Brown Algae?

[HomerJ]

Hi all:

I have a 10 gallon tank with 2 goldfish that has finished cycling, I think anyway.  Readings have been stable for the past week and are as follows (to the best of what someone colorblind can do when comparing the drop tests to the reference card!):

• Ammonia: 0
• Nitrite: 0
• Nitrate: ~2ppm
• PH: 7.4
  

This past week, there has been quite a bit of what I think is brown algae growing on the decorations, and slowly on the substrate at the bottom.  Just wondering if there's something I can do, if it's futile to scrub everything and if it will eventually go away?

I have searched, but there's a lot of different info.  Some places say brown algae is not impacted by light, some other places recommend reducing lighting, not too sure what to think!

I've been doing regular water changes (10-15%) weekly, vacuuming the substrate weekly (1/2 of it), feeding lightly twice a day (I use pellets and put them in slowly until they stop madly dashing for them, about 5-10 each I'd say).  I have my lights on a timer for about 15 minutes in the morning when I feed the fish, and after that from 3pm-10pm, which is not exaggerated I think.

Here are pics (P.S. The decorations were picked by the kids, not me!)

[Fishnut]

Algae is part of having an aquarium.  In your case, you have plastic plants so the chances of algae are increased because there's no competition for nutrients from other live plants in your tank.

Make a habit of scrubbing the algae off the plastic plants and other decorations every time you do you water change.  If you're doing a water change every week, it shouldn't get out of hand.

[ciaus]

Feeding in a ten gallon tank twice a day, is too much for only two gold fish.  Reduce feeding; to once a day, ncrease water changes, and reduce light to the the tank...If you are getting substantial muck from the gravel, at your current rate of water change/gravel cleaning, then you are definitely overfeeding.  You might try an algae eater, but ten gallons pretty is small to support much more of a bio-load than what you already have...
As a suggestion, take a sample of water to your LFS and let them test....once you know what the colors should be then you can eliminate misreading the tests as a problem too.  Once you have a set of water conditions that are known based on an LFS store, use your test strips, at home, and take a good quality picture of them.  Use those pics as a baseline to caompare against in the future, so you dont have to guess on the amount of change that will eventually occur...


HTH

Ciaus

[dpatte]

Your brown algae is actually not algae at all, but diatoms. This is common in newly setup tanks, and will pass eventually. Until then just rub it off and do water changes weekly.

If your fish are eating all their food in 5 minutes/meal, feeding twice daily is fine.

[HomerJ]

Wow, thanks all for the replies.  From most of the replies, looks like I'm feeding too much.  I think this is the hardest thing to grasp for newbies, it seems so little!  But, inline with dpatte's comment, I doubt they even eat for 5 minutes when I feed them.  The literally splash the water like piranhas for 10-15 seconds, then niblle a bit for maybe a minute.  Anything else just seems to drop to the bottom so I stop feeding then.

I'll try to feed only once a day and see what happens.  In the meantime... looks like I'll put these "free" toothbrushes I get when I go see the dentist to good use!  Scrub scrub scrub!

Thanks all for your comments.

[magnosis]

I used to keep 2 fancytail goldfish in a 10 gallon tank.

I then realized the tank was way too small (well.. the fish got to about 6-7 in, then one died out of bladder flipping / whatever the name for when the body stops growing but the internals keep going)

They are not inhabiting a 60g.

Still, in the 10g tank, I noticed huge improvements in water quality and amount of waste whence I started feeding every 18 hours (morning day 1, evening day 2, none day 3, morning day 4, etc)

Some people advised to feed once a day, others advice every two days.  I went in the middle.  Everyone was happy