BBA ever present - what am I missing?

[Hoppy]

Reduce the light intensity below 40-50 micromols of PAR at the substrate, and BBA becomes just a minor nuisance. I doubt that we can ever totally eliminate it, so we can ignore its threat, but for reasons I don't really understand, if you can provide all of the CO2 the plants need, and not be stunted from a shortage of carbon, BBA tend not to be a problem. With low light, the plants don't grow fast enough to need much carbon, so BBA isn't a big problem. With high light it is hard to get enough CO2 in the water to meet the plants needs, so BBA is a continual threat.

Someone else will have to figure out why that could be true, but it has been found to be true by a lot of people. When someone comes up with a different way to avoid BBA problems I will be one of the first to offer congratulations. (And, it won't be the first time I was wrong.)

[viwwo]

"but weekly spot dosing of excel"
really?? doing excel as spot dosing... I must try.

Originally Posted by kubalik

I also have two tanks: one high tech with co2 , the other one is low tech with no co2 .
The high tech always have bba , but weekly spot dosing of excel keeps it in check.
The plants in my low tech came from my high tech , so I was sure I was going to have same problem , to my surprise the BBA in my low tech didn't grow till the filter get clogged up while I was away. Once filter was cleaned , bba gave up , till I overstocked the tank. I then invested in TDS meter and started topping the tank off with RO water instead of regular tap water . TDS went down from 220+ to 150 and no more BBA .
I really think cleanliness of the water combined with stable parameters of the water is the key for BBA free tank.

[houseofcards]

I've seen BBA in indoor KOI ponds with no direct light and no plants. Would raising the co2 help? Point I'm making is BBA can strike anywhere even in very low light situations. If the tank is really dirty you see this quite often. How many times do you go into LFS and see BBA in some very poorly light setups? Keeping the tank clean of organic waste allows much moer flexibility with everything.

[rockwood]

Well, my kH is really high, and GH just slightly high. I'm sure I'm over 200-250 TDS at least. So the idea of watching TDS and adding RO water could be one of the "keys". I have noticed most of the guys who run really high light tanks successfully (Tom, Speedie, etc.) all have pretty soft water. I also know when I was at my parents house with this tank (they have well water and it's reasonably soft too) I didn't have these issues. Both places I've lived with municipal water systems, BBA has been an issue from the get-go. And I haven't done anything drastically different from place to place.

It IS probably time to clean the filters.

I put a large plant mass in within the first week (big order from AP.com) I'm running purigen in the 2217. The 2217 was used to re-establish the bio from the very beginning (it was running on the tank pre-move.)

I have cut back on the lighting, and I got home early enough today to see it. It looks like the BBA is simply holding ground but not spreading like it was. That's good.

I'm having issues with my Ludwiga Glandulosa dropping leaves and having a bare stem at the bottom. What can I do to help with that? I thought that was a light issue and obviously I can't add more light..... so what to do?