I want BBA DEAD

[debbieg]

Hi,

I've been reading everything that I can find on the forum about BBA, and I've never seen so much conflicting advice. Here's where I am in this fight.

I have a 55 gallon with 2.4 wpg cf lighting, no co2. I've been fighting BBA for about 3 months. The tank was set up with lots of plants and lots of fish for over a year with absolutely no problems.

I don't know if this caused the problem or not, but, after the fact, I've tied the BBA outbreak to the expiration date of the bulb in my uv sterilizer. I've replaced it now. Would a uv sterilizer stop the spread of this algae?

IMO:
I tried the bleach suggestion and I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS TO ANYONE. I used less bleach than recommended for a shorter time than recommended with more rinsing than recommended. It was a huge job, and the plants were still so damaged that I would have been much better off just breaking off the tops that weren't yet infested and tossing the rest.

Now, my tank has fish, gravels, and one large fake rock. What's left of my plants are in a tank on the deck. Some are growing well above the water line. If I get my tank cleaned, would it be safe to put 'above the water' sprigs back in it, or should I just dump all of the old plants?

I've left the one large rock in the tank because it's covered with easy to see algae. I hope to use it to tell when it's safe to put plants back in the tank. My gravels are black, and I can't see any BBA on them.

Finally, my question:
With no plants in the tank, is there anything that I can dump into the tank that will kill this stuff? It has to be something that absodamnlutely will not harm ny fish or my biological filter. If there's something that will not destroy the biological filter but might harm the fish, I have a 40 gallon that I could transfer them to for a little while, but I'd hate to put them through the stress.

I just want my beautiful planted tank back, but I don't want to replant if the plants are just going to turn black and die. BTW, I am going to order some true SAEs once I get the tank clean. It seems like a good thing to have, and I can't find them locally.

What should I do at this point??

Thanks a bunch,
Debbie

 

[Peyton]

http://www.plantgeek.net/article_viewer.php?id=9

BBA is hard to deal with, but don't get discouraged. I've had it in a 20gal for a year or two now. I have killed a good bit of it now with the help of flourish excel. IMHO your on the right track with the SAE's but you also need to find out why you got it in the first place. Many times BBA is caused from a lack of CO2. Do you dose any ferts? Have any test kits available (phosphate, nitrate, ph)?

 

[debbieg]

Hi Peyton,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. The articles make it clear that there's not too many things worse than this stuff. It make my head hurt just thinking about it. Algae eaters, sterilizers, ferts co2, nitrates, phosphates, ph, lighting, and (for goodness sake) new fish that can have it in their systems!!!

I've read that, with my level of lighting, I don't have to have co2; and the tank (fish and plants) was perfect for over a year. I've never fertilized with anything. I paid over thirty dollars for one of those master test kits a couple of years ago. Everytime I used it, the readings showed that all of my fish should be dead.

What exactly is flourish excel? Does it kill algea, or does it promote plant growth and deprive the algae of the nutrients that it needs to grow? The articles that you provided indicate a very slight chance that it could harm my fish.

I've developed a theory about why the BBA has taken over. I think the stuff somehow got into the tank, but the sterilizer kept it in check. The light in the sterilizer got old, and the BBA became noticeable. I tried the bleach soak which weakened the plants. The plants grew more slowly because they were almost dead, so the BBA really took off. Of course, this is totally guesswork.

Debbie

 

[Peyton]

What kind of readings did you get with the test kits? Even in low light tanks most of the time you still need to dose at least potassium. It may look good for a while but then it will slowly go down hill, as did my first planted tank.

Flourish excel is a source of carbon for plants. It also has a side effect of being somewhat of an algaecide. If you don't want to scrap your whole plant collection try the SAE's and flourish excel. I've had very good luck with this combination. However you still need to dose ferts. Really need your test results though to see what might be the main problem.

 

[Purrbox]

Flourish Excel provides a liquid carbon source. In smaller tanks this is particularly nice since it provides an alternative to having to setup CO2 on the tank. When used at 3-4 times the recommended dose it also acts as a highly effective Algaecide. Caution must be used as too much Flourish Excel can be harmful to plants and fish. The industrial version of this chemical is quite dangerous to both and has to be highly diluted to be used safely in an aquarium. It should also be noted that even at recommended dosages some plants like Anacharis and Vals are sensitive to Flourish Excel and can be killed.

 

[7Enigma]

Been battling some BBA myself for a bit, but have been hesitant to try the high dosing of Excel. I would highly recommend that you setup a simple DIY CO2 system since while you do not NEED CO2 at that light level, you are very close and would probably eliminate most algae if you had it.

I think I'll start a thread looking for success and horror stories using Excel.

EDIT: Thread's now up. Purrbox if you have first hand experience with using Excel to kill BBA (sounds like you might) please head over to my thread and post your story!

 

[Tong]

FWIW, if you are using 132ish actually CF watts, your tank is actually more like 3.6 WPG and is definately in need of CO2. I would say even at 2.4 WPG, it is definately in need of CO2.

Also FWIW, usually BBA is a result of a nutrient imbalance. More specifically, your nitrate and your phosphates are not a a 10 ppm nitrates to 1 ppm phosphates ratio. Fixing the nutrient imbalance treats the cause of the BBA. SAEs, overdosing Excel, and UV sterilizers only treat the symtoms. They should be used after you have your nutrients in order and not before. If used before your nutrients are balanced, BBA will return at some future time because the conditions are still right for it.

