i've got it bad!--- the great excel disaster

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WaterPond

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
3,139
Location
Corunna, Ontario (outside of sarnia)
BBA, grrr, i've got it really bad. It is covering the leaves of my crypts, swords, wisteria, Lilacina, anubias nana and hygro polysperma. The only thing it is not infecting is my glosso(thank god!), my christmas moss and my java moss.

Well, i know that this is almost the only thing you plant geeks ever hear about so you should have come up with some good ways to treat it. I'm pretty new to plants.

Heres the info you need
ammonia- 0ppm
nitrite- 0ppm
nitrate- 10ppm
pH- 7.0ppm
co2- 30ppm
Tank size: 5gal
Lighting: 24 watt CF and 9w CF
Gravel: nothing special, jusrt everyday stuff.
Dosing: havn't been dosing because i ran out of supplies and have no money to buy more, so yeah. I used to dose with Nutrafin plant gro every week, but i upgraded lighting and added co2 and since then i havn't dosed anything except co2.

I think that is all you need. Please help! lol.

I will post a photo late hopefully.(no guarentees)
 
For BBA, to stop it's growth you need more CO2, or better circulation of the CO2 you have.

To get rid of it, manually remove as much as possible. You can also use Excel (by seachem). You turn off the filters and powerheads. Take the recomented dosage (and no more than double the recomended dosage(in a 5 gallon you are looking at 1/4 to 1/2 tsp)). Then use an eyedropper to squirt it directly into the BBA. You can do this treatment every 2-3 days. The BBA will tend to turn red, then white and eventually will go away after it is dead.

There will be other recomentations most likely. (ie peroxide, or even bleach (done out of the tank)). None are as safe to flora and fauna as excel.

The only caveat to excel, if you have Valisneria, Riccia, or Pelia. You may want to remove those plants prior to excel, as it can be hard on those specific plants.

Do a forum search on this topic and you will find a wealth of information.
 
Not from what I've seen, I have those plants, no issues here.

Regards,
Tom Barr
 
The only plants that I've heard of consistantly having problems with Excel are Vals and Ancharis. The rest should be fine.
 
ok, great. I will go to my LFS tomorrow and get a price check on that. Hopefully my parets will help me out a bit with buying it because i am dead broke! I hooked up the co2 to a powerhead i had lying around, it seems to send it shotting across the tank in burst, that should work better hopefully. Is this a good idea? I turned my HOB way down, Hopefully i dont create an environment with too much co2 in the water. I'll keep you updated.
 
thast how i diffuse my co2. put the co2 line into the intake and it chews the bubbles up and shoots them all over. u really need nitrate, phosphate and potassium. with that high of light and co2 your plants will just inhale the available nutrients. even if u manage to kill most of the bba it will come back if u dont balance your fertalizers.
 
are u planning to do an excell dip or just start dosing excell? i dont know the concentrations but there are alot of members who do so u will get an answer soon.
 
an excell dip is when u dip the infected plants into a very strong solution of excell to kill the algea then put the plants back into the tank. the algea will die over a few days and the plant will be algea free again.
 
well u dip all the plants in the one solution. this will kill the bba then u dose the excell to get your co2 up and keep it from coming back.
 
WaterPond said:
do I? i want to do this today to so i need to know if i rinse after i dip.
i don't think you have to, maybe just let them drip a little to get of excess... i do not think you would exceed recommend dosage buy what is left stuck to plant...but i could be wrong... :?
 
ok, finally an answer! thank you so much. I get too impatient, lol

Any more advice because it seems that JDogg isn't quite sure. Appreciated very much though. I am just worried to overdose because it is a 5gal tank.
 
WaterPond said:
ok, finally an answer! thank you so much. I get too impatient, lol

Any more advice because it seems that JDogg isn't quite sure. Appreciated very much though. I am just worried to overdose because it is a 5gal tank.
yea...do you have any excel sensitive plants?

you could alays be extra safe and remove the fish
 
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