The Puffer Forum

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











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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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%.

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

Very typical for a newish tank.

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 .

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

oto's love it too.