# A Short Brown Story



## TankAaron (Aug 8, 2014)

A few weeks ago, I was having trouble with brown algae. Even though it turned out to be not as bad as I had thought, it was still bad. Eventually I happened to find the thread on algae, and organic pollution.

So today I replanted the few stems I have left of Alt. R. I started out with over 120 stems that were in really bad shape. But I got them all for fifty cents; I will not complain about that. I now only have a few over twenty stems left.

Since I had picked out most of the dead leaves, and stems as they began to die off, I figured I had gotten most of them. What ever I didn't pick out with tweezers, or by hand, I got out during water changes. Yesterday, while moving the substrate around, I noticed a huge chunk of dead roots. Today while I was replanting, I moved a LOT of substrate around. Guess what! A LOT of decaying chunks of roots from the Alt. R. were still there.

I fanned the water with my hand to get as much of it out. There were dead roots floating EVERYWHERE! I didn't panic, since today is one of my water change days. I remembered to use Prime, again. I only use RO water, but, since I bought it by mistake, I've been using it to help protect my new shrimp from any of my mistakes. After seeing the horror of all the floating organic matter, I was sure not to forget dosing Prime.

I hope this was the reason why my nitrates kept going up so fast. If this is the case, I hope to see quite a change, at least after the next water change. Even though I do 30% water changes each time, the flow rate of the hose I use never seems to give me enough time to suck out everything I want to get out. But if I got a smaller diameter hose, it would probably not suck enough out anyway.

Anyway, one thing I learned is that when I see a dying plant, from now on I will not only pull out the stem, I will also check for any roots it may leave behind.


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## TankAaron (Aug 8, 2014)

Hmm... Idea!

I'm thinking of stirring up the water, and cleaning up the intake sponge daily. Since the sponge is not my main biological filtration, I just use it to filter out large particles so they won't get in the filter, I don't see it affecting the the cycle enough to be a concern. The mix of stirring up the substrate, AND cleaning the filter... that may be.

Thoughts?


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## anubias6439 (Sep 7, 2010)

TankAaron said:


> Hmm... Idea!
> 
> I'm thinking of stirring up the water, and cleaning up the intake sponge daily. Since the sponge is not my main biological filtration, I just use it to filter out large particles so they won't get in the filter, I don't see it affecting the the cycle enough to be a concern. The mix of stirring up the substrate, AND cleaning the filter... that may be.
> 
> Thoughts?


Is the tank being cycled now?

How is everything now?


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## TankAaron (Aug 8, 2014)

The tank had cycled several weeks ago. I lost track; maybe two months ago. The brown algae was gone within a week. I imagine it was because of the substrate I moved around.

I plan on doing that to give the shrimp something different to eat, from time to time. I figure I can do small portion of the substrate once a month.


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## serenityfate1 (Sep 4, 2014)

Hated changing substrate or moving substrate around, once there are debris always need to change water to prevent even the slightest algae outbreak..

They need to make something to change water easier lol


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