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BBA is killing me! Thinking about going low-tech because of it

11K views 64 replies 21 participants last post by  shinycard255 
#1 ·
So BBA has been the death of me. I have been battling it for at least 6 months, if not longer. I thought I had a grip on it at one point in time because it stopped spreading and started diminishing, but it's starting to spread again.

I've tried numerous things to try and stop it, but yet to no avail, it still comes out ahead. I've tried tweaking the CO2 input so I have a more consistent amount in the water by adjusting when the CO2 comes on/off in comparison to the lights. I've tried spot treating the bad areas with both H2O2 and Excel. I've turned over the flourite that has BBA on it so that the BBA doesn't get anymore light. I've tweaked the amount of light over the tank. (Obviously, I didn't do all of these at once, but over the course of the past 6+ months that I've been battling it)

I don't know what to do anymore. I've read over a bunch of the threads about BBA and I've tried almost all those suggestions as well. The BBA just looks so nasty and I can't stand looking at it anymore.

Any other suggestions before I pull the plug on my high-tech setup and go back to low-tech?
 
#2 ·
I had a BBA problem too, got rid of it by using Easy Carbo, almost twice the recommended dose daily, for a week or 6 (shrimp, snails, fish were fine). Flourish Excel would have been fine too. And I removed a reflector of the back one of the 2 T5 tubes (Juwel Rio 125) as it gave too much light on the background.
 
#5 ·
Unless you lay all the details out on the table, you'll get generic answers.

Some of this is in your 60G thread, but we have no idea about current lighting schedule/distance, ferts, etc.

A pic of the algae in question can be useful. Several types are commonly called BBA.

Is the algae on the substrate in a high or low flow area, or distributed evenly? Is it on plants? Particular ones? Any noticeable relation to lighting distance or high/low flow there?
 
#6 · (Edited)
Yes, it is my 60G (I can never find time to update my journals anymore)

My current set-up:
-Lights are 2x T5HO (meant for hydroponics) 12" above tank. Puts me at ~45-50 par at the substrate
-5lb CO2 tank with Fisher dual gauge regulator, Brass CGA inlet, burkert solenoid, Ideal needle valve running at ~6bps (hard to count)
-EI dosing per Yet Another Nutrient Calculator on a 60G tank (was dry dosing, just switched over to liquid)
-Dirt capped with Flourite
-60% WC weekly

CO2 schedule
11am-2:30pm & 5pm-8:30pm

Light schedule
1pm-4pm & 6pm-10pm

pics (I'm ashamed to show them :icon_frow):










All of it is scattered throughout the tanks. The most is on my Anubias. It grows on my Anubias Nana and Amazon Sword the most, then usually on equipment and the substrate. I will probably end up cutting that leaf off of the Anubias and a few other leaves as well. The Anubias and Amazon Sword are both in very high light areas of the tank. They both get hit with a lot of light. I've also heard that Flourite likes BBA, but that may be a myth, who knows. The algae is found in both high and low flow areas, it seems to like both.

A few months ago I moved my powerhead to the other side of the tank so now the flow out of the canister filter is getting blown out towards the front glass pane and to the other side, while the powerhead blows from the other side along the back wall. I used to have both on the same side, not sure if that would have anything to do with it.

If you have any other questions, just ask
 
#8 ·
If it makes you feel any better (and I know it won't) I hear the CO2 mantra over and over and over and over about BBA. Riddle me this: I have plenty of NO3, PO4, K, CSM+B and FE, 5+ BPS CO2, bright yellow on the BC, with 6500k CFLs 8 hours a day, on timers, with 50% weekly WCs and using Wet's calculator for fert dosing EI. Yet:

I get BBA growing out of the CO2 spray bar holes coming from the Cerges reactor.

...concentrate on the plants they say....

Going on almost a year fight here....
 
#9 ·
What is your tank equipment? filter? total flow gph?

According to James's Planted Tank.net the cause of the problem is:
In a high light tank it is an indication of low or fluctuating CO2 levels or not enough water circulation around the plants. In a low light tank it is often due to changing CO2 levels.

