My white gravel

[freshwaterfishlover]

What to do, my white gravel is turning brown.

[Fishguy2727]

If it is a community tank go with ottos, they will eat brown algae.

[CJ1]

Do you vacuum your gravel weekly while doing water changes? If you do, gravel will stay clean.

[freshwaterfishlover]

I do a Gravel stir up water change every other week. I made the cardinal mistake about Alge. I put the tank next to a window. The other 2 tanks are ok because they are away from the window.

[Lady Hobbs]

Depends on how many fish are in the tank but I vac my gravel weekly. I hope you don't mean you stir up all that nasty gravel and the fish are having to tolerate that. If you use a gravel vac there's no reason to "stir" the gravel at all. Sounds as you know what your problem stems from.....the window. Gotta cover that window.

[freshwaterfishlover]

Yes I do a Vaccum Gravel water change. It took me a week to figure out it was the window.Today I was looking at the tank and it popped in my head it was the window. Now I covered it up.

[Lady Hobbs]

That will help for sure. I get sun in my front window that hits two tanks so I hung a sheet up last summer. I kept complaining that the sun doesn't shine but I couldn't see it if it did. :)

[kimmers318]

Another option is to cover the back AND sides of the tank where any sunlight might hit. My dp tank is in front of a window that granted only gets a little direct light daily since it is under the front porch, but I just made the background longer, wrapped it around the sides and it is fine. I don't get anymore algae there than any other tanks.