Please Help!

[Hope]

I have no idea what this black hair looking stuff thats growing all over my plants, rocks, and driftwood in my boyfriends 40gal. tank. He left me to take care of it and I need to get this taken care of before it becomes a really bad problem! Anyone have any advice as how to treat it?? What is it?

Thanks,

Hope

 

[mfdrookie516]

thats a type of algae... it is super hard to get rid of from what ive heard... Im sure somebody thats dealt with this before will have a better answer for you, but i do know some people have had luck using excel and doing a complete blackout...

 

[jsoong]

That is Black Beard Algae, very tough to get rid of. Eliminating it will require long term work. Quick fixes don't work.

More info is needed - tank size, water parameter, light & schedule, fertilizers? CO2?, plants & fish list, etc.

From fighting this stuff for over a year, I can say that BBA is tenacious. Blackouts don't work unless you do it for a week or more. Excel overdose will work, but will kill certain plants. Nutrient restrictions don't work because BBA can fix both nitrogen & CO2.

The best thing to do is to manually remove as much of the algae as possible - remove older ratty leaves, clean all inanimate objects (I bleach & scrub mine, then rinse very well & treat with a 4x overdose of dechlorinator before returning to the tank.), then optimize things in the tank so the plants can out compete the algae. <Fertilize so NO3 never bottom out, make sure CO2 is stable - adjust water circulation so there is no dead spot, etc.>

Fighting BBA is prob. not a job for the tank-sitter. Perhaps you can do some simple stuff like scrubbing the worst looking rock, etc. But I would leave the real battle to the owner!

And Welcome to AA!!

 

[fort384]

You may want to try a bit of plastic explosive and a detonator.

That is a pretty severe BBA infection. The owner of the tank will have to invest some serious time to combat it. If it were my tank, I would trash most, if not all of those plants, and remove all the rock and clean as suggested above. The most effective means I found for treating BBA was to spot treat infected areas with a syringe full of excel, and ramp up CO2 injection to 50+ppm, but this tank is infected so severely that it would not be feasible.