What are these brown spots on my aquarium and decorations?

Question

I've recently noticed these light brown spots on the sides of my aquarium and on my fake rock setup. What is it and how can I get rid of it?

Hopefully its nothing serious...

Its a 10 gallon with:
2 dwarf gouramis
2 neon tetras
3 cory cats

Equipment includes:
20 gallon power filter
Heater
air pump

Answer 1

The brown stuff you see growing is bacteria and algae. They are feeding and growing rapidly on something in your aquarium water. In this way they are a sign that there is probably too much dissolved waste in your water. Here are some recommendations.
Change 20% of the water once each day and see if this helps, by that I mean do the "brown spots" grow more slowly or even disappear. Click here for more about changing water.

A filter with a BIO-Wheel will help, because the beneficial bacteria living on the BIO-Wheel will digest most of the waste from the water and improve the water quality.

I am also wondering how much gravel you have. If you have a layer of gravel more than 1/4" thick, then you should be washing your gravel and removing it, until you get down to 1/4" or less.

I also wonder if you have any suspicious rocks in your aquarium. Some rocks contain minerals, like various forms of iron, that will often cause various types of bacteria and algae to grow more rapidly.

~ GG

Answer 2

As everybody else said, it's algae. Since algae is so much fun to deal with, you are going to want to get rid of it ASAP. This entire process will take about a week... start by doing a gravel vacuuming daily (don't remove more than 15% of the water per vacuuming). During the week, keep your tank away from any light (no hood light, no sunlight, no ambient light) and feed the fish half as much food as normal.

The goal of this is to starve the algae. By removing its light and food, it will not be able to support itself, and it will die. After this, you can just scrape all the dead algae off... Email me if you have any more questions...

Nosoop4u

GuppyGuy, do you always just copy information from a website and say that it's yours?

Also, most Plecos will not eat brown algae, and algae destroying chemicals mess with your water... I would avoid them if you want your tank to stay balanced...

Answer 3

most likely algae. this type happens alot in newer tanks. catfish don't really eat it, you'll just have to scrub it off. make sure you tank isn't in the sun, and it will eventually go away.

Answer 4

its algae growing you either need alge destroyer from your local fish store or get your self an alge eater like a plecko or something of that nature. in a week after i add an algae eater to my tank it was pretty cleared up.