I want to know how yo get rid of the brown algae in my 20 gallon long tank. I was told its normal, but how do I prevent the ugly stuff.

If its a new tank just wait. It will die off as your tank matures. Try feeding a little less in the mean time.

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29g Tall FW: Many Swordtails: 1 lemon, 6-8 neon/pineapple, 1 Gold Tuxedo, ? fry; 1 Clown Pleco; 3 Otocinclus Cats, and MTS.
Planted: Amazon Swords.

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Brown Algae in a SW tank is usually Diatoms. This is caused by too much light and/or too many nutrients (Phosphate, Nitrate, and Silicon). Reduce your light duration by 50% and make 20-30% water changes with clean, nutrient free water. Make these water changes every 5-7 days and see what happens. Keep lots of aeriation and filtration going to avoid Algae die off killing your fish. Test your tap water to see if it has nutrients in it. This is very common in the USA if you have Agricultural or Urban areas upstrem of you water source.

Try purchasing some Otos. We were told when we had our huge brown algae outbreak that they are one of the best to keep it under control. We did alot to keep it from spreading but it didnt work, and let me tell you those little guys do a great job. Also, try keeping your lights off longer. Algae likes alot of light. Not sure how long you keep your lights on, but We use to do 12 hours on,and 12 off. Now we dont turn them on until we get home from work in the evening when its dinner time. then we turn them off before we go to bed. As long as there is some ambient light in the room they dont really care if their light is on. Its more for our enjoyment then theirs :-)

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Ditto on the Ottos. Wipes out my brown problems. Got two in a 30g.

I was told earlier algae is like a plant that needs light and nutrition to grow. cut back on these and you should see it go away....