View Full Version : More on BGA - But is it really?
Alrighty, So here's the scoop. I'm 95% certain that this is BGA that I'm fighting in my GF's tank. Increasing light (wattage, now at 276Watts, and duration, 12 hours) has had no significant effect nor has artificially keeping the Nitrates up in the 10-15ppm range. We're looking to stand on our last leg here and try a blackout period of 4-5 days and hope everything makes it through alright and if that doesn't work we'll be dropping some antibiotics into the tank.
For the other 5% of me that's not sure - A photo is worth posting. Keep in mind both thanks, my girl's and mine, were both cleaned about 3 days ago.
chronic
02-28-2009, 09:03 AM
I had a small battle with bga a month and some ago.
I still have some, not much though...
For me, I think my biggest problem was the arogonite sand, and expired flourescent bulbs in a freshwater set up.
since then I've changed to some 32watt tubes, black flourish sand (or what ever its called) and some regular black sand.
The first two weeks I didn't have any more bga, but then it came back for a short period. And then now I get small traces every now and again. I do two water changes a week. I pick the bga out by hand. I read that interrupting the lighting cycle screws with it alot.
Otherwise, I dont know that I am much help lol I read areation helps, flow, interrupted lighting, water changes... But... I dont know if anyone really knows how to just kill it.
I was lucky in my battles in comparison to others I read about. I hope you have an easy battle too since some people have no other option besides total tank break down and sterilization. Good luck man!
Well, this evening we scrubbed and siphoned out as much of the stuff as possible, and effectively did an 80% water change in the process and re-spiked the tank to get the NO3 levels back where they were. The tank is going on its black-out cycle and I'm hoping we don't lose anything in the process besides the BGA.
The tubes are new in all the fixtures so blaming a phosphor color shift is out. The tank itself exchanges half of its water every minute. I did add an air stone to the tank to drive the DO up just as a precaution since the tank itself will be covered with a blanket for the next few days and hopefully to mitigate any increase in oxygen demand due to decay which might occur during that time.
I for one am still confused as to how this stuff even arrived, much less managed to get such a firm foothold in the tank.
Alfcea
02-28-2009, 05:21 PM
I thought you had already gotten rid of it with the medication for ich! Hmmm... I wonder.... if you hadn't spiked the water... Are you using NaNO3? Maybe if you keep the nitrates as low as possible for a couple of weeks... I don't think your plants will suffer much if it is not sustained, but that might help you along with your battle against cyano. By the way, I am not sure if it is cyano either, though. Does it smell?
It doesn't really smell too much, however it has pretty much every other characteristic of BGA. I thought the Ich meds would work on it too, however after the fact I read that it'll only work on "anaerobic" bacteria. Something I'd overlooked previously (I feel dumb now lol).
Heliwyr
03-01-2009, 08:04 AM
Won't BGA (cynobacteria) go away if you increase the current? I seem to remember reading that somewhere. It's something you could try anyway.
The tank already sees about half of the bulk water in the tank cycled through pumps and powerheads every minute. It's a 55 gallon tank and it moves around 1500gph as it is.
Alfcea - The tank originally had a zero NO3 reading when the cyano took hold. The number and size of fish in the tank coupled with the plants keep the tank at low NO3 readings by default. I started spiking the tank in the hopes that we'd be able to controll/eliminate the cyano when it became apparent that it was starting to grow in an uncontrolled manner in the tank.
The "algae" itself is a relatively long (~1cm) mono-filamentous strand which grow in loosely attached sheets across the glass and over just about anything else. The scraped sheets definitely take on a blue/green hue in a pile or on the sand. I don't have access to a microscope of any quality anymore so taking a more precise look at this stuff isn't in the cards.
bushwhacker
03-01-2009, 07:52 PM
if its growing in sheets it more than likely BGA, that stuff is horrible .. i tried upping the lights and photo period, a powerhead for more current, all the other things but eventually i had to get the erithromicin and killed it off 1/2 doses for 4 days did it but it will come back so get an extra box or so
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