Black Beard Algae outbreak

[Ziggs180]

I went on a vacation for about 3 Days, and asked my parents to feed my fish while i was gone. When I got back my tank was almost covered in black beard algae. I had some already, but it was in small amounts. I fear that my parents overfed my tank, and there was alot more nutrients in the tank. This is kind of reinforced since several of my plants grew by alot, namely my Water sprite, Dwarf Sag, and ludwigia. All of my Anubias plants are also shooting out extra leaves.

I would like some tips to draw down the amount of Black Beard algae in the tank, I'm planning on doing a massive water change to take out excess nutrients, and probably cutting down my light, but i've heard BB algae can be pretty resilient, so i'm not sure about doing a Black-out.

 

[revchristinejday]

Dear Ziggs180,

My deepest sympathy on the Black Bearded Algae,BBA. You are probably corrected that the extra feeding may have been the factor that pushed the BBA to flourish. It also likes lots of light. It is very aggressive. Addition of Co2 system can combat it, but since you have a natural tank, that's not an option.

I had a horrible outbreak at the begging of the year in my natural planted 125 gallon goldfish tank. I had tried back to back 75% water changes and scraping off what I could. BBA always survived.

So finally I took out all the plants. Scraped off what I could. Scraped and brushed the rocks, driftwood to which plants were attached. I then placed the plants (except for the anacharis), rocks, driftwood into a dark 26 gallon tupperware bin, de-clorinated water and dosed the bin with 2X dose of Seachem's Flourish Excell. I kept it covered/blackout for 3 days and then repeated the process. Meanwhile I kept the anacharis in a 2 gallon plastic jug just in de-clorinated water and covered. I did a 75% water change, gravel vacced, put in the regular dose of Flourish Excell in the tank. I also put my lights on a time to insure less light time. Then I put everything back. It has not reappeared.

I have heard that one can also wipe the leaves and roots with hydrogen peroxide or spot treat leaves and roots with Excell.

Some people have had success with back to back water changes, scaping and 3-5 black outs.

Good luck,
Chris

 

[Smcoyle87]

I feel for you. You want something done right, you have to do it yourself. My deepest sympathies as well. lol
BBA is a tricky pest.
To be honest, hopefully AquaChem will chime in as, from what I've seen, he's a guru. ^ Chris seems to know a thing or two as well. Best of luck
Water changes to removes nutrients is a very good way to start.

 

[rkilling1]

Correct the cause, remove whatever BBA you can, bleach or excel dip all equipment, and then treat the tank with excel. Problem will be gone.

FYI, performing PWC's on a non-CO2 aquarium will only make the BBA worse.

 

[Ziggs180]

I performed a Water change of about 50% just to soak up any extra nutrients from any food products in the tank. A bright side of the possible overfeeding is I've noticed a colony of Platy and Sword tail fry have somehow survived and thrived, and havent been eaten. (they've been taking refuge in a piece of driftwood im hanging at the top of the tank).

I'm going to be dosing Excel in small amounts and slowly increase the amount in order to prevent any plants from melting. I'm also cutting down the amount of light per day. So far i've noticed a small reduction, but no significant change.

 

[rkilling1]

I performed a Water change of about 50% just to soak up any extra nutrients from any food products in the tank. A bright side of the possible overfeeding is I've noticed a colony of Platy and Sword tail fry have somehow survived and thrived, and havent been eaten. (they've been taking refuge in a piece of driftwood im hanging at the top of the tank).

I'm going to be dosing Excel in small amounts and slowly increase the amount in order to prevent any plants from melting. I'm also cutting down the amount of light per day. So far i've noticed a small reduction, but no significant change.

Of coarse the fry weren't eaten. The larger fish had full bellies.

You only have to worry about a select few plants with excel. Vals, anachris, I think HC, and I can't remember the other ones. Whenever I treat for BBA, I just double dose for a week and that kills all the BBA.

 

[aqua_chem]

FYI, performing PWC's on a non-CO2 aquarium will only make the BBA worse.

How's that?

Ultimately your fight with algae will come down to how much light you have on your tank. BBA is generally accepted to be caused by low amounts of CO2 relative to how much light you have (although it shows up in low light conditions on occasion as well). Spot treating with excel or hydrogen peroxide is a good start, and continuing excel will help ward it off as well.

