Black Beard Algae ""HELP""

[220PLANTED]

Tank is about 5 months old and ive just started a BBA problem. Only using seachem flurish 1 cap full 2 times a week and co2 injected ???. I do a 50% water change every friday. I only run my lights 6 hours a day my PH is a constant 7.0 so can anyone tell me what im doing wrong ? and what I need to do.

[PhillipOrigami]

Check the CO2. Often(very often, like really really often) FLUCTUATING CO2 levels cause BBA, usually in addition to a few other things.

We have a sticky on it in the algae section I believe.

[smaug]

Can you post some pics. There is a big difference between black brush and beard algae. One is short and bristly and stays under a half inch in length. Beard algae is long,soft and comes off easily.

[PhillipOrigami]

And one is a lot, lot worse.

[Cory Catfish]

^ Agreed with above.

Also, I had a similar thread a while back. This may give you some ideas or help you:

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/aqua...ad.php?t=94742

[Gogi]

1.Up your light to 8-9 hours, this will give your plants more time to use up excess nutrients that the BBA is thriving on.
2. Monitor your CO2 like Philiporgami said.
3. Cut back on your feeding for fauna and ferts for flora, most common cause of algae is overfeeding.
4. If you can get some water sprite it is excellent in using up excess nutrients in the water column, but it only works if you have high lighting.
5. Right before your weekly W/C prune as much of BBA affected leaves with out killing your plants, then do W/C immediately, BBA releases spores when messed with.
6. Be patient. It will take a long time to recover.
ALL this I have done on my 8 gallon shrimp tank and BBA is losing a lot of ground.

I also had it BBA in my 30 gal community tank. All i did there was 2 things
1. cut back on my feeding, i was overfeeding
2. got a pair of True Siamese Algae Eaters.
two weeks problem solved.

Good luck and do not let the BBA horde break your WILL!!!

[smaug]

1.Up your light to 8-9 hours, this will give your plants more time to use up excess nutrients that the BBA is thriving on.
2. Monitor your CO2 like Philiporgami said.
3. Cut back on your feeding for fauna and ferts for flora, most common cause of algae is overfeeding.
4. If you can get some water sprite it is excellent in using up excess nutrients in the water column, but it only works if you have high lighting.
5. Right before your weekly W/C prune as much of BBA affected leaves with out killing your plants, then do W/C immediately, BBA releases spores when messed with.
6. Be patient. It will take a long time to recover.
ALL this I have done on my 8 gallon shrimp tank and BBA is losing a lot of ground.

I also had it BBA in my 30 gal community tank. All i did there was 2 things
1. cut back on my feeding, i was overfeeding
2. got a pair of True Siamese Algae Eaters.
two weeks problem solved.

Good luck and do not let the BBA horde break your WILL!!!

What on earth did you do with the sae after they at all the bba. They don't belong in a 30gal.

[Lady Hobbs]

I get a bit of it about every 6 months or so.

Depending on your plants, you may not need that much fertilizer if you have slow growing plants. Fast growers need ferts more than the slow growers that will grow slow no matter what. Perhaps you are giving them the right amount of nutrients that make growing easy for them.

I get in there with my scissors and cut off all I can. (Did that yesterday.) Plants like to be trimmed anyway. I have used Flourish Excel but it's a last ditch move on my part.

What lights and plants do you have? Perhaps you don't even need to use the CO2 if you have the low lights and slow growing plants?

[Gogi]

What on earth did you do with the sae after they at all the bba. They don't belong in a 30gal.

I still have them. Why don't they belong in my tank? According to AC's descritpion of the fish it says minimum size tank is 25 gal/100 litrers.

[sheamurai]

I bought an SAE for BBA and all the darn thing eats is flake food.