I wouldn't think calcium would have anything to do with it. Uneaten food indirectly in that it could have caused a small amount of ammonia or at least added to the organics in the tank, either of which is just exacerbated by having a lot of light. If it were me, I'd turn down the light, manually remove as much BBA as possible including affected plants if necessary, spot treat with Excel or H2O2 and to paraphrase Tom Barr, concentrate on growing plants not killing algae.
I'm going to revive an older thread because I want to know what happened...
JCox, what did you end up doing? Results? I have a little of this starting and I've already started an excel regimen and upped my CO2. Any input would ROCK
Slow down on the ferts for a while every third day is fine then keep your light 8inches off the water crank up the co 2 during water changes when the water level is down peroxcide the stuff spot on==light 10 hours is ok dont believe the lights out guys what you want is stability and small changes over a long period of time leave your filter alone change it every 45 days you need the bio good luck
BBA is a direct cause of having to high of light in relation to how much co2 you have in the tank. I would spot treat with excel by putting the excel in a syringe, turning off all forms of water movement, spraying the excel on effected areas and leaving the circulation devices off for at least a hour preferably two. You can dose double whatever the bottle of excel says and it usually takes 2-4 days of treatment to kill the algae. But turn up the co2 as much as possible right now. Raising the co2 levels will not kill the BBA it will just stop it from growing.
Any updates JCox? I have the same problem but I don't see how I can dose excel over the entire floor of my tank. Will a massive dose of excel like this be harmful? should I just pick small areas and dose over a period of weeks?
That's the weird part. I trimmed my dhg so that it would spread and the parts that got cut now have algae. All the new growth is fine. Is this something I should let run it's course? Let the new growth just keep growing. Does this stuff go away after a while?
bba never goes away. You have to manually remove or kill it. And then adjust your parameters. If it comes back that means more adjusting and killing is required. It's a process that takes many months...
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