Buu
Aquarium Advice Freak
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2013
- Messages
- 268
It looks like the start of BBA. You could spot treat it with Hydrogen Peroxide 3%. Pull up 3ml of Peroxide in a syringe then slowly squirt the algae as close to it as possible. Be sure to turn off your filter and lights before treatment and leave off for 20 minutes. If there is alot you might have to spot treat more than once. Also only run your lights 6 hours until the algae is under control.
Next time you get new plants you can soak the plants in a container with Peroxide and water for 20 minutes or lay papertowels down in the bottom of a sink, lay the plants on top of them, squirt the entire plant with Peroxide, wrap the wet papertowels over the plants and let sit 20 minutes before planting. Don't rinse them, just plant them in the tank after treating. This process will kill algae and usually any 'live' hitch hikers and most snail eggs.
Seems I forgot to finish the usage amount... it should have read 3ml of peroxide to every 10g of tank water. You don't have to treat other plants unless they start to show signs of it. I swear once you add a plant that has BBA or hair algae in your tank the stuff just seems to magically pop up on other plants if the conditions are right.
Just be sure to really soak new plants completely before wrapping them with really dripping wet peroxided paper towels.
I'm not sure why you would QT a plant... The algae is in the water as well as the plant, much like Ich acts. You really don't get anything from QT.
The first thing we need to know is what your lights are, what your fertilization regimen is, what your CO2/liquid carbon setup is, w/c schedule, etc.
You really should be dosing at least a liquid fertilizer such as Seachems Flouish Comprehensive weekly. Flouish Excel is a liquid carbon that can melt some sensitive plants such a anacharis. It's not a fertilizer. Have 0 nitrates in a planted tank isn't good. 10-20ppm nitrates and .5-1ppm phosphates are good levels for a planted tank.
Also depending on what type lighting your getting 10 hours might be too long and cause algae to rear it's ugly head. You might only want to run them 8 hours and can go as low as 6 hours daily if you have algae problems.