Blue-Green Algae (ASAP Help Please)

[Leader-Of-The-Fish]

Hello everyone,

I have a blue-green algae breakout and I want to get rid of it. It was really bad until I lowered the light down to 4 hours a day. I read that you can use hydrogen peroxide, so I was wondering if any of you have had any experience with it. I have taken pictures of the progress. These pictures are actually good progress believe it or not hahaha.

Front View:

Ride Side:

Left Side:

Left Pane:

Right Pane:

Decor:

 

[vanimal]

What size tank?? Do more water changes. The more water changes the less waste in the water for the algae to grow from. or maybe if your adding ferts add less.

 

[Bbarb27]

That looks like cynaobacteria to me. The only way I was able to eradicate it when I had an outbreak was using Maracyn, although I never tried hydrogen peroxide. My initial outbreak was due to new lights and overfeeding fry, but reducing lights and feeding didn't stop the outbreak.

If you try maracyn (erythromycin), remove as much of the cyano as you can with a net or siphon, treat for the full dosing period, and watch for an ammonia spike following treatment due to the dead cyano.

 

[Rivercats]

Bbarb27 is correct, it is cyno bacteria and erythromyin is the way to treat it but do use the entire treatment.

 

[Leader-Of-The-Fish]

Ok everyone thanks for your replies. I will try to do more PWC to remove some of the BGA. I know what you said is recommended but will hydrogen peroxide work?

Thanks a lot everyone.

 

[Bbarb27]

I've read articles about treating cyano with hydrogen peroxide but it seems like the conclusion is that it poses risks to the fish in the tank. H2O2 breaks down quickly when exposed to water, so I'm not sure how you could keep a high enough concentration to treat a whole tank and kill the cyano. I've dipped plants in it but never added it to an entire tank.

Personally I think the erythromycin is a safer and easier option to try, but I'll be interested to learn how the hydrogen peroxide treatment works if you go that route.

 

[Reygan2]

What type of lighting do you have and what are your parameters? It would be a good idea to get to the cause of the outbreak in order to avoid having to treat again. Overfeeding and low N03 are major culprits. You should remove as much as you can by hand. If needed you should dose KN03. There are ways to treat this without wiping out your BB, but it may take some work.

 

[Daxhua]

From my personal experience hydrogen peroxide 3% is fairly safe, what you want to do is spot treat the blue green algae (Cyanobacteria) don't just pour peroxide into your tank. There're a couple of videos on YouTube of a kid doing this if you need a visual.

Here's what I think you should do and I'm going by what I see in your pics.
First remove everything from your tank except water, fish, gravel, and media sponge. Clean/Remove as much of the cyano as you can from the objects you took out of your tank. Maybe even pour some peroxide on them.
Next use a scrapper like a plastic card, scrape off and take out the cyanobacteria from the glass.
Then do a quick gravel vac to remove any loose cyano from the gravel and water. When doing several water changes during a week try to keep them around 20%, doing several large water changes can cause unstable ph.
The purpose of all this to remove as much of the bacteria as you can to make treatment easier and to help prevent ammonia/nitrite spikes after the cyano starts to die.
During peroxide treatment remember to keep pumps, filters, power heads turned off. If you choose to treat the cyanobacteria with meds you should know that it can kill your beneficial bacteria, I would use a syringe to spray some peroxide onto the bacteria that is visible in your tank. It doesn't take much just enough to treat the visible cyano. After about 30mins or so you can put everything back together and turn everything on. Continue this method of treatment once/twice a week or as need.

Things you can do to prevent further outbreaks or help remove the current one.
If you have any blue actinic bulbs, I recommend you replace them with natural daylight bulbs.
Add a power head or air stones to improve water circulation.
If you have a hang on the back or canister filter thoroughly clean the the filter housing (not the media for your beneficial bacteria) and keep it clean.
From your pics it looks like all you have for filtration is a sponge power head which is fine but I suggest adding another or upgrading to a HOB/canister filter.
Hope this helps

 

[Reygan2]

+1 on the added circulation and filter upgrade. Good luck!