[Hardstuff]

I have been battling BBA for many many months almost to the point I felt like just taking the tanks down. But than I said to myself I would be destroying one of natures great experiments! Nothing to lose , only to gain actually.

I am not going to mention what I tried only what seemed to work. I am in agreement with the many that when they just bump up the CO2 they only grew more BBA, in fact it grows all over diffusers because that's what happened to me as well! Does flow have a cause an effect ? Yes but may be the least. Does CO2 by itself claimed by many experts & those that follow agree. No it does not seem at all that its strictly about CO2! CO2 seems to be a trigger but from my experience something else is fueling it. Find out what fuels it & you will slow or hurt it. CO2 still should be steady but does not seem to be needed at extremes below 30ppms. That would be a limit in most cases. I still dose separate Fe an as a test the Fe does now not seem to make it worse, it may only be If PO4 & DOC's get out of hand along with you know, dirty filters & substrates that could use a little work& better Redox!

I still use excel , but I have cut that down to 1/5 the dose every couple days which would really mean 1/6 or 1/8 th the dose. I have been adding peroxide directly to the water in my case 1 cap every few days at night only , in theory bringing more 02 into the system. At some point I may stop the peroxide altogether to test the system more as well as the excel. Some may say that its the excel mostly thats killing bba in my tanks but I tried that & it helped a little but BBA continued to grow regardless.


What I am about to say may be premature an not exact it is just what I am observing in my tanks. I may report back soon an say well its back but I feel at the very worst I will report back an have a very controllable condition without constant trimming an spot dosing excel & peroxide. Its hard to say but when you watch a tank for 8 months every day & know something has gone wrong you can kinda feel the energy that is gone from better days. That being said here it goes.

I started to think that O2 is playing a role in the growth because of poor redox. So on a hunch I decided to put better aeration in both tanks one with fish one without fish. Both had BBA growing constantly , the short spotty kind. The one without fish would gain a HOB filter with its already 2211 Ehiem. In theory I would be getting better gas exchange at the surface interface . My internal CO2 reactor had to be bumped up to adjust for more degassing of CO2 from the HOB filter. The second tank would get no additional filters this tank I had even more trouble with hinting at the primary problem, DOC's! That tank would get an air stone on a timer at night for 5 hours to move more water an bring more O2 to the plants & filter causing better biological activity from my filter letting my tank go alkaline for at least 10 hours a day in the 7.5 or higher range. BBA does not seem to like that. I use to run my reactors a little later now they turn off 1 - 1.5 hours before lights turn off letting the last of the CO2 degas an the tank gets a head start on alkalinity.

Another thing that BBA does not like is clean filters. Some folks may not be cleaning their filters including myself as well as they could. I would not skip cleaning any component at all especially the hoses. I started cleaning my canisters more often & keeping up with regular substrate cleaning at the bottom sucking up a reasonable amount of organics sector by sector even though its a small tank. My tank water looks crystal clear now & the plants & fish look better as well. Not sure how this works on low tech substrates just yet?

I believe EI dosing in some cases gets out of hand forcing you to do more water changes & it is not possible to test & even know if some nutrients are still building up an fueling more negative algae from excess nutrients. I started cutting back on CSM+B as well dosing one time a week. I even only change my water now every other week & the other tank I go sometimes 3 weeks the one without fish & both tanks do not seem to mind!

The last big factor I will mention will be at conflict with some . That's Phosphates! Plants still need it but the 1-3ppm or more that some are running may be too much for your system. Probably light related. I do not run high par tanks so I tried keeping my PO4 between 0.25-0.50 ppms but not crashing. Normally I run 1-2ppms or more . I also notice that more green algae & green spot is growing again which I have not seen in months. A healthy sign. The green spot may also be competing for nutrients with BBA?
Fe seems in my tanks to make BBA grow more as well but I feel its only when the tank is out of balance & in a funk because of poor redox & high DOC's & low O2 levels as well as dirty filters excess nutrients. I do not agree that every one should run out & get phosphate removing media unless its short lived or you may have to figure something else out to keep levels lower. You still need PO4, you just might have a little too much for your tank, thats all I am saying.

