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For the last month or so I've been getting brown stuff on the leaves of my plants. Here is a pic. It comes off pretty easily, but is back the next day.


http://client.webshots.com/photo/398444348/398445560fpeihy




Last edited by bensaf at 19-Jul-2005 10:18

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looks to me like you may be overfeeding a little

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

Moondog, thanks for the response, but I feed so little as is, Anything else you could think of. It kinda sticks to the leaves, but rubs right off.

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I get that once in a while. It happens when I stir up my flourite when I'm adding plants or taking them out. the flourite dust and other fish waste will settle on leaves, then (I think) algae will grow from the nutrients there. At least that is my experience.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Matty, How do you get rid of it. A large vacuum and water change. This stuff just keeps coming back

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I'd try to stir up the gravel as little as possible. If you have a bunch of fast growing plants that use up your nitrates I wouldn't even worry about vacing out the gravel as it will just pull up more dust/fish waste and that will in turn cause more algae on the leaves. I'd wipe it off, rinse out your filter (try not to damage your bacterial colonies!) and repeat until you don't see it anymore. If you feel you HAVE to do a gravel vac, try to disturb the substrate as little as possible. This works well in my experence.

Another thing you can do is to check and make sure all your water parameters are in balance with each other. The above is my recomendation if you have a good balance. IME local "pockets" of high iron or whatever from my flourite can cause a very confined algae outbreak on the leaves which looks like your picture. If the nutrients are not balanced algae can come from a lack or an excess of different nutrients. I'd check that as well.

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Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

Thanks Matty. Are you pretty sure that's what it is. By the way I have 100% eco-complete substrate.



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