BBA - problem

[Sokoly]

Dear friends, I have a 5 mounth set tank that is ment to house some wilds in the future. By the time they arrive I put some plants to make it more alive. The tank is 145 gallons, has 4 x 80W T5, preassurised CO2 with a PH controller coming very soon, the substrate is a JBL proflora fertiliser, and it's covered with a silica sand. Although I recently 4 weeks ago started to use the PMDD algae are still present. The problem is I had to through a few beautifull plants because they were all covered in that ....
Fish inhabitants are about 20 cardinals,
8 Corydoras sterbae
8 Otocinclus
14 Amano shrimps
4 Baryacintrus or (L018)
7 Corydoras panda
If you have any advices or experiances please feel free to share.

[paletka]

you have to put a lot more plants to utilize (what is produce by fish; light 7 CO2)

Chris

[KimR]

I agree with Chris, altho I am no expert, but I think you need more plants, IMO (in my opinion) if there isn't enough plant ratio to fish and of course lighting and CO2, then you a) get algae, b) not the best plant growth. There are some good algae cleaners, bristlenose plec, ottos (which you have) & amano shrimp.

[alan j t]

i had the same problems before ,the bba was all over
it sarted to happen when i added more light to my tank
i wanted more growth so i bought more light
the the bba started to creep slowly and using flourish excel alot was getting expensive and dangerous to my fish if a mishap was ever present
cut the light
my tank had 4 t-5 bulbs over the tank and left 2 off for like 4 weeks
the plants were fine and the bba slowly died
then after all the bs was over i put the lights on timer and the tank was given a siesta daily about 1 hr
this was just my experience
so i would either cut the lights or add more plants to soak up the excess nutients to win the battle against the evil algea:D

[Sokoly]

Thanks mates, the Vallisneria grows like crazy and I had to trim it today.It was going to take over the hole tank. Speaking of which - do you scisor it in your tanks at the size (lenth) you want it, or you just let it roam from end to end of the tank?
I quess it will just take some more time till every think sorts out.
I also have another tank that running for 5 years now and I also do the 2 h. blackout daily. Perhaps it helps keep algae at bay?

All the best,
Sokoly

[CARY_GLdiscus]

amano shrimp and cherry shrimp work very well, but you need a large amount of them to be very effective. Plus your discus will probably go after smaller shrimp - pending their size (both the discus and the shrimp!). probably the most effective biological controll animals are going to be siamese algae eaters (the famed SAE) or if you cant locate them, florida flag fish.

Depending how bad your outbreak is you'll want to give them a hand with a combination of manual removal and a blackout to speed the process along.

If you do a blackout, please do a COMPLETE blackout for 5 days. Throw a towel over the tank (or somethign similar to completely block all light). Dont worry about 'just a few mins of light to feed'. Your fish will be fine and even a few mins of light will giove the algae enough of a boost to survive the blackout.


You can also consider doing peroxide dosing if your bba outbreak is just localized to a few small spots. Peroxide can safely be dosed into an aquarium at a rate of 5ml per 20 gals PER DAY. Turn off all pumps and circulation , give the tank a few minutes to settle down, then inject the local algae tufts with a small ammount of the peroxide and allow it to bubble for a few mins. After about 10 mins you can turn your pumps back on and resume normal operation of your aquarium. Please do not excede 5ml per 20 gals per day. This treatment is also effective on hair algae and other types of filimentatious algae's and will not harm higher plants.

Once you get your problem undercontroll, just make sure you balance the ammount of light, the photoperiod, and plants/fertilizer in yoru system to help prevent a re-occurance.

HTH

[Sokoly]

CARY_GLdiskus, this is very interesting method I have never tried. I quess I should turn off the CO2 supply wile doing the blackout?
Will the blackout heart the plants or it will just stagnate their growth.
I will try the peroxide injected directly in the BBA, hopefully it will burn them.Should I do the water change right after the treatement or it will just disosiate in the water column with no ill efects?

Thanks again mate, sorry for so many questions at once.:)


All the best,
Sokoly

[CARY_GLdiscus]

Sokoly,

Yes My friend You got it! a small w/c will be fine to knock back the PH. Don't worry about the blackout either the plants will be fine.

KEEP US POSTED
takecare
Cary Gld!

[plant.one]

During a algae blackout you should cease all co2/fertilization. Your plants will be fine, as they can handle more than 5 days (most plants anyway - 90% of them) of no light.

Please know .. its ALL about balance in a high-tech planted aquarium. Balance of plant mass vs light vs nutrients (co2 included). with the ammount of light you're working with, please write down your entire dosing routine so i can eval it and let you know if anything is missing. If you're doing the origional 'PMDD' routine, its definatly deficent. There are routines that are based on the origional Sears and Colin 'PMDD' paper that work very well that i can help you manage a dosing routine for your aquarium.