Should have posted during prime time. Hope this helps .

 

[Hardstuff]

Yes, Zorfox you cannot buy a DOC'S test kit anywhere. Most of what you say is correct, but I know my tanks . I know they have turned the corner. An yes experiment rinse & retry. That will be easy. The amount of attention I am giving my small pressurized tanks probably will not continue in the long run. I just have been on a quest to find a resolution to this & I never for a minute believed that CO2 was strictly the cause. It seems to be an inducer but the fuel source needs to be found for it to go away or not do well. Adding O2 at night seems to be the biggest solution to date. Aeration should improve redox & help the beneficial bacteria do its job. People with sumps in theory will have a huge heads up on this provided the sump is kept in clean & a healthy condition.

That being said its not just that simple as I stated earlier. If some things are out of balance even what I am saying may not work. Example, not a high enough biomass, not enough good healthy algae, proper lighting, yes steady CO2 not bouncing around during the photoperiod. Nutrient crashing will cause poor plant growth. EI may have issues for some especially if untestable nutrients build up.

I also did not say I was cutting back on W/C either. As time went by I went to every 2 weeks for a water change long after BBA showed . I just said that running my tanks with the kind of lighting I use with lower amounts of nutrients dosed each week I change my water less. For me every 2 weeks in one tank works & 3 weeks in the one without fish. Regarding Does not make sense with less water changes because of more of a build up up DOC's well, not if you are concentrating on better redox an aeration at night. That's what I have been concentrating on mostly & keeping a close eye on PO4 not to let it crash but keep it low ( 0.25-0.75ppms) seems to be working in all my tanks even low tech dirted one's.

Regarding how it grows in nature. Well I will not try an answer that only thing is what we are doing is really not that natural & actually I do not think we fully understand nature anyway. We have a general idea what is happening on how things work but sometimes you have to have an open mind an say well, maybe there is something that we are missing & need to step back take another look an see if something is going on that we do not understand! It would be arrogant at this point to say this is exactly what is going on out there. Science has been corrected many times over in some cases. Yes I know about the pure water that it loves in nature, but our tanks are different, there will always be something different. Let me see, we have Filters to name something off the top of my head.

I dose very low amounts as stated of excel. It never stopped my bba. Do I think its totally gone ? No I am sure the spores are waiting & yes if you want to pick my tank apart I am sure you could find some trying to stay alive!

But thanks folks, its nice to get some feed back, I really did not want to start a big long thread on this, just to report what I feel will help many, & what has helped my tanks. I know my tanks , I could not stop this stuff from steadily growing now it is fading back so I thought I would let some people know.

 

[Hardstuff]

Regarding filter cleaning

I forgot to mention I changed out my filter sponges on my Fluval on the tank with fish. I also plan on totally changing out the bio media or partly in the near future as well. I found that it did not matter how I cleaned the sponges there was still always organics that could be seen in the cleaning bucket. So I decided to buy new one's. I could not get them totally clean. They have been running for 3-4 weeks at this point.

 

[Hardstuff]

I do not have trouble growing most plants. I do not want to limit CO2. I am not trying to cut ferts to a minimum. I am back dosing Fe again. My tanks are looking like they were 1 year go before I discovered red alga. The water is crystal clear & I have several species growing out of control. My tanks are not in bad shape , probably better than most. The thing is I do not have the budget to run high light tanks now nor do I wish to. These days I feel like practicing water conservation . I am not against high light pressurized systems. I just do not want water changes every week. I did that for over a year an in the end I still got some BBA. Why Tom? O I know not enough CO2. Sorry I do not agree. Well maybe partially.
CO2 needs to be steady , we all know this but I will not go into the same old story about how I cranked up the CO2 & pushed it day after day staring at the tank hour after hour checking levels . Ok how did I really know I had enough. NO, I did not post to defend. Just to report about tanks with an issue that improved. Also my tanks were never really that bad. Some posts I have seen looked extremely bad compared to my tanks. I never had the stuff growing all over everything , just here & there. But that bothered me enough when I checked my nutrient levels & kept them up month after month & cranking the CO2 , even improving enrichment which seemed to help, improved flow but the BBA would not go away even with pure 50% reset r/o water. I started to think it had to be the water , something in the mix. Sometimes my CO2 would be off my target range but I got better at it. I listened to Tom & really targeted the CO2. . I know some on this forum that blame soft water as well. I do not totally agree myself.