If you got your co2 worked out, I think you have a low flow problem in the tank.

I would recommend leaving your co2 constantly on like 1-2 hours on before the light goes on and 1 hour before the light goes off.
 
#11 ·
Lower your tank temp. Constant 65-70f if livestock will be ok.

What is your current temp?

I has a lot of BBA when I was closer to 80f and I even had 2 pressurized co2 systems with EI dosing and did all kinds of thing about light.

I don't want to sound like I'm telling everyone have a colder tank as a solution for all issues, but algae seems to behave better now.

The other factor I believe* had something to do is good flow and over filtration.

I wasn't doing water changes. Every 6 months like 20%... Using RO/DI water for top offs.


* i believe = I'm not certain.
 
#12 ·
Current temp is 75˚.

I just started doing water changes with RO/DI water mixed with regular tap water within the past few weeks. I top off with RO/DI water daily, about 1/3 gallon.

It is possible that the flow in my tank has to change a bit. I'm going to move the powerhead back to the same side as my filter output and see how everything goes over the next few weeks. I'm also going to try to get rid of as much of it as I can this weekend during my usual WC.
 
#14 ·
It is possible that the flow in my tank has to change a bit. I'm going to move the powerhead back to the same side as my filter output and see how everything goes over the next few weeks. I'm also going to try to get rid of as much of it as I can this weekend during my usual WC.
Ohhh... yea... make sure your ouput doesn't counteract each other out. I like to make one continously loop.
 
#15 ·
Shinycard,

Thanks for being brave and sharing those pictures. Most of us have seen similar in our own tanks at some point.

Nothing in the additional info is jumping out at me as the culprit. I see you have a drop checker, and assume you are using a proper 4°KH solution. I see also you've reduced light, which *did* look excessive six months ago or less.

Once you reach this extreme level of algae infestation, correcting an underlying problem typically has little impact on this kind of algae. It seems to be able to modify its own environment to be favorable for continued growth, even beyond the obvious detrimental health impact on plants.

Gotta hit it hard to turn a tank like this around. Wipe out all you can in one pass. If you haven't tried the Excel overdose whole tank treatment yet, by all means do it. It works well most of the time. If you have tried that and it failed, I have an interesting (but experimental) treatment that's much more potent.
 
#16 ·
I can empathize with you. I've had my tank for 5 years and have always had BBA. I've read all the threads on BBA, tried all the solutions, been there done that, and still have BBA.

All I can say is be very careful when spot treating BBA with Excel. I usually ended up with dead leaves wherever I spot treated. I used to use Excel diluted 2 to 1 in the syringe and even though the BBA died, the leaves eventually always died too. Its like the Excel killed the leaf weeks later or once infected with BBA, death was inevitable.
 
#17 ·
Yes, proper 4˚KH solution in the DC. Yes, the light was excessive a few months ago, which is why I toned it back some. I'm pruning back most of the leaves and am dipping the equipment in a H2O2/water solution.

Excel overdose is doing 2x the daily amount, correct?

Not sure if I'm willing to try out something experimental. If worst comes to worst, I'm just going low-tech
 
#19 ·
Honestly, I wouldn't bother worrying about the drop checker solution. Plant health and livestock will tell you where you need to go with it. Neither of my tanks have them and both have different diffusion methods...however the only algae I get in either of them is the occasional GDA. The tank will tell you what you need to do. Trust it. ;)
 
#22 ·
So a bit of an update...

