tell me what the brown stuff is when doing the fishless cycle. Its happened twice to me.

by **KalandraJane** on Fri May 06, 2011 1:12 am

Probably a kind of algae bloom as there are nitrates being produced if the cycle is working, but no plants to absorb it and it will not all be removed by water changes. You can try to remove as much as possible, or pop a moss ball into the tank to soak up some of the nitrates leaving less for opportunistic algae!

by **2tall** on Fri May 06, 2011 1:21 am

Thats what it from as the tank finally cycled not long ago. No money for moss
balls ATM but have added a small bit of frog bit earlier today.

by **Irish_Lass** on Fri May 06, 2011 7:21 pm

KJ - I have an algae problem in my 6g. I've tried the moss balls thing and it didn't work??? Anything else I could try or any other reason for it? Its get bad real quick.

by **KalandraJane** on Sat May 07, 2011 6:55 pm

Well, algae blooms because there's light and nitrates available, and not enough plants there to outcompete it for these resources. In my experience a well planted tank will barely ever get algae, so my advice is add some plants which give greater cover and break up the light reaching glass, surfaces etc. frogbit is also good if you don't want plants in the substrate as it does both.

One of my tanks is having a bit of an algae fest at the moment, I hate scraping it off and the plants in my local fish shops have been rubbish for months! Just waiting for the ones in my boyfriend's tank to produce enough offshoots so I can nick some Smile

Brown Stuff

Brown Stuff

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