Got my BBA combat fatigues on...

[marchmaxima]

I have been compating an explosion of BBA in my tank in recent months. Here's the short version so far.....

Upgraded lighting in March 09. 2 x 24w T5s @ 10,000K - yes I realise it wasn't optimal but they came with the fixture and I thought I'd give them a go anyway.

Bought a stack of new medium to medium-high light plants. Added DIY CO2 and was dosing Flourish, Potassium and Nitrate to Phosphate at the 10:1 ratio. Growth explosion followed and many new plants outgrew the tank. Caused Amazon-tank syndrome. Couldn't see fish.

June 09 ripped out and gave away most of these plants to aquarists friends (who always respond in kind). Left with lower light plants (Anubias Nana, Pigmy Chain Swords, Riccia, Java moss. Did NOT alter fert regime.

BBA arrives and takes over. Manual removal cannot keep up. Going this way for over 2 months. Excel dosing does next to nothing.

In last 2 weeks, got serious becuase it was really getting to me. Since then I:

Did around 10 hours over several sessions of manual removing what I could. Finished removal effort around a week ago.

Rermoved a 10K globe and was running one globe for a week. (minor hair algae issue goes away)

Realised my fert regime was inproper and wasn't altered to compensate after the de-amazoning of the tank. Reduced it to dosing 1/2 the recommended amount of Flourish. Have dosed only once since starting the big manual removal exercise.

Bought a 6700K replacement (minor hair algae issue comes back).

Bought a pressurised CO2 system. Waiting on the reg to arrive in the mail, so it's not going yet. Figure I can control the amount of CO2 much better than DIY. And I have never enjoyed the maintenance of DIY CO2 anyway

Today, I am convinced I had more BBA than a week ago.

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So at the moment, I am almost convinced my lighting is the primary culprit with my continuation of the old fert regime also a contributing factor (prehaps). So tonight, I have removed the second T5 10K tube and am running now on the single 6700K. Can do this fine for now....

Here are my questions:

1. I know from further research into lighting that watts and kelvins are not the full story and I have liughts that emit too much ion the green spectrum. Even my current 6700K tube seems to emit more light in the green spectrum than in the red and the blue that I need. Do I look at replacing these globes with ones that emitt more blue and red? I read that an ideal setup is 1/3rd blue to 2/3rds red/orange.

2. Say I want to keep my current globes. Will the number and type of plants in the tank potentially make a difference? I found it interesting that when I removed "the amazon" a tiny BBA issue got very large very quickly. If I rescape things and add a bunch of new plants could this work in reverse?

thanks for listening (reading).

 

[JustOneMore20]

Sorry you are fighting BBA.

I think the problem occurred when you took out the "amazon". Being medium-high light plants they probably grew faster than the lower light plants you have now. Now there is excess nutrients and co2 in the system and the lower light plants grow much slower, so they aren't using it up and the algae is taking over. It is feeding off the excess nutrients, light, and co2.

That is a good bit of light for a 15g, especially with just lower light plants. I think your idea of adding some new plants is a good one. I would get some stems if you can. Some lower light stems like Anacharis would be good for sucking in nutrients. Cutting back on the light was a good move. That single 6700K bulb should be fine. I wouldn't worry about changing it out unless the plants change.

I would continue to pull it out regularly. You can also spot kill it with some Flourish Excel, if you have any on hand or if you can get it. It won't keep it from recurring, but it will kill what is in there now.

 

[marchmaxima]

Thanks Kirstin, glad I'm kind of on the right track. Think I will continue plan a new scape with possibly some new plants and deal with adding a new globe if I need to then.

I have been spot dosing Excel daily, but it wasn't making a dent hence I did the manual removal sessions. It was sooo bad. I was scooping out tablepoons full of my top layer of substrate (sand). In the first session, I removed around 3 cups worth. 2nd session laterin the week was 2 cups worth and lots of infested leaves. Then a 3rd session came a few days later.

I considered a total blackout, but I do want to solve the underlying issue too becusae I can't deal with how quickly and how aggressive it had become. I failed to mention that before I "put the fatiges on" I was doing an hour of removal every 3 weeks for a few months only to have it come marching back.

I just got my new CO2 reg tonight. Time to go figure out where all the bits and bobs go. At least then I can better regulate the amount of CO2 going in.

Still spot dosing daily and will do some more removal this weekend. It's now just black dots spotted throughout the tank.

 

[jsoong]

Black out doesn't work (at least for me.) BBA needs 2-3 weeks of blackout to be killed and most plants don't do well that long without light.

You might consider doing an Excel overdose. IE - add the "initial" dose daily for 3 days or so. It will kill most algae but might kill some sensitive plants. Anubias should be fine - I dip it in pure Excel (5 min) to kill all traces of BBA. Once you kill the BBA off, you still have to fix the root cause.

 

[marchmaxima]

So update on my BBA problem. Actually, a few problems....

As mentioned, I bought a pressurised CO2 kit. Long story short, I had some issues with the new CO2 setup resulting in, amongst other things, a bottle of lost gas and a broken diffuser. So there has been no CO2 running for the last few weeks.

So since the 17/9 (ish), I have been running one T5HO 24w tube, CO2 off/on for a week then off since then. Reduced my ferts to 1/2 the previous doses.

Now dosing: 0.5ml seachem flourish weekly, 1/2 a teapsoon of potash, and keeping the nitrate at between 10-20ppm. I've also been spot dosing Excel daily using double the recommended dose.

I have done a couple of overdoses. I used 3-4 times the recommended amount.

BBA is *still* growing.... I wouldn't say its quite as fast, but too fast for the spot dosing to have much effect. It dies in one little spot and 4 times as much grows somewhere else.

