Question: Brown Algae

Help, please! I've done some quick research and i believe this is brown algae that has bloomed practically overnight. I've removed my axie and am about to give the tank a REAL good clean, but I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for prevention? And maybe any ideas as to where it came from? Thanks in advance!

Looks like diatoms. How new is the tank? Those rocks also don't really look axolotl friendly...


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Thank you! The tank is at least 2 years old now... Also, those rocks are much larger than they appear in the photo, no worries - I've read that they can choke on anything smaller than their head, so I've steered away from small ones. I did try sand for a bit but it made the tank get yucky very quickly, so I ultimately decided to go with larger rocks. If you have any substrate suggestions though that would be great

Okay good! that gives some scale to the picture too.

Two years is a pretty established tank so the culprits are either high mineral content in your water (doubtful if this is only just appearing now), too much light, or high nitrates. while diatoms look ugly they won't do too much harm to axolotls. Try water changes to bring nitrates down and maybe keeping the lights away.

What kind of lighting do you have? Have you tested nitrates? How often do you change water and how much? Do you have live plants in the tank?

A lot of wastes can accumulate between the rocks unless you clean them well often. Even if your cycle can take care of the ammonia and nitrites caused by the dirt, nitrates can get very high which can easily lead to algae blooms.
Brown algae also thrives in low/bad light conditions. In low light conditions plants grow slower which leaves more nutrients for the brown algae to use. Brown algae can also benefit from "bad light", meaning there are wave lengths that plants aren't able to use, but algae has no problem with it. If your light pulps are old then it might be time to get new ones.
Third thing that causes brown algae blooms is that there might be too much phosphates or silicates in your water. But if this just appeared now, then it's probably because of the other things.

I'd suggest cleaning out all the algae you can, cleaning the tank (but be careful not to crash your cycle), getting some fast growing plants, testing the water often and making sure the nitrates stay at around 20 ppm max.

Thanks so much for the tips! He gets a pretty regular water change, and the light bulbs are new. I'll go get a plant or two for his tank too. Anything I should avoid?

Any plants that can grow in the colder temperatures and lower light conditions would be good. I have different kinds of java fern and anubias, java moss, moss balls and some other stuff in my tank. Especially java fern seems to be growing like crazy.