I pulled all my equipment out of the tank last week and dipped into a 3:1 (tap:h2o2) solution which killed off most of the BBA. I've started turning over some of my substrate as to cover up the BBA growing on it. I'm most likely going to start spot treating my anubias tonight to get any extra BBA off of it. Powerhead and filter output are both on the same side of the tank now (hoping that will help with flow issues). Changed out the 4dkh solution in my DC. I'm also topping my tank off daily with RO water since it's an open top tank.

kevmo, still reading through the 27pg topic you referred me to
 
#23 ·
I'm currently battling it too right now. For my 55 gallon I'm spot treating 5mil of flourish excel and 2-3 hours later 5ml of algaefix (don't over dose... your fish may act a little strange but they will be fine in an hour but this stuff will kill your shrimp). I turn filter off and start spot treatments and turn filter on 5 mins later. works like a charm. BBA turns pink in a few hours and then turns white after a day or two. After that i scrape it off or my cleanup crew has taking care of it. I'm now at the two week mark and barely see it anywhere. :bounce:
 
#29 ·
Correct CO2 does help in many situations, but let's get real it's not an algeacide. It will only make a big difference if there is enough fast growing plant mass. How many LFS tanks look like the tanks in the pictures that the OP posted. Most of those tanks are lowlight, but have BBA growing everywhere. Poor maintenance and high organic load. Try putting CO2 in those tanks and see if it helps. You need to hit BBA from all ends and don't try to figure it out. You can reduce light duration, keep up with water changes, add carbon/organic waste remover, add plant mass and you eventually see your BBA problems go away. Using excel or glutaraldehyde to rid your tank of BBA is really not a solution IMO.
 
#30 · (Edited)
You can reduce light duration
Already did this. I went from 4x 55W T5HOs 18" above the tank to 2x 55W T5HOs 12" above the tank. I believe I also went from 8, down to 7 hours a day

Keep up with water changes
I do this regularly on Sundays with around 60% water changes. I have been doing WCs on Sundays from day 1 (kinda my thing).

Add carbon/organic waste remover
Never thought of doing this, since I've always read you don't want to add carbon to a planted tank due to it taking out the fertilizer, but I've also read that that's a myth as well... so not sure about this one. I could give it a shot for a few weeks and see what happens.

Add plant mass

I've got quite a bit of plants in this tank already. I feel like I don't have much more room in this tank for more

I know that using Excel or H2O2 is only a "cover up" or "quick fix" and I need to find the root cause, but I've been trying to make it disappear for the past several months (as have many others out there)
 
#31 ·
I would definitely do the organic removal thing. I always do that from day one to lessen the change of anything starting along with a short light duration and seeding of the bio-filter. Do you have plants that grow or mostly slow growers, etc taking up most of the space. I guess I'll see that from the pic. The whole carbon is bad for plants is really alot of BS. If you have algae issues or want to prevent algae issues don't hesitate to use carbon and/or organic waste removal media.

In addition to changing water do you remove dead leaves regularly and what is your fish load and feeding. The cleanliness of the water is key especially if you have already reducing lighting, etc. I'm no a big fan of dirt bottoms, but does that get stirred up at all?
 
#36 ·
I updated my previous post with a pic of the tank.

I'll get my hands on some carbon and toss those in a for a few weeks and see if it helps.

I do try to prune back what I can when I see it. I'm assuming any dead plant matter doesn't help out much?

Fish load is 2 angelfish, 10 ornate tetras, 5 sterbai cory cats, 3 otos, 1 bristlenose pleco. I feed every other day at night.

No, the substrate does not get stirred up either.

bba comes from CO2 problems, yes. but whether it can be a sign of CO2 flux, or overall insufficiency, i cant say; probably both induce it equally well.
light drive CO2 need. the more light you have, the more CO2 you need. its a balancing act.
i do not use a drop checker. used to, but then trashed it. i used to keep it green in my ADA 30C, and my CO2 was not high enough (my tank had a ph of 6.7 at that time). then i turned up the CO2 til it turned yellow and my tank had a ph of 6.2 (i keep mentioning ph cuz i keep my CO2 on a ph controller, and can indicate how much more im putting relative to the previous value). but i still had some CO2 problems, including BBA. a while later, i removed the drop checker and started paying attention to my plants instead to see what they say.
got the tank to this (with a ph of 5.4):


the drop checker was giving me a false answer. its not the best tool in the world.
but look at the other part of the picture. that tank used to have BBA problems, and it was saved.
good CO2, flow, and nutrients to encourage plant vigor and halt BBA growth, and some occasional excel to kill what BBA was still there was all it took. simple, but only in retrospect.
I've heard that the drop checker really isn't that accurate, it just gives you a rough idea.