As stated , I am not saying CO2 does not factor into the puzzle but thats not what feeds the stuff IMO. Sorry folks if you cannot except that but there are other things going on. Example, why would BBA grow on the highest concentration of CO2? Like growing on hard object delivering CO2 in the tank???? If higher levels of CO2 causes BBA to slow in growth than why does it grow all over the very thing you say keeps it from growing?????? For that reason I do not run diffusers anymore. That was an atomiser not a regular diffuser. I only run reactors now even on small tanks.

IMO medium light tanks do not need the levels of nutrients that high light tanks have so why would it be a bad idea to reduce levels in less light tanks??? Reduce does not mean limit in my book. Limit means crash or near zero IMO. Does nature contain 10-20ppms of nitrate??? Does nature commonly contain 2-5ppms or more of PO4???

I do not agree that CO2 is the only factor. I do agree that if the levels bounce around & are too low during the photo period that could induce BBA. I also believe & I did retain this knowledge from Tom , that even in low tech tanks water change water should be degassed which I do & thus far have not had issues in that format. So I am meeting you half way. However I stand by observation & improving 02 levels has helped my systems more than anything else besides cleaning the filters more & replacing dirty sponges collecting Organic compounds. Which compound? ( hold on let me get my chem book out! ( I see a citation coming.) I also do not agree about using excel while dosing CO2. My tanks were growing like weeds & the water looked extremely clean & clear while doing that. Can some folks dose no excel an have similar results? I am sure they can but they probably run higher par levels with much better fixtures than I run. For the low quality equipment that I run , I have some pretty nice tanks. I enjoy my tanks & a am not an equipment snob as well. I try an get away with less.

If my tanks clear out the BBA & I did what I said I did , nothing special for the CO2 levels than I have been for the last 6-8 months than what do you think? Did I get lucky , even (Tom) says luck does not factor into it???
I will continue to enjoy learning about red algae & I am planning on again enjoying my tanks . With all do respect I agree with a fair amount said about what induces BBA, but I strongly feel that CO2 alone is not the only factor. I believe it induces it if levels get too low or fluctuates too much but if its fuel source is taken away than it will be much less of a problem. But Hay, that statement will be taken wrong unless I continue to explain which I will not. There probably are a dozen other things that could factor in as well like say bio mass in the tank, par, nutrients, CO2, O2 , water quality , filtration, surface agitation, acidification, bacteria, types of plants. The list is endless, like Tom says focus on growing plants & that will get rid of algae. Maybe I want some. If grown correctly , some algae is helpful & natural. I am not into tanks with absolute control anyway , they become sterile looking flower gardens anyway.
As stated before, science stands still when the many follow the given excepted current science of things until one day a discovery is observed & suddenly it changes everything!
If I report back a month later & still degas my tanks at night & continue to have little to no new BBA what would you say than? I got lucky?

