Now, I always liked brown algea on stones etc. but it is now attacking my
plants. Someone told me to do a partly refreshment of the water with
rain-water. Any ideas about this?

__________________

in my opinion, you can change the water till the fish come home, that wont take care of the alge. do you have anything that eats alge? if you can get one i would. you know how i feel about chemicals(everyone knows how i feel about them) but it might be an inbalance in the water causng the alge, not the fish. there are all kinds of chems. from 'jungle' that takes care of a lot of problems. however, once you medicade your tank, you could lose fish. ive never had that happen with 'jungle' but there is always a chance. my bala had the white fungi on one of his eyes and the only way i found to get rid of it was the fungus clear from jungle. it turns the water a beautiful emerald green, and within 3 days his eye cleared up.( the green color looks great with the flo. lights.) sorry moment.. i will look it up in a book i have and will let you know what i find.

__________________
red sky at morning, sailor take warning. red sky at night, sailors delight.

Brown algae are hard to control because not many things eat it . Plecos will keep it at bay as they feed on the bacteria slime . If you have brown algae it is a good idea to step up your water change regime . Note that frequent weekly and /or bi -weekly changes are far better than monthly changes . In fact , changing the water very very often keeps the parameters stable . If you wait a whole month , there will be fewer nutrients for plants and Ph may fluctuate wildly .
Rain water is not a good idea at all . It is void of mineral salts and will not support your plants and other inhabitants. It can be used temporarily to induce spawning but the ph can plummit without the buffering of minerals .

I hav'nt used any chemicals in five years . No carbon , no anything. Just good old fashioned water changes .

thats my bad. i had an alge eater that ate all kinds of alge. i read that the water changing didnt work...maybe i need an updated book! i hate to medicade my tank. i think ive done it maybe 2 times in 6 yrs. so dutchman that was my bad!

__________________
red sky at morning, sailor take warning. red sky at night, sailors delight.

Supposedly , siamese algae eaters will or flying foxes. My experience has been that they do a very poor job and prefer fish food.

Thanks for the advice, i will give it a try with more water changes and see
what happens. I'll keep in touch.

Ron

__________________

Ron does sunlight hit the tank?

__________________

No it doesn't, when I had cychlids in the tank it was nice in balance, the
algea where there but I liked the look. Now they are growing like hell,
that is nice on my coconut but not on the plants

Ron

__________________

Today I did the job, i scrapped algea from the windows, from the rock,
from the coconut, from the piece of wood. I cleaned the plants as far as
possible, i refreshed half of the water.
Tomorrow I will buy a few more plants, to replace the ones who died.

I hope this will help, I keep you all informed.

__________________

Yea, a good water change will lower the nutrient concentration, that should help.
How many hours are your lights on, whats your photocycle?

__________________

I have them on for 12 hours, is this okay you think? Maybe I just need some
fast growing plants to beat the algea.

__________________