To summarise, the changes so far are:
- Halved the lighting. Was 2x24w 10,000K T5s; now 1 x 24w 6700K T5. Still on for 8 hours a day.
- Stopped dosing phosphates. Was 2.0ppm. Now practically 1ppm.
- Was 1ml Flourish. Now 0.5ml Flourish (weekly).
- Was 1 teaspoon Potash. Now 0.5 teaspoon Potash (weekly).
- Spot dosing with Excel daily - doing double-doses.

The changes so far have made minimal impact on my BBA problem. I'd say that the BBA is growing at maybe 1/2 to 2/3rds the speed it was growing previously. Lets say its still growing faster than I can treat with Excel. Again, its still mainly attacking the substrate towards the front of the tank, but this is not exclusive. There's tufts of it lurking everywhere.

I did another 3 hour manual removal session last night. Gave the filter a good clean. I also (finally) hooked up my new CO2 system again, so will gradually crank it up. Certainly think my plants are missing their CO2.....

BBA winning the war.... I seriously hate this stuff!

 

[fort384]

I solved my bba problem by cranking co2 up over 50 ppm, adding some fast growing plants, manual removal, and spot treating excel with a syringe. Controlling excess nutrients should help too. Low light plants with just the one bulb running may mean you don't have to dose much at all. Are you testing for N or P levels?

 

[jsoong]

You might consider turning on both the lights & halving the time to 4 hrs.

I am doing an experiment in a small tank, 14W pc over 5 gal, running 6 hrs. So far, no trace of BBA (no Excel, no CO2, min. ferts). I have put some BBA infested plants into that tank & the BBA is gone after 5-10 days. <Plants are sulking a bit - some yellow leaves, but at least not dead like a prolonged blackout.> I am going to start changing the main tank's light period to see if I can match the result. <The tank has no fish, no filter & no heater, so might not be able to generalize that to my main tank. However, someone had reported that cutting down on length of continuous light kills BBA. He did a 4 hr on, 2 hr off, then 4 hr on regime daily.>

 

[marchmaxima]

I solved my bba problem by cranking co2 up over 50 ppm, adding some fast growing plants, manual removal, and spot treating excel with a syringe. Controlling excess nutrients should help too. Low light plants with just the one bulb running may mean you don't have to dose much at all. Are you testing for N or P levels?

Am testing Nitrate bi-weekly. Aiming for between 10-20ppm. Got a decent amount of riccia floating that sucks up the Nitrate at a decent rate. Phosphate is at 1ppm or lower (usually lower). Used to have keep it at the N ratio of 10:1.... that wasn't working, but at that stage I was keeping Nitrate at 20ppm, so I aimed for Phosphate to 2ppm. Concluded with this, AND the 2 x 24w 10,000k lighting there was wayyyy too much in terms Excess. Excess lights.. Excess nutrients.... I figure that's how my problem started.

Yeah, I am thinking the same thing about the CO2... Will run the CO2 at the current 1-1.5bps for 2 weeks and see how we go. My drop checker is dark green indicating less than 30ppm CO2... Agter 2 weeks, observe the change/results. If needed, crank it up a little more for 2 weeks. Repeat.

Taking the approach that I don't care what my drop checker says. I'm just going to observe the tank and make changes based on how the plants look and how the algae reacts (not to mention my fish!). Will focus on my distributing the CO2 throughout the tank more evenly. I'm sure this will (if nothing else) give me more bang for my bubble rate if ya know what I mean.

 

[marchmaxima]

You might consider turning on both the lights & halving the time to 4 hrs.

I am doing an experiment in a small tank, 14W pc over 5 gal, running 6 hrs. So far, no trace of BBA (no Excel, no CO2, min. ferts). I have put some BBA infested plants into that tank & the BBA is gone after 5-10 days. <Plants are sulking a bit - some yellow leaves, but at least not dead like a prolonged blackout.> I am going to start changing the main tank's light period to see if I can match the result. <The tank has no fish, no filter & no heater, so might not be able to generalize that to my main tank. However, someone had reported that cutting down on length of continuous light kills BBA. He did a 4 hr on, 2 hr off, then 4 hr on regime daily.>

I have also read something similar on a local forum, but I had totally forgotten about that until you reminded me. The logic behind the argument was the that plants can cope with interrupted lighting periods, but algae, comprising more primitive structures ( or less evolved was the point) can't seem to handle it as well as the plants can. Will do that too.

 

[WhiteDevil]

I had the BBA issue recently. I started to dose period and it disappeared, per direction on bottle. I noticed it grew on the old leaves of the plants, so I just trimmed off the old leaves and the BBA has gone almost completely away. I have some on a powerhead but thats gonna be gone in a few hours. I did use a soft tooth brush to get it out about 90% before the excel came into play.

 

[marchmaxima]

Nice to see you you easily fixed it WD. Mine's a lot more aggressive I'm afraid. Basic spot dosing hasn't worked.

Am now breaking up the lighting period. 4 on, 1.5 off, 4 on. CO2 going good now. Have stem plants on the way. We will see how that goes.

 

[Atl300zx]

im having a staghorn and BBA outbreak. i removed the leaves that were highly infected, started dosing Excel (despite the fact i have pressurized co2), reduced my ferts to half (i used to have a lot of fast growing plants and remvoed them to only slow growth - that is when this started), and i added hygro and asian ambulia back.

Ill let u know my results after a bit.

 

[Atl300zx]

mine has been 80% beaten with spot dosing and manually removing any leaves that get too infected.

i think the fast growing stem parts are really helping.

My Co2 tank ran out 2 weeks ago and i hve been using only excel and havent noticed much change in the algae for the better or worse.