 

[Hardstuff]

Ok I forgot to mention something in my last post. It may or may not have anything to do with BBA but I will report it anyway. About the time I started noticing BBA but not really really sure about the timing,I installed new R/O filters that at the time I never thought about checking PO4 levels after changing filters. I noticed my PO4 levels were at 4-5ppms steady & even with 2 water changes a week & zero PO4 dosing I could not figure out where this stuff was coming from. I had 2 shrimp die at the same time so I contributed the levels to that.
Well it turned out one day I tested the R/o & the water was coming out of the system at 4-5 ppm level. So that answered that question! I called the company but they said they were not aware of the issue but said they have read about some carbons admitting PO4 more than others . Long story short I went 2 months like that than they cleared up. Now I flush them better before use & I have not noticed the spike since. There is however even after a good rinse that the PO4 will still stay at 2ppms for a week or 2 even now when new.

Did this not help my situation IMO It did not. But I will never know for sure, it would be hard to repeat.

 

[Hardstuff]

Thanks Zapins

I will read that. I think I followed that for awhile. I wanted to see how it turned out. I use to work for a lab myself. For me it was frustrating getting the ok for samples. There was always something political going on. Questions like what do you want them for??? I was not in position to use the auto autoanalyzer. It was frustrating. But back then I wanted to use it for different kinds of samples.

About this thread why is it taking so long to get results??? I believe the thread has been going on for awhile. Somebody has access to the equipment, right?

 

[Hardstuff]

I will be looking out for the results, thanks. It would not surprise me at all if there was some compound in common between the tank samples with BBA issues compared to clean tanks. No pun intended, Ha, ha , ha!

 

[Hardstuff]

(Thank you very much) Roadmaster ! Thats me as well. Sealed glass box just collecting organics. I have not pushed 2 times a week on water changes but probably would not hurt. Yes I am currently cleaning my canisters 2 times a month but took it one step further, I replaced my sponges as stated earlier in this thread. It did not matter how many times I squeezed my sponges they kept releasing particles out into the rinsing bucket. Some people would miss this but a flashlight does not lie! If you turn out the lights & shine a flashlight down into the bucket otherwise clear looking water could actually be releasing massive amounts of contaminants. This in part could explain why outflow pipes & spraybars grow BBA on them. Also could explain why high flow areas where plants are growing grow BBA all over them. Low flow areas where old leaves are not growing well can not defend algae that well anymore so BBA grows there to. However the low flow areas could also be lower in CO2 adding fuel to a fire triggering more growth?

My tanks are looking cleaner & less BBA growing all the time since I am cleaning the filters more, but they need to be cleaned really well or you could cause more BBA compounds if you will , to be released. I know still theory. Why not entertain it ? Whats the worst thing that will happen? Cleaner filters with BBA still growing. Folks with sumps if kept clean have a big advantage because of more 02 being aerated from the spill box. Provided the sump is sealed properly to minimize CO2 loss.

 

[Hardstuff]

Zapins that was an interesting experiment. That was interesting but from my experience more CO2 usually grew more BBA like others say as well.

I agree with Mistergreen that its the fluctuation that causes spore release & new growth. Thats why I said & will say it again that CO2 is involved , but IMO its the trigger, not the complete fuel source . BBA may have many nutrients that it really uses but I speculate like others that there is a group of compounds specific to fuel the growth organic in nature. What they are we may find out if enough samples are run through the analyzer.

I believe that's why people see new BBA growths after water changes in low tech set ups. I stole that line from Tom but it makes sense. However that ph swing & CO2 surge promotes BBA because other conditions are right for growth. The surge is usually so great tn low tech tanks after non degassed water is used that only the most well maintained systems could defend BBA from growing. I had a basic experimental 10 gallon low tech with cheap lighting low to moderate bio mass growing & when I started doing big water changes not degassed plus adding stronger lighting at the same time BBA grew immediately. Since it grew I added DIY CO2 which helped lower the levels of BBA & I planted more stems as the tank evolved. I dosed EI than added pressurized with an internal reactor & the BBA decreased more but persisted on tank walls & mostly filter parts & the slowest growing or dying leaves.