Now, lets say I do have low CO2 in the tank, how would I be able to tell from my plants that I have low CO2? That's the part that I'm stumped on. Watch the plants, I understand, but what am I looking for exactly? I'm assuming better and more luscious growth, right?

I've already pushed my CO2 to where my fish were gasping for air, so I turned it down a little bit and have left it there since.
 
#35 ·
40b with inert blasting grit sub. Tank set up 1 year. 50+% WC every Sunday. NO3 ~40-60 ppm. Dose KH2PO4, KSO4, CSM+B per Wet's calculator. FE when I think about it. No other algae issues.

I received a "gift" of bba along with a batch of plants someone gave me from their soon-to-be-torn-down tank. I didn't bleach them, and what a mistake. I have battled it for 8+ months now, using the usual techniques. It grows everywhere. I do EI and 5 bps pressurized CO2, three 23w CFLs on 9 hours a day. Cerges reactor on a closed loop pump. Drop checker canary yellow on opposite side of tank from CO2 spray bars. FX5 through spray bars. Plenty of water movement... Parameters are fine. Chock full of stems and crypts.

I have BBA growing at each hole on the spray bar. Nice beautiful tufts that I have to scrub off with a toothbrush after I soak the bar in strong bleach solution for 2 hours....


I put 6 American Flag fish in this tank, and I can say without a doubt, the bba is disappearing. I am impressed with these beautiful fish. But...bba? Yea, tell me all about parameters and this and that. My experience is a bit different on this one.
 
#37 ·
Looking at this thread and all the dogmatic answers makes me SO glad I quit CO2 and went back to low-tech. I'm sure that there is some good information here, but my tank is finally algae free, lush, and green and I am pretty happy!

still trying to sell my CO2 setup, though!
 
#51 ·
I keep thinking about doing that (starting up the CO2), but there is no algae and the plants are beautiful so the only effect would be that the plants might grow faster. I don't need any extra maintenance so I am just leaving it as is and trying to sell the CO2 system.

Actually, I'm sort of leaning the other way lately. I am going for low maintenance, low tech, low light and seeing how easy this can be! My technique is to use easy plants, hardy fish, and lots of diversity (snails, shrimp, frog, loaches, etc). For the last few months I've done maintenance exactly 1 time per month (huge w/c/) and the tank is ship shape!!
 
#53 ·
I see you give this advice over and over, but the fact that you won't even consider that there might be exceptional cases seems to be a bit too rigid of a mindset to me. I don't want CO2 in my low light tank, like I said, and the fact that you haven't seen something in 20 years doesn't mean it isn't true.

Respectfully, your advice didn't work for me and it's not clear to me that it's 'fact' that CO2 correlates so closely to algae.
 
#56 ·
..and it's not clear to me that it's 'fact' that CO2 correlates so closely to algae.
Yes it's way to general. This is 'The Planted tank' not 'The Heavily Planted Tank. The CO2 will only buy you so much since it's directly related to plant mass. Of course light, waste load and other factors are at play, but I see so much advice to correct CO2 before anyone even sees the OP's tank. Why does CO2 work at all. The plants increase uptake and get rid of nh3, etc in the WC. It's not an Algaecide like the way Excel is used. It needs good plant mass to be effective.
 
#54 ·
Thanks for all the info. A) So I'm lead to belive BBA colonizes when CO2 is deficient or when it's levels are inconsistent. B)Also if the plants are growing and doing well, then there will be no black brush algae colonizing. From my encounters with BBA, I could see both of those hypotheses being true.

A few general observations: In a tank with no supplemental carbon and very high light, I had no BBA until I did water changes with city tap water. The more water changes I did, the more this stuff would colonize, but if used RO water, I had no more colonizing. Based on what I've read here, I would imagine the tap water was high in CO2, and the temporary rise in CO2 spurred the BBA colonization.

