Some red stuff in tank!!! Help me :(

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Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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eccen
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Some red stuff in tank!!! Help me :(

Post by eccen »

Two days ago I noticed there are some red/brown stuff on my plastic plants and tank glass. I tried to figure out what they are but no luck. Here are some pictures

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Are these some sort of fungus? Any suggestion to get rid of them? (I don't want to replace all the plants I have :?) Would aggressive water change help?

Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0.3ppm
pH: 8.3
Salinity: 0.010
Temp: 80F

Water is pretty hard...

There is only 1 baby(1'') GSP residing in the 30g tank. He still seems healthy and well but the red stuff is freaking me out.
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Rocker
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Post by Rocker »

A simple wipe should get rid of the brown. They are diatoms that most simply call brown algae. Common in new set ups.
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Phaedrus
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Post by Phaedrus »

How often and how much water do you change?
How long has the tank been setup?

The brown spots are diabolical diatoms. Nothing to worry about. Completely harmless, just kind of ugly. You can clean them off, but if you leave them be they will eventually (usually) exhaust themselves and disappear.

I'm more worried about your nitrite reading. Is that the lowest reading of your test kit?

What is your ammonia reading?
eccen
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Post by eccen »

Phaedrus wrote:How often and how much water do you change?
How long has the tank been setup?

The brown spots are diabolical diatoms. Nothing to worry about. Completely harmless, just kind of ugly. You can clean them off, but if you leave them be they will eventually (usually) exhaust themselves and disappear.

I'm more worried about your nitrite reading. Is that the lowest reading of your test kit?

What is your ammonia reading?
Ah sorry I mixed up the readings.
Nitrate is 5 and Nitrite is 0. :oops:

I set up the tank 4 months ago and has been doing 4g water change every 7~10 days.

It is good to hear that they are nothing serious. What a relief. Thanks a lot. :grats:
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Post by Dinsdale »

You could consider doing changes weekly, and not waiting longer than that. That would likely keep algae from popping up. What do you have in this tank? You could do a larger water change than 10%.
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Post by eccen »

Dinsdale wrote:You could consider doing changes weekly, and not waiting longer than that. That would likely keep algae from popping up. What do you have in this tank? You could do a larger water change than 10%.
1 baby GSP and thats it. Other than that, bunch of plastic plants and 3 rocks. and yeah, I think I'm gonna do like 20% water change for next couple weeks or so. I hate these brown stuff
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Post by Pufferpunk »

Very typical for a newish tank.
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Post by shine_on »

Yeah, I got the same thing in my 40 gallon shortly after setup. I just took the plants out and wiped them down, did a water change, and put them back in. Haven't had any problems since :).
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Post by Apocalyptictoast »

I had that in a guppy tank once. They loved it. Totally cleaned the tank out of it.
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Post by Phaedrus »

oto's love it too.
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