brown algae,small bubbles

[marcingo]

Originally Posted by P R Wildwood

i notice a brown algae forming on sand and rocks ..the algae stuff in now letting small bubble from it how do i control this .. any help would be great

About 2 months ago 2 weeks after I started my tank I ran my lights a little too long because the switch didnt turn them off. Anyway I started to get copper colored sand then it turned brown then I got those same small bubbles and the brown algae as you did. Sometimes the bubbles would leave the algae and go to the surface. Also the layer of algae was aweful- covered everything and kinda looked like the skin on cooking milk.

To get rid of it I shut off my lights for 48 hrs and left the tank in darkness- even cover it with towels if you get indirect or direct sunlight. I also did not feed the tank for 48 hrs. After the 48 hrs it seemed alot of the stuff went away. Also after this time period I did like a 30 percent water change. Then when I turned my lights back on I only kept them on 4- maximum 6 hrs a day. In less then a week most of it was gone. Also when I had a little of this stuff left I bought a blue cheek goby I think its called which sifts the sand and got rid of the rest of the stuff by just breaking it apart.

When I was trying to figure out what the bubbles were I read somewhere its just gas the algae or whatever that brown stuff is is releasing.

Just a note. I have heard of lots of people who decided to disturb something on their sandbed by hand and it crashed their tanks so I would not recommend directly removing this stuff by hand just to be on the safe side. If you do what I recommended the stuff should be gone in 1-2 weeks. But you never know this was just my personal experience.