 

[rkilling1]

How's that?

Because you are adding in an instability. Non-CO2 tanks are stable just sitting there. When you perform a PWC, you are injecting additional CO2 that cause fluctuations and thus contributes to additional BBA growth.

When I get back from my business trip, I will post some references to this. It is well documented.

Now I'm not talking about a PWC a month being an issue. It's when people think performing them every other day or every week that's the issue.

 

[aqua_chem]

Inconsistent has several meanings, but with regard to CO2, we are more worried with day to day variations than hour to hour. After a big water change, you CO2 levels might be heightened, but the CO2 will off-gas after only a few hours. The plants won't have time to adapt to these new high levels, so it won't be an issue. If you consider inconsistency with regard to DIY CO2, the CO2 levels change over the course of two weeks, with higher levels in the beginning slowly tapering off. This is the 'inconsistent' that makes it difficult for plants to adapt to CO2 levels and therefore become prone to opportunistic algae like BBA.

 

[rkilling1]

Inconsistent has several meanings, but with regard to CO2, we are more worried with day to day variations than hour to hour. After a big water change, you CO2 levels might be heightened, but the CO2 will off-gas after only a few hours. The plants won't have time to adapt to these new high levels, so it won't be an issue. If you consider inconsistency with regard to DIY CO2, the CO2 levels change over the course of two weeks, with higher levels in the beginning slowly tapering off. This is the 'inconsistent' that makes it difficult for plants to adapt to CO2 levels and therefore become prone to opportunistic algae like BBA.

You are assuming the BBA grows based on the plants not up taking nutrients. That is not the case with BBA. BBA is influenced by changes in CO2 concentrations through out the day.

Here is just a quick quote on the matter:

"Doing water changes adds CO2 back to a CO2 limited tank.
Plants and algae both can and do adapt to low CO2 environments and induce genes to make enzymes that concentrate CO2 around Rubisco, the CO2 fixing enzyme. When we add the CO2 at higher levels back, this causes the plants and algae to destroy the low CO2 enzymes and start growing without of them since they no longer need them to fix CO2 form the KH ( the -HCO3).
Why keep all this machinery around if you no longer need it? Doing weekly water changes "fools" the plants and helps encourage algae more. Algae are faster to respond to low CO2 than plants."

From:

http://www.barrreport.com/showthread.php/2817-Non-CO2-methods

 

[aqua_chem]

The logic doesn't follow on this one.

High CO2 tap water will have around 20 ppm, while the low end is around 1-4 ppm. Ambient levels in the tank is around 2-3 ppm. If you do a 25% water change, the CO2 will have "spiked" to 7-8 ppm or so, assuming high CO2 tap, but will quickly re-equilibrate back to ambient levels over the course of an hour or so. At max you're seeing a swing of 5 ppm for a normal sized water change. But why doesn't this hold true for CO2 injected tanks? If you're following EI, you're doing a 50% water change every week. I maintain my tank around 50 ppm CO2, so I would see a swing of as much as 15 ppm CO2.... but that doesn't cause issues either.

This idea implies that plants will rewrite their entire molecular machinery due to a hour long exposure to different levels, but that's simply not the case. If it were, plants could simply revert back once conditions return to normal. Unless BBA can explode in the hour or so that it would take the cycle to happen, it will be largely a non-issue.

That passage has caused some debate and confusion over the seven years since it was put out, inciting discussion between the Tom Barr devout followers and pretty much anyone else, and as far as I can tell, the consensus seems to be that WCs help more (removing organic content, excess nutrients, algae spores) than they'll ever hurt. Tom has chimed in a couple times, never really answering the quesiton (in typical TB style), but definitely IMO casting some doubt on the subject of the ill-effects of WCs.

 

[rkilling1]

That passage has caused some debate and confusion over the seven years since it was put out, inciting discussion between the Tom Barr devout followers and pretty much anyone else, and as far as I can tell, the consensus seems to be that WCs help more (removing organic content, excess nutrients, algae spores) than they'll ever hurt. Tom has chimed in a couple times, never really answering the quesiton (in typical TB style), but definitely IMO casting some doubt on the subject of the ill-effects of WCs.