Regarding B) generally when the plants are growing really well, the BBA is not spreading. Now is this because the CO2 levels, and/or perhaps the tank conditions are stable and therefore the stimuli for BBA to colonize are not there, or is there some sort of allelopathic effect that is only generated by growing plants that keeps the algae from colonizing? I was reading through an awful planted tank book a few months ago, and that was one of the nice sentimental points the book made (healthy plants will produce allelopathic chemicals that inhibit algae), which I have not seen talked about much outside that book. Since the book had so much misinformation I have to think that Idea could be bogus as well.

Finally my last mixed question/statement. Would the build up of CO2 at night, if you run it 24/7, promote BBA colonization?

Oh one more, has anyone looked into the life cycle of the BBA? Anyone know the Latin name? I'm guessing there are some spores being exchanged, and probably some environmental cues that trigger their development and release? If we knew exactly how this stuff operated we would have a much better chance not getting it in the first place.
 
#60 ·
Thanks for all the info. A) So I'm lead to belive BBA colonizes when CO2 is deficient or when it's levels are inconsistent. B)Also if the plants are growing and doing well, then there will be no black brush algae colonizing. From my encounters with BBA, I could see both of those hypotheses being true.
Yep I'd agree with that.

A few general observations: In a tank with no supplemental carbon and very high light, I had no BBA until I did water changes with city tap water. The more water changes I did, the more this stuff would colonize, but if used RO water, I had no more colonizing. Based on what I've read here, I would imagine the tap water was high in CO2, and the temporary rise in CO2 spurred the BBA colonization.
Yep, I'd agree with that also.
What might you do to test to make sure?
Degas the tap water really well, then use that for water changes by slow exchange without exposing the plants to air(this will quickly supply them with a lot of CO2 from the air exchange).

You might even try this without degassing the tap water.

Then see if you get BBA.

If not, and then you repeat the test while exposing the plants to air, then you have a a much much more likely culprit.

Plants are like a factory ina way. If you sudden increase production say 10X faster, but do not account for downstream production or it's justa blast through the factory, this upsets the entire assembly line.

It takes awhile to get things back in order.

Plant's enzymes have trouble readjusting and this seems to give the algae a signal( no clue how), maybe the sudden rapid change in CO2 is a good signal itself?

Like your tank and Dave's non CO2 tank, the plants did in fact adapt to LOW CO2. They grow, just slower. when you suddenly add a lot of CO2, this throws everything into Chaos for the plants.

If you live in a stream or lake/pond etc, and suddenly there's a large increase in CO2.........this means there's likely nutrients along with that CO2 since it's likely the CO2 is from organic decaying matter that runoff added from the valley/watershed around the water. Not a bad cue to start growing in a good spot if you are an alga.

Better than say O2 levels, or nutrient levels. But those likely play some role also.

Still, we find nice plants growing well in natural systems where the CO2 is stable. These spring fed systems have been in wonderful shape with plants for 500 years in some cases in Florida(The priest took notes that went with Ponce de Leon in his search of the fountain of youth in Florida). Those same springs still, have lush beds of aquatic plants.

Regarding B) generally when the plants are growing really well, the BBA is not spreading. Now is this because the CO2 levels, and/or perhaps the tank conditions are stable and therefore the stimuli for BBA to colonize are not there, or is there some sort of allelopathic effect that is only generated by growing plants that keeps the algae from colonizing? I was reading through an awful planted tank book a few months ago, and that was one of the nice sentimental points the book made (healthy plants will produce allelopathic chemicals that inhibit algae), which I have not seen talked about much outside that book. Since the book had so much misinformation I have to think that Idea could be bogus as well.
I refuted this a few times, so did Ole, you can search for more on allelopathy. I provided a few methods to test for controls. Also, what sitb likelihood that all 400+ species/types of aquatic plants all produce the same chemical cocktail that works on all algae equally in many tanks with many different biomass and growth rates?

A few Billion to one might be generous odds. And that's just one of the issues with the observation.

Finally my last mixed question/statement. Would the build up of CO2 at night, if you run it 24/7, promote BBA colonization?

