Trying to grow algae with Thrive C

So I am trying to grow algae, I put some tank water and a squirt of thrive c in a glass jar and it’s been under a grow light for a week and a half and on the bottom there is brown stuff, it kinda does but doesn’t look like brown algae, but it’s just in the bottom of the jar and moves within the water, it’s not stuck to the glass at all, is it algae? Or something else?

 

Put a jar of dirty water in sunlight put fish food in it and dying plants

 

Put a jar of dirty water in sunlight put fish food in it and dying plants

I would also put something in there for the algae to grow on other than just the walls of the glass.

 

Some sort of water movement would also help - Think thread algae or BBA growing on filter outlets.

 

If you need biofilm get Chloris driftwood On amazon and don’t rinse it I was a noob and didn’t rinse it now I have infinite biofilm

 

Lol when you don't want to grow algae, you have an algae problem. When you do want to grow algae, you can't. Wonder why it works that that?

One thing that I do know about algae is that it does not grow due to phosphates as we first thought, but rather ammonia. Add things like fish food, dead plant matter, and other contributors to ammonia and you should be fine! But make sure not to add too many nutrients or else it will kill the algae (i.e. don't add fertilizers)! What I did was set a small 1 gallon container on my windowsill. I honestly just used old tank water from the Goldfish aquarium and, in the span of only a few days, algae! Now, this aquarium does not have a lot of ammonia. In fact, since it's a Walstad, a very large aquarium, and is lightly stocked, ammonia levels are extremely low. However, we all know how Goldfish are, so I guess ammonia was pretty easy to find I'm my algae container! Anyway, once the algae was grown significantly, I take it out with a toothpick, place it into the dehydrator, let it dry out completely, then blitz it into a powder! I then add it into the fishies' gel food diets and, voici! It works wonders!