liquid nitrogen causing BBA bloom!

[grantbudd74]

Hey guys n Gals;

SO after reading a bit about the need to dose nitrogen to keep it at -10ppm to prevent algie I did this as my test kit was reading zero nitrates. I have a 6x2x2 and change a little bit of water often as I have 8 yound discus, 14+ cories, 20+ tetras and 2 BN plecos.

So I have 2 very large bits of drift wood and on the upper parts of the wood 1-4 inches of the waters surface it is now covered heavily in the dreaded BBA! I am talking a carpet!

So after dosing the nitrogen it exploded and went nuts! Even had brown algae hanging off the wood! I have enough turn over as I have an eheim 2080 pro 3 and a pro series for 400l skimming the surface.

what can I do? I have old leaves dying off too but am afraid to dose further as I only see additional growth in the BBA. I do have injected c02 but only at 1 drop a second as my discus gasp with anymore. hmmmmmmmm???????

I don't want to chuck in excel as this is more chemical stuff. I read soooo many thoughts from blackout to total tank breakdown to excel.

i have the outlets from both canisters creating max flow in the tank and have low light around 260W total.

[Patr1ck]

The guy at the lfs had an outbreak in his show tank in the store and he was using hydrogen peroxide. The tank was looking great. He dosed for a week but I dont know the concentration or method. Maybe do a search for it. This link has some ideas as well. http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm

Pat

[Chad Hughes]

Sounds like you have a bit of inbalance in your CO system. Hydrogen peroxide, as mentioned, will kill the algae but will not eliminate the cause of the algae in the first place. What is the KH and Ph of your tank?

Best wishes!

[grantbudd74]

Hi Chad

Thanks for asking so as requested:

Kh 4 and Ph 6.8, nitates 0, amonia and nitrite 0. Co2 1 drop now up to 2 a second, GH 6-7 and 29C water temp. I now have 9 flying fox's in the tank only small 3cm size. I was thinking I may remove and bleach the wood and scrub it to death?

I do dose liquid ferts (N,P,K, Trace and flourish) but usually a couple of times a week using the flourish range. I also use seachem root tabs. I have stopped using Nitrogen after the algae bloom which included a load of brown algae. My BN catfish have got along well and I have lots of babies taking care of the green algae on the glass.

I change about 70l a week but have read that W/C don't really have anything to do with algae? I feed spectrum every hour for 8 hrs and a cube or 2 or hikkari frozen bloodworm.

So many thoughts! I was thinking upping the lighting. I have noted old leaves on my banana lilly's turning yellow and dying off. The 2 small plants have put out 10 lilly pads each over 2ft in length and some are 6 inches across and growing!

More advice would be great other than excel and blackout as this does not treat the problem. I post some pics when I manage to take some good enough.

Thanks again

I picked up another hagen 100w HO T5 unit today and have upped the co2 to 2 drops a second

[Chad Hughes]

Hi Chad

Thanks for asking so as requested:

Kh 4 and Ph 6.8, nitates 0, amonia and nitrite 0. Co2 1 drop now up to 2 a second, GH 6-7 and 29C water temp. I now have 9 flying fox's in the tank only small 3cm size. I was thinking I may remove and bleach the wood and scrub it to death?

I do dose liquid ferts (N,P,K, Trace and flourish) but usually a couple of times a week using the flourish range. I also use seachem root tabs. I have stopped using Nitrogen after the algae bloom which included a load of brown algae. My BN catfish have got along well and I have lots of babies taking care of the green algae on the glass.

I change about 70l a week but have read that W/C don't really have anything to do with algae? I feed spectrum every hour for 8 hrs and a cube or 2 or hikkari frozen bloodworm.

So many thoughts! I was thinking upping the lighting. I have noted old leaves on my banana lilly's turning yellow and dying off. The 2 small plants have put out 10 lilly pads each over 2ft in length and some are 6 inches across and growing!

More advice would be great other than excel and blackout as this does not treat the problem. I post some pics when I manage to take some good enough.

Thanks again

I picked up another hagen 100w HO T5 unit today and have upped the co2 to 2 drops a second

Your CO2 appears to be about 19ppm based on your KH and Ph values posted. How heavily planted is the tank? I run both of my heavily planted tanks at 30ppm. These tanks all use dry ferts and lighting is on the high side. Photoperiod 8 hours, no more.

If you want to try and increase your CO2 to 30ppm, increse the CO2 dose to achieve a 6.6 Ph. Are you using a controller?

Best wishes!

[Consigliere]

I recently had a battle with BBA as well. My corrective action was increase CO2, increase ferts, reduce lighting.

The BBA will not just go away when you fix the cause, you have to kill it. To do this I used a dosing pipette and peroxide and spot treated affected areas. Turn all water pumps and power heads off during the spot treatment to keep the peroxide in the key areas as long as possible. After a few hours, 50% WC. Repeat for 3 days in a row, then on the 4th day do another 50% WC.

After all this I trimmed out all the BBA I could see ( which was now a pinkish colour). I have not seen it since except for a small patch after I increased my lighting from 6.5hr to 7.5hr. I have since reduced back to 7hr with no issues.

[grantbudd74]

there are pictures of my tank in the show us your tank section. Its the 6x2x2 planted discus tank. Its not too heavily planted and i'm not sure how many plants I can put in without making the tank look over full....The bba is thick and growing well.

I now have on 8hrs a day 3 x 4ft Hagen power glo units which are t5 and one 3 ft hagen power glo with a total output of around 360W. The co2 I can not put up much more a my fish are breathing heavy ye seam ok as they are not gasping at the surface.

For me to do a 50% water change is next to impossible given its around 270L and I have no way of treating this much and heating it. Also in Australia we are in a drought and water is expensive.

I can reduce the light period and may just try that, Oh I don't have a ph controller. Check out my pics they are not great but you get a better idea of my tank.

Thanks for the help so far

[grantbudd74]

so should I pull back to seven hours of light? Would halide lighting make this issue worse?

[Consigliere]

Are the BBA spots in a low flow region? I have read that although CO2 may be in the optimum range if the flow is low BBA will flourish due to lack of nutrients for the plants to outcompete.

I would suggest doing a peroxide treatment for a few days and lower the lights to 6hr. Continue ferts, and CO2, and see if you can up it a bit. Unfortunately, peroxide treatment requires 50% WC daily until the day after the treatment ends. The other option would be to dose Excel at 2X the recommended dosing for about a week or two. Another expensive option but maybe cheaper than water in your area. Even if you have stopped the BBA from spreading it will remain until you start killing the stuff in there right now. If its spreading still, all the more reason to take a bit more drastic action.

[grantbudd74]

i'll pull back the lighting and take out the wood which will be hard given they are around 5kgs each piece. I will have to dose excel and hope.

Thanks everyone

I hate this stuff!