Now I am at the point a year later & until recently the tank always had a small to moderate problem with BBA but mostly resolved with a slight weekly trim of a few leaves or a stem or two & it looked pretty good. But in the last few weeks I decided to get more aggressive & target organics so I added more filtration & surface agitation & like I said more filter cleaning & water changes not degassed unless I make it after lights out when the tank becomes more alkaline to keep ph & CO2 more stable have I seen much more improvement.

The tank that gets aeration at night which had a worse problem that has fish in it now is doing much better with the BBA. Now in this case the tank moves a full unit from ( 6.6, 6.7-- 7.4-7.6) range in about 4 hours or less. Yet BBA is now struggling to stay alive! The water also looks clearer even though I have not increased water changes. Why , I always felt that tanks water since having BBA growing was not perfectly clear, almost like I could see the organics. Now its crystal clear after aeration at night . Maybe an increase in filter bacteria & the bacteria can do their job better with more alkaline oxygenated water???

Mistergreen said his dirt tanks have high DOC's & no BBA? Well the stable ph & CO2 maybe saving you & or the DOC's that are in your substrate may not be the correct fuel source or correct group of compounds that it prefers . Speculation of course . Also even more important maybe that tank is actually better oxygenated & or alkaline which is better for the filter bacteria. And do you use aged water??? That would be huge because that would degas the water which would keep CO2 more stable.

You would think that lower levels of CO2 would be needed for lower light systems & those tanks still get BBA so that in part would indicate unstable CO2 & or poor flow, & of course high organic nutrient loads from dirty filters & dirty substrate. That could be my issue since I do not run high lights . Besides from high organics I really believe in CO2 tanks that gas stability is critical because unless you have a well maintained sump or very clean canisters if the CO2 becomes unstable during the photo period or beyond could be a BBA producer!

Sorry for the ramble but feel this is important as well. I did as mentioned from was it Zapins? keeping the CO2 stable constantly , I tried that but with out a controller , running a reactor on a timer I kept the CO2 as stable as possible even at night & the BBA grew as usual? I believe stability acid wise is counterproductive especially at night ! Why,bad for the filter bacteria. Thats why I decided to aerate at night an noticed BBA backing down!

Thanks Zorfox for the article , I shall have fun digesting it. Looks really good.

 

[Hardstuff]

I agree mostly especially about being 100% at this point. I am still going though this new experiment that I am performing. Time may tell for me. As far as determining its actual food source, well that may never happen. But who knows? Samples, & more samples tested in a lab.

However yes, most of us cannot measure CO2 levels down to a specific ppm . That being said, we can assume to a large degree especially in a non dirt low tech set up with little to no water changes recently that carbon gas is limited , correct? We can also assume that fresh R/O water or tap water will contain more CO2 gas than said tank. That being said say at 50% new R/O water that has not been degassed will change ph / CO2 levels quickly. I have measured it many times. I know regency , but I also measure new water with digital ph meter.

Leave R/O water out over night & see how it rises in the morning after the CO2 degasses!

 

[Hardstuff]

I just checked the tanks . I am very happy BBA has not come back in any noticeable way on the plants in all my tanks. However BBA still is growing slightly on the back glass on one tank but not on any filter , heater , or powerhead/reactor . I very seldom clean the back glass in that tank, so I am guess flow/ nutrients are playing a part on why it insists growing back there. It is growing down & behind the spray bar . I really do not see that as a problem but I am going to nuke it off with some peroxide later today when I clean the canister. This will be the second time this month I have clean the canister.

I really believe the night time aeration is helping a lot improving redox, & yes I am cranking the CO2 in both tanks. I have been waiting 8 months now I am glad I waited more & tried different things to help the tank because the tank has now turned the corner , I can feel the energy that I have not felt in nearly a year. I am getting 2 or 3 new leaves every other day from the Anubias. Needle leaf ludwigia has puffy green & gold , bronze looking leaves again. The tank is also consuming more nitrates now a good sign.

I am also paying close attention to better surface agitation to help the water not get so acidic & provide more gas exchange.

I will keep this info posted from time to time to see if it holds the test of time.