Algae and plants recommendations?

[Baddog671]

I have a 20g tank with sand bottom and lightly planted. I have 2 amazon sword plants and a large amount of java moss attached to rocks. I have a Finnex Planted+ LED light at 7 hours a day and just decreased to 6 hours, a large Eheim canister filter, 1-2ml Flourish each day, Prime sometimes, keep it at 78F, and currently have 10 small fish. Ammonia/nitrites/nitrates always good...

First problem, I've been battling black beard and (to a lesser extent) green dust algae for a few months now. It gets bad, I do a deep cleaning on the tank, then it creeps back in and gets bad again. The green dust is pretty easy, I just make a few passes on the glass with a sponge. The BBA however is a pain since it likes to cling to my plants, rocks, filter, and heater. I just cleaned my tank and probably wont put the java moss back in since it is the largest host of BBA. It is also messy, my mollies eat it and leave green poop everywhere, and the roots seem to be failing because even though it is thulled to the rock, it is detaching all together in one big clump.

My swords were getting BBA pretty badly on the older shoots. They needed pruned anyways so I have like 6-8 medium shoots on each plant.

So, what should I do to reduce my algae, and also what are some nice plants I could look into with my setup. No messy stuff tho

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

How tall is the tank? I know there's 20g long tanks that are shallower. Depending on the height, you will have a difference in light intensity, or PAR. A lot of algae issues can be reduced or even eliminated by injecting CO2 and/or liquid carbon like excel. Look into spot treating the BBA with h2o2 with a syringe.

 

[Baddog671]

From substrate to water surface is 13.5"
Water surface to light source is another 2", plus I have a glass top on.

Here is the PAR for my 24"
3": 185
6": 117
9": 88
12": 61
15": 45

I watched some videos on Youtube about treating with Excel, so I am going to try that now and keep an eye on it. With my java moss out as well, my mollies are really focusing on cleaning up the swords. Hopefully they dont get eaten since they are currently the only plants in

 

[schoeplein]

Dosing with Flourish every day may be a bit much. Cut back to twice a week. Prime is also unnecessary once the tank is cycled/established. Have you tried a split light schedule? 3 hrs on, 2 hrs off, 3 hrs on? I know that does wonders for eliminating green algae...never personally dealt with bba. I've got my own white furry "algae" problem that no one knows about.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Aquarium Advice mobile app

 

[Baddog671]

Seachem recommends dosing every day or every other day, at 1ml/10g. So, my 1-2ml a day has been less than recommended, not excessive. For what I've read so far, reducing co2 seems like a bad idea...

Prime is not unnecessary if you use to it condition tap water. In my case, chloramine. We recently were required to switch from a community well to a municple water facility. Yum, city water

BBA is technically a red algae

 

[Baddog671]

Little update...

With my rocks and attached java moss gone, that removed the biggest amount of my BBA. Sad to see them go as I've been growing the moss for about 8 months, but the BBA was wrecking my tank.

When I removed my java moss I also did a vacuum job to clean the substrate and a 50% WC. The next day I did another 50% WC, cleaned the canister filter out, and then also let my hardware air dry to kill off any algae. (filter intake and output, heater, suction cups, etc.) I also pruned off all the old amazon sword shoots that were getting covered with BBA. This trimmed them down pretty heavily, but the younger shoots are much less covered.

Currently I am treating the tank with higher levels of liquid carbon, as I believe that was what caused the algae spike. 1-2ml a day was on the low end, and i missed days here and there. I bumped to 4ml a day, and recently 5ml a day which I will stick at for awhile.

My mollies are helping keep it at bay since they like to pick at everything. They remind me of chickens. If the BBA starts to take over again, I'll probably have to pull them out and try some peroxide treatment.

Thoughts?