 

[Plantbrain]

If you have no CO2, no excel, then do not do water changes, BBa will slowly die off.
You need to have a balanced fish/pklant load to do this.
That is what defines and non CO2 plant tank method.

If you use CO2, then use it correctly, if you see BBA, you need more CO2 ppm.

BBA is not your enemy, proper use of CO2 and routines to grow plants and provide good conditions with less work is.

Grow the plants and the algae will not grow.
Treat Excel like CO2, too much will kill fish etc, and you can do large frequent water changes,m EI at 1/3 strength etc if you want etc.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[frostby]

In regards to BBA, it was posted that an imbalance between phosphate and nitrat 10-1 ratio... Does anybody know if it is a 50-1 ratio, or a 10-10 type ratio or both, that will encourage BBA.

I find it quite difficult to locate a phosphate test kit locally, is fish food sufficient in a medium light tank to supply phosphates?

And the users of Excel, do you also use CO2?

 

[7Enigma]

In regards to BBA, it was posted that an imbalance between phosphate and nitrat 10-1 ratio... Does anybody know if it is a 50-1 ratio, or a 10-10 type ratio or both, that will encourage BBA.

I find it quite difficult to locate a phosphate test kit locally, is fish food sufficient in a medium light tank to supply phosphates?

And the users of Excel, do you also use CO2?

I believe BBA is more prevalent in high ratio systems (ie 50-1) since your in essence limiting phosphate, however in my case it was the other way around (nitrAte under 20ppm and phosphate over 2ppm). But the general concensus is that while this N/P ratio is important, the main cause of BBA is the LACK of CO2, moreso than a poor N/P ratio.

Purchase a phosphate kit online, there is NO way to know if your tank contains enough phosphate. In my tank, high bioload, ample feeding, I do not dose phosphates because they are ALWAYS above 1ppm. In many people's tanks, they are dosing potassium phosphate to keep their phosphates from bottoming out. I highly recommend you stop the guesswork and get a test kit since you could easily be on either end of the spectrum and could really cause an outbreak if you overdose or bottom out.

I have recently begun dosing Excel along with my DIY CO2 since I have BBA and other algae issues. This all started when I was on vacation for a week and my CO2 petered out and a fish died. This combination of high ammonia (nitrAte), and low CO2 started everything going downhill.

I tried to bring everything back into working order, but the damage had been done. I avoided doing a blackout since I was worried of killing the plants, but in hindsight would have preferred to do the blackout right away.

Being DIY, I have fluctuating levels of CO2 in the tank and this is apparently a frequent cause of BBA and other algae. So now I dose Excel along with my DIY so that I know I'm maintaining an acceptable level of carbon at all times (>15ppm), and normally around the optimum 30ppm.

I'm about a week away from trying a radical treatment option that I've mentioned in my other thread regarding BBA, that would be spot treatment with hydrogen peroxide. This is very risky to both the plant and fish in the tank, and so I've modified the procedure I've read about on the net so its safer.

If my BBA doesn't go away with the increased CO2 source, balanced ferts, and reduced light (went form a 65w CF on a 20gallon to a 50/50), I'll be trying the peroxide treatment.

HTH,

justin

 

[Plantbrain]

In regards to BBA, it was posted that an imbalance between phosphate and nitrat 10-1 ratio... Does anybody know if it is a 50-1 ratio, or a 10-10 type ratio or both, that will encourage BBA.

I find it quite difficult to locate a phosphate test kit locally, is fish food sufficient in a medium light tank to supply phosphates?

And the users of Excel, do you also use CO2?

The PO4 and ratio hypothesis is patently wrong.
We tested this about 8-10 years ago pretty definitively for both NO3 and PO4. The water quality was un matched(pure) and we had the KH2PO4, KNO3 to add or do water changes etc to remove any traces.

Lamott and Hach test kits where used throughout.
Tghese test kits matched well with known sources of NO3 and PO4.

After 6 months of riding at less than 0.2ppm of PO4, BBA was just fine, NO3 levels from 5-20 ppm had no influence.

The only significant thing we ever found related to BBA were CO2 levels and stability.

If any of the PO4 limiting or ratio hypothesis are correct, why didn't we ever see any effects? Several folks have done this and no one to date has seen the effects.

So in order for that hypothesis to be accepted, we should have seen similar results, clearl;y after 6 months in several tanks, that was not the case.

My tanks at the same time had 1.2 ppm of PO4 and side N ratios as well, I had no BBA, but had high CO2.

I also fix many folks tanks over the last 10 years on the web and for various local clients.

To date I've fixed every BBA issue every person had.
That a lot of tanks.
I also can induce specific species(BBA) of algae to grow using CO2 in an otherwise healthy balanced tank.

So......if I add lots of PO4(say 5ppm) or vary the N ratio(1:50 to 1:1), that(BBA bloom) does not occur. Accurate testing/kits and assumptions will help you a great deal if you reply of them for testing hypothesis and finding correlation.


Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Tong]

The PO4 and ratio hypothesis is patently wrong.

Best info I've had all day. I'll have to try it out sometime.

 

[frostby]

<<<<<<<<<<<<<BOWING>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
every time i see one of tom's posts... i feel unworthy of an aquarium.....

The man has spoken!

-um adding this to the archive for sure!!

Thanks!