[TheNewEra]

I set up a new 30 gallon about 2 months ago and it's been going pretty well, most plants are doing really well and have grown incredibly fast in the last few weeks. Still having some slight issues with my repens, lost more than 100 of the 150 I initially planted. Good news is that the ones that did survive are growing pretty thick and bushy.

Anyhow, its running under 40 lumen per liter lights and pressurized co2 with the drop checker at a beautiful grass green color. Dosing 5 ml macro with K+ 3 days a week and 5 ml of micro 3 dayes a week. CO2 output is stable as far as I can tell, using a double gauged regulator with a 2 way splitter.

I still have some green algae problems, green hair growing on the hardscape and some green thread algae on the substrate. Figured that would solve itself over time as the tank becomes more stable. However a few days ago I was trimming some of my Christmas moss and found that there is quite a lot of BBA growing underneath! Why is this happening? I don't have any BBA anywhere else and I don't really understand what caused this.

Any info, tips, tricks and help is appreciated! On both my BBA problem and maybe also on the green algae problems should you know what I can do to fix that. If I left out any info please let me know.

 

[Plinkploop]

Bba you can spot treat and manually removing as much as possible with filters off. It's a tough one. My 40b is perpetually plagued- rotting driftwood and direct sunlight for me. For thread algae check co2 and possibly phosphates. I'm not 100% on if it's low or high or just not balanced with nitrogen. I'm better at growing algae than getting rid of it lol- I'm enjoying seeing responses in the various algae I'm encountering. I haven't had thread yet, but I think I see some developing in my cube 😉 this'll be my next test in blind fert balancing

 

[TheNewEra]

Bba you can spot treat and manually removing as much as possible with filters off. It's a tough one. My 40b is perpetually plagued- rotting driftwood and direct sunlight for me. For thread algae check co2 and possibly phosphates. I'm not 100% on if it's low or high or just not balanced with nitrogen. I'm better at growing algae than getting rid of it lol- I'm enjoying seeing responses in the various algae I'm encountering. I haven't had thread yet, but I think I see some developing in my cube 😉 this'll be my next test in blind fert balancing

Wow, thought I already clicked post! Sorry Plink.


Unfortunately I can't do spot treating, all the bba is underneath the moss. If I spot treat I'm sure I'll kill the moss along with the bba. It might be the co2 but if it is I might be farther from home. Drop checker is a vivid green now, I tried upping the co2 but with 1 bps extra I was already in the yellow so I dialed it back a bit.

I'll look a bit more into the nitrogen, it might be imbalanced but my tank is still very understocked and the liquids I add are as instructed.

Could it be from any of the moss underneath that died because of the new growth?

 

[Plinkploop]

Might be from dead moss. I've noticed my java moss loves to pick up bba. I haven't had a problem with spot treating with excel for algae, I won't use peroxide, though, because I have had issues with that and moss.

 

[Spike the BNP]

OP, can you pull the hardscape and spray it with a little hydrogen-peroxide? That keeps the BBA away for quite some time. Spray it, let it kill the BBA for about 5 minutes, rinse, and put back in your tank. It'll also give the plants a little oxygen.

 

[Cajun Charlie]

A week ago my 130 liter (34.4 gallon) low tech Tropiquarium 88 community tank with 10 plants, an undergravel filter and a submersible Fluval, and a full load of mostly tetras, with a plecostomus and a corydoras, had become infested with BBA all over the gravel and starting to coat the petrified wood decor and some of the plants. I change 5 or 10 gallons a week treated with Prime and Flourish. I started carefully dosing with Flourish Excel, but I didn’t want to rely only on chemicals, so after some further research I got some livestock: 3 Dalmatian mollies, 3 nerite snails, 3 amano shrimp, and 3 red cherry shrimps. The shrimps disappeared and are so small that they didn’t seem to have much effect. I didn’t see any of them for a week until I saw one amano briefly yesterday. But the mollies were working very hard with visible results, and the nerites were doing a number on the hard surfaces, so the very next day I got 3 more of each. Now after a week the BBA is almost all gone, like 90% gone, and every day there is less of it. My plants are green again, and their fur coats are almost completely gone. The decor and gravel are so clean that poor pleco no longer trails a long string all the time (but the mollies do). I haven’t had to clean the ‘windows’ all week. I haven’t used Excel the last 3 or 4 days. I’m convinced the mollies and nerites have just about finished solving my BBA problem and will keep it under control.