The most common 'pmdd' style dosing routine out there is what is referred to as Estimative Indexing - thanks to Tom Barr. This is the dosing style i employ in my aquariums and those of my customers here in the store. It can be used on a PMDD (dry chemical) dosing or with the Seachem Flourish line of liquid fertilizers.

Again - post your routine (both ammount and frequency) and i'll try to get ya tuned in closer to where you want to be.

Take care of your plants, they'll take care of the fish :)

-Berne
Choice Aquariums L.L.C.
Great Lakes Discus L.L.C.

[Sokoly]

plant.one, I use this dosing for my 143g tank.

My tap watter is very hard so I mix my RO watter with tap water to reach 130ppm. Taking this in consideration I don't add any trace elements hoping there are enough in the tap water.
2 Tsp (~14g) K2SO4 (potassium sulfate)
1 Tsp (~6g) KNO3 (potassium nitrate)
2.5 Tbsp (~33g) MgSO4.7H2O (fully hydrated magnesium sulfate, aka epsom salts; omit if already present in trace element mix) - my MgSO4 is in crystal white powder form and I don't know what does it mean fully hydrated?
300mL distilled H2O - here I use 500ml RO watter!
0.5mL 9M HCl (optional)- no HCL added because I keep it in the refrigerator.

I add 17ml daily and do the 50% WC weekly. I was targeting on the estimative index but since this is the 4 week of using this method I haven't had a chanse to compare the growth and eventually increase the dosing.
One thing I noticed during this last two weeks is the new leaves are very very bright green and seem thinner, specialy in Echinodorus bleheri and Ech.Tennelus.

If you would do anything different please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Ognen

[plant.one]

You're missing some general balance stuff that you'll need to upgrade for. We have to assume that the trace elmets in your water supply are different from what the plants are looking for. Essentially lets give htem a full range of stuff, and let your water changes sort out the rest :)

one nice thing you'll find with a tank you size is that you can dry measure dose *MOST* of your fertilizers instead of having to mix stock sollutions.

on a tank this size with the ammount of light that you have (4x80 ho-T5) with a co2 controller you can be pretty liberal with the fertilizer ammoutns you use. With your lower plant quantity i'll give you a half dosing routine of what a heavily planted (70%+ surface area coverage of plants) would be.


all dosing is calculated for 150 gallon tank at less than 50% plant coverage
all 1x per week doses should go in right after waterchange or be dissolved in your w/c water.

3 tsp k2so4 1x per week (approx 15ppm dose potassium)
2.5 Tbsp epsom salt 1x per week ( approx 5ppm magnesium)
1 tsp kno3 1-3x a week to maintain 5-10ppm nitrate (6ppm nitrate)

If you need phosphate (you'll have to test your tap supply)
1/8 TSP of kh2p04 will give you approx a .7ppm dose. again, if necessary, this would be a 1x/wk dose


If you can find plantex CSM+b anymore i would recomend this for your trace mix + iron.

Use 1 dry oz to 500ml of r/o or distilled water to mix your stock sollution. THen dose the stock sollution at a rate of 1ml per 20 gals dosed 2-3x per week. THis stock sollution is best stored under refrigeration or its common for an almost mold type layer to form on the top.

This routine should pretty much cover anything you're going to need fertilizer wise. If down the road you decide to increase the plant mass in your tank (highly encouraged!) drop me a pm and i'll give you an updated dosing routine.

If you get tired of dry fertz and want to switch over to the Seachem line i have full dosing routines pre-written for those as well.


One thing I noticed during this last two weeks is the new leaves are very very bright green and seem thinner, specialy in Echinodorus bleheri and Ech.Tennelus.


probably iron deficency, but could be other issues as well.

keeping healthy plants is all about BALANCE.

HTH

[Sokoly]

Hello everybody, after a mounth or so I can say I somehow regulated the BBa problem. IT was all up to the number of plants and CO2 I add. I keep my PH at around 6,5 aiming at 6.0PH - but it spends a lot of CO2.
I planted a lot more plants and the tank is great now. My previous mistake was there were not enough plants to suck the nutrients so the algae took advantage of it.
I will post some fotos tommorow.
Now there seems to be another problem that I don't really understand. The plants seem to thrive very good, although some green alage showed on the leaves. Few Black molly's fixed that very quickly.
But what does it mean when the buds that come out are very very brigh green almost yellow. The new leaves seem to be very thin with no classical green colour as the mother plant?
Is this a deficiency of some kind? Is it Iron? Can I use humane pills cracked and into the roots?What is your suggestions.


Thanks in advance,
yours Sokoly

[Crstfr]

you wouldn't believe what more plants will do to stabilize everything. i was battling alge as well... ..added a more plants.. now i just do water changes and do ferts... i can now enjoy.. seems really balanced. .. knock on wood!..