"typical TB style" I have to admit I got a good laugh out of that one.

My current suspicions about BBA are not completely in agreement with CO2 being the only input. I have been working on the minimum nutrient method to try and solve my BBA. Some speculate the BBA is induced by a difference in Mg/Ca relationship.

I suspect my BBA has to do with light spectrum shift. Yes I know it would be hard to deduce this just by observations alone, but that's all I got. Running bulbs that are old or are around 4000k seems to cause the BBA to grow rapidly. One could argue that it's the plant not growing with this spectrum that is the cause.

My old light setup was 2 4100k bulbs and 2 ge aquarium bulbs. BBA grew pretty nicely. I replaced one of the 4100k bulbs with a colormax bulb and also started adding Mg once a week. The BBA has stopped growing for several months now. Can't really say what stopped it without resorting to making it grow again by replacing the colormax bulb or stopping the Mg doses.

 

[Ziggs180]

Well the BBA has decreased, I've started doing a full Excel dosage after doing have dosing to prevent any melting of my plants. There is definitely some reduction in BBA. I'm also noticing some strange growth on several of my plants.

It appears to be a single white stalk that branches into four different pieces, almost like a claw of sorts. I'm not sure if this is an algae or maybe seedlings of a plant or something. My Amano Shrimp and Bristlenose pleco seem to be pretty full off eating algae, but they dont eat the BBA Algae that is oh so annoying.

 

[aqua_chem]

Sounds like hydra.

 

[Ziggs180]

Just googl'd Hydra, and thats definitly it. They seem to be a smaller type, and hopefully my Dwarf Gourami gets around to eating them all.

 

[jigabodo]

I went on a vacation for about 3 Days, and asked my parents to feed my fish while i was gone. When I got back my tank was almost covered in black beard algae. I had some already, but it was in small amounts. I fear that my parents overfed my tank, and there was alot more nutrients in the tank. This is kind of reinforced since several of my plants grew by alot, namely my Water sprite, Dwarf Sag, and ludwigia. All of my Anubias plants are also shooting out extra leaves.

I would like some tips to draw down the amount of Black Beard algae in the tank, I'm planning on doing a massive water change to take out excess nutrients, and probably cutting down my light, but i've heard BB algae can be pretty resilient, so i'm not sure about doing a Black-out.

1. Start dosing excel daily. When you are about to dose it, turn off your filter and powerhead. Use a medicine dropper and apply excel directly to the affected area, then leave it on there for 20 minutes before turning your filter back on. You should eventually see your BBA "pearling", followed by turning white and falling off. Alternatively, you can also manually clip off affected leaves if you wish.

2. Reduce your lighting duration and add a "lights out" period in between. For example, reduce you lighting from 12 hours a day to 8 hours, and out of that 8 hours schedule a 4 hours lights off period in between. So you will do: 4 hours on, 4 hours off, then 4 hours on again.

3. Reduce feeding frequency. If you feed your fish twice a day, feed them once a day instead now to avoid excess nutrient building up.

4. Get algae eating critters. If you have a large enough tank (40 gallon+) you can get a siamese algae eater, they are known to eat BBA when they are young. Careful not to get a falseSAE though. If you have a smaller tank, stock up on enough amano shrimp. Do not feed your amano shrimp. If you keep them hungry enough, they will start munching on BBA as well. You will need at least 1 shrimp per gallon to do the job if your BBA outbreak is bad.

5. If you are dosing liquid fertilizers, stop. Begin dosing root tabs instead since BBA draws nutrients directly from water. This will prevent BBA from utilize the nutrients in the water while your rooted plants can directly absorb them from their roots.

6. Get more fast growing plants to outcompete BBA for the available nutrients. Giant duckweeds, water sprite, water wisteria, anacharis, pennywort, ludwigia, java moss are all pretty good candidates.

7. If you dose CO2, keep it at a constant level above 30 ppm. (Even during lights off) Fluctuation of CO2 levels are known as a trigger to cause BBA outbreaks (which is often the case with DIY CO2).

Good luck! I am currently battling with BBA as well, and it has been a constant struggle. Feel free to ask me if you have any other questions.