Oh one more, has anyone looked into the life cycle of the BBA? Anyone know the Latin name? I'm guessing there are some spores being exchanged, and probably some environmental cues that trigger their development and release? If we knew exactly how this stuff operated we would have a much better chance not getting it in the first place.
I doubt that BBA is ever CO2 limited, nor any algae for that matter.
Plants? Certainly, this is very very common. Like palnts, the algae only use CO2 during the day time, maybe a few minutes after sunset, but not much more than few minutes after.

Audouinella is the genus.

Common in streams with 5-10 ppm of CO2(Sheath and Wehr Freshwater Algae of North America, 2003).

You can find plenty on this topic on google.
 
#55 ·
hmmmmm check out Nicko's flow thread & filter thread. You might think diffrently.

someone probably already said this but..... turn off your equipment before doing the excel kill BBA thing. best to use a syringe and douse offending areas very slowly and limit hand/arm movement.
let it stand for 10 -15 min. Then do WC - add macro ferts- excel & micos - If you do it right ....ut will be all gone in less than 2 weeks. However heed the CO2 warnings - get a drop checker and a good needle valve ( not a clippard - go for a NV-55) GLA sells them.

HTH
 
#59 ·
Personally I feel Co2 is part of it, but is it the biggest part of keeping BBA and other algae away? Why is the water change so essential to keeping things pristine? Pretty simple to me your diluting any nitro organic decay, but at the same time your creating fluxing co2 levels are you not? If you increase water changes to every day are you going to get more algae because of the constant co2 flux. I don't think so.
 
#61 ·
The control for that is simple:" use activated carbon(AC), same for allelopathic chemicals, add AC. This removes those organic chemicals effectively.

Do we see less BBA in tanks where they use AC? Purigen?
Etc.........

You can also add organic forms of N, say more fish, more fish food etc. Or add NH4, say urea or NH4Cl.

I've done it and postulated a long time ago that NH4 was a potential inducer for Green water. But I was able later to add 0.8 ppm per day of NH4Cl without any Green water or algae blooms.

I tried fish loading, progressively adding more and more bait minnows till I got a crash, GW, followed by staghorn and finally some BBA. About 100 3" bait minnows ina 25 Gal tank with foreground rug plants only. A stemy planted tank would require a lot of fish for this to occur.

I think works more like this:
If you switch to Daily water changes then this becomes more stable(CO2).
If you do it say one day a week, then it's less stable. Daily water changes works pretty well with CO2. Dose after etc, we do this a lot when there are "issues" and it does tend to fix many "issues". Folks experience excellent growth post water change day.

It's those days in between that cause issues if the CO2 is poor.

I do 2x a week for some tanks, once a week for others, once a month for some. Generally based on how much pruning/moving weeds around I do and light umols. Fish loads are quite large for all 3 tanks.
CO2/very high light tank has the CO2 around 55ppm. A couple of Hair algae issues.
CO2/mid light(180) has CO2 about 70 ppm. Virtually no issues.
CO2/low light 70 Gal, no issues, CO2 is about 50ppm.
O2 is 7 ppm to about 9.5 ppm depending on time of day.

Every so often, the CO2 will run out and I'll not notice or catch it for 1-3 days etc. Plants seem okay with this overall, algae not an issue, if you go a week etc, then?

The other issue I had when using disc and some diffusers: they did not add enough CO2 in the start of the day cycle. If i measured later in the day, I had ample CO2, if I measured every 15 min from light= 0, till light on for 2 hours, I had much less.

In other tanks, the built in overflows degassed too much to keep up with the CO2 delivery system. I would gas fish or not have enough CO2, very hard to balance that. Adding a bean animal or other type of prefilter made this issue go away.

Still, all these things tend to get back to CO2. It's(CO2) not a simple thing.
 
#62 ·
I agree with the comments above. Co2 is not a simple thing since I've been keeping track of it with a co2 sensor.

CO2 is not an algaecide. It's just that you create conditions in your tank to cause the nasty hairy BBa growth. It's always around in some form or another. You'd want invisible form. So keep the co2 stable and appropriate to your light levels.


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