Hi! Im new here and i figure now is good as any time to join up.......i have a problem/concern......i have a live planted tank with some tiger barbs and some rosey reds.......my concern is that recently(last week), one of my broad leafed plants and my enormous rock(both conveniently located under the filters output), have a brown fungus/mossy looking growth forming on it.....also its started to grow on the back wall of my tank also underneath the filter outflow......the plant is pok-a-dotted, the tank wall is blotched and the rock is gettting a good even spread of whatever it is.....Does anybody have any idea what it is? and how do i treat it? I check the ph, No2-, N03-, NH3/NH4+ once weekly and record my results and perform water changes when needed...i had 5 tiger barbs in the beginning and two of them died one week apart(maybe not related...just though i'd throw that in there!) and im not due up to change anything in my filter yet!

The fish dying is probably not related to the new plant life...
Can you get a pic for us to ID from?

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When did you set up the tank? Is it newly setup? How long it has been running? The black spots sound like black algae. It does spreads around the tank on anything that isn't moving like slow growing plants. Algae grows if there is a chemical unbalance, like if there is too much phosphate due to lack of or too little water changes, too many fish for the size of the tank, etc. If it is a fairly new setup, the fish could have died for the same reason the algae appeared, e.g. high ammonia, high nitrite, high nitrate or too much phosphate. There are other reasons too.

We really need more info in order to be able to diagnose it.

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GUPPY STRAINS I'M BREEDING:

Blue Grass
Blue Grass Swallow
Metal Blue Grass Swallow
Red Grass
Red Grass Swallow
Neon Blue Giessen/Ribbon
Japan Blue Blue Grass
Japan Blue Wild
Neon Blue

Strains I developed in my fish room:

HB Yellow (own line)
Platinum Pink Blue
HB Blue Leopard
HB Leopard Multi
HB Red Crowntail