Re Plants With Brown Stuff On

Hi
My plants are developing a brown slime on. Even the anubias I've had since June . Don't know what to do . I fertilise the plants , have the lights on all day they never seem happy !
Ally

Since I converted over from silk plants to live plants, I've also got this. I bought a toothbrush specifically for the fish - or, more precisely, the fishtank. The anubias' leaves are thick enough to tolerate one brush of each leaf during the weekly water change but the pennywort struggled to tolerate brushing it off ie it disintegrated. I also brush the leaves of the silk plants with the toothbrush as they're now covered in this too.

I'm trying to reduce the time the lighting is on for, to see if that makes a difference - this week's aim is to reduce them to being on for 8 hours (rather than 10), so I'll let you know if that's the "magic figure" or not for keeping the algae at bay, although it will depend on the actual lighting - ie it may involve some experimentation to find out what number of hours is optimum for keeping the plants alive but not getting too much algae.

Just to confirm that I do have fish in my tank but no algae eating fish or invertebrates.

I'd recommend reducing lighting to 10 hours.  Also:

Having just posted in your other thread I can now maybe see the problem...

Firstly in answer to your question regarding how often to do a thorough clean.. never!.  I do a thorough clean of a quarter of the tank each week and a general clean on the rest while I'm there. This way I don't have to risk removing items and deep cleaning then which can remove beneficial bacterial from the tank (similar to those in your filter) on these surfaces.  Also I just read:

Quote

Planting substrates are mainly designed to trap and slowly release nutrients to plant roots, and often come pre-loaded with food — that means ammonia. The moment you start trying to rake through them, you release those nutrients into the water column, and that in turn will lead to an outbreak of algae. http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/features/articles/2016/10/13/how-clean-is-your-bottom

Now to combine the threads and answer your question on algae... I would reduce your fertiliser dose simply because a lot of your plants are relatively slow growing, and your substrate is a source of nutrients and/or possibly releasing some into the water already making it easy to overdose in such a small volume of water.  This should help limit algae growth.

This is very dependent on the dosing instructions for your specific fertiliser and your tank volume though I'd recommend amending your tank volume down a bit based on the fact that you need to limit the algae growth as this will obviously result in lower dosing levels.  You might wish to use the dosing rate for a 15 litre tank for example or stop dosing all together and add it back in small increments until you find the right level for the plants without causing algae growth.

All very good points, should you wish, you can also do a split lighting period with a 2 hour siesta so you see more of your fish in the evening and so CO2 can build back up again midday.

Go for an 8 hour lighting period split into 2 4 hour sections with as much gap as you like. Timings up to you dependent on when you are likely to be around to see the fish, time the lights to be on for that time.  I'll be honest I've never done this myself... thats the theory though!