BBA - Collection of Knowledge

[scottward]

It's suprising looking around various forums that there is still no concrete answer with regards to why this stuff forms and what prevents it from reoccuring. Somebody says one thing, somebody else chimes in with something that rules it out...

It's pretty common knowledge, though, that putting Excel or Hydrogen Peroxide directly on it will kill it (so would salt, brake fluid, kerosene, all sorts of things!!).

Some of the various causes and (my thoughts) on the ruling out factor in brackets...

- Low CO2 (plenty of non-CO2 tanks don't have BBA)
- Unstable CO2 (unstable CO2 would cause poor plant growth; plenty of examples of good growth + BBA though)
- High CO2 (yes I've even seen this one which made me laugh; nah)
- Low Flow (plenty of us have reported, including myself, seeing BBA growing directly in the high velocity flow of filter returns etc)
- High Flow (plenty of us have reported it growing in quiet, low flow corners of the tank too!)
- Too much light (growing in my 100G right now, only a couple of T8's over the top; even growing down low where not much light penetrates)
- Too little light (also reported being found at the top of peices of driftwood etc up high being "gunned" with light)
- High organics (too many reports of users dilligently cleaning their tanks, performing massive daily WC's, yet still having this stuff grow)
- Dying plant leaves (grows on plastic pipes, rocks and even the aquarium glass too)

....so what's left??? Nothing as far as I can see???

Personally, my tank is doing pretty well these days. If only I could get rid of all the little bits of BBA that keep popping up I would say I've pretty much nailed it.

Bugger off BBA!

I remembered back to when I first started battling this stuff, I tried some of the "BBA magic" stuff. It did kill it off to some extend, but, from memory, I had to be very precise with the dosing because it was using copper as the effective ingredient. It got me thinking that perhaps, because of all our various fertiliser over-the-counter, DIY mixes, and the obvious variability in all them, that perhaps some of us are running slightly higher copper (or something else??) which might explain why some have no problem whereas others don't?

Maybe, and I'm not joking, it comes down to, not something *in* the water, but something *not in* the water?

Scott.

 

[Tom Barr]

BBA grows in ranges of about 5-10-15ppm of CO2, that seems to be an optima.(See Sheath and Wehr)

So non CO2= not good.
High CO2, also not good, but it will grow, but not very well.
Folks adding CO2, but doing so poorly?
Loads of BBA.

Every single case I have seen in person and addressed/cured over 20 years: always has something to do with CO2. Perhaps some basic care of the tank also, but the bottom line has never been anything other than CO2.
I can induce the BBA with CO2, I cannot induce BBA with anything else.

I've seen no evidence otherwise.
There's 101 correlations, but I've yet to see anyone state they can induce BBA with ruling out the other factors.
I've also solved the worse case BBA in person at 100% success rate.
Maybe 100-200 aquariums at least.

It's always been CO2.

 

[Tom Barr]

BBA grows in ranges of about 5-10-15ppm of CO2, that seems to be an optima.(See Sheath and Wehr)

So non CO2= not good.
High CO2, also not good, but it will grow, but not very well.
Folks adding CO2, but doing so poorly?
Loads of BBA.

Every single case I have seen in person and addressed/cured over 20 years: always has something to do with CO2. Perhaps some basic care of the tank also, but the bottom line has never been anything other than CO2.
I can induce the BBA with CO2, I cannot induce BBA with anything else.

I've seen no evidence otherwise.
There's 101 correlations, but I've yet to see anyone state they can induce BBA with ruling out the other factors.
I've also solved the worse case BBA in person at 100% success rate.
Maybe 100-200 aquariums at least.

It's always been CO2.

 

[Asmack Arabia]

IME, i have a co2 injected tank and i get bba on my anubias and crypts while in my non-co2 injected tank, i don't have any. what i've observed so far is whenever i use substrate fertilizers (2-3 pcs. seachem), i see some growth of bba in 1-2 weeks following that.

 

[scottward]

Tom, thanks for the info.

I'll see if I can track down the Sheath and Wehr article...

I think I may have figured out where some of my confusion lies....at very high CO2 levels (i.e. water like lemonade, no fish in tank) *pre existing* BBA can survive but no *new* BBA will germinate? Is that correct?

So simply sticking some pre existing BBA in a certain environment isn't a satisfactory test to say "BBA still grows in very high CO2" environments?

What is it about the high CO2 level that prevents it germinating?

Scott.

 

[Tom Barr]

I've seen BBA in plenty of high CO2 tanks, but never on the plants.
New growth is absent or very very slow growing.

Now if you have some good pickers, like a horde of Amano shrimp, well, then not much can establish.

There's a range that seems optimal for BBA to start growing. the old stuff is tough to get rid of.
Non CO2 planted tanks certain get BBA and quite bad also, seem plenty, but if you do not do the water changes, toss some driftwood/tannins etc, use lower light etc........then it's pretty rare.

This goes back to this low range CO2 ppm enrichment. It also explains a lot as to why non CO2 tanks rarely have it, why it is common in areas of high current(It comes from streams) and why water changes on non CO2 can be detrimental and induce it.
It also explains why many hobbyists have it that use CO2 poorly or assume they have enough even though they keep getting BBA.

FYI, I spent 3 years trying everything a long time ago with BBA. Amano said he spent 10 years. We both just kept adding a tiny bit more CO2 and watched.
That's what did it. Problem is, many do not add a tiny bit, they either add not enough, or way too much.
Then they rely too much of test and drop checkers, not plants and the BBA itself.

Many have low O2 and gas their fish, so they just live with BBA rather than learning to better manage CO2.
Some fiddle with ferts and claim that cures it(via limiting plant growth, thereby reducing CO2 demand).
Plants do not like a large flux in the CO2 daily.
Some degas their CO2 too much in effort to prevent gassing their fish and are never able to add/or provide stable enough ppm's.
Some do not use algae eaters, clean the BBA that's still there etc.
Quite a few variables really, but still gets back to the same old same old.
I had it for sometime in a client's tank mostly because I'm never around after the service is done to observe fish and algae, I only see things for 2 hours a week etc.
So if a few fish die, I might not see or notice, I never get to see later on if they are being gassed, but I'd hear about it if they do get gassed!
So very small slow adjustments are done there.

Takes longer.

BBA will also go after rock, equipment, wood etc before plants. But these can be bombed with excel and water changes can expose and treat these things easily with excel/H2O2.
You might have to work pretty hard to get rid of it all, but the main thing is to prevent new growth, CO2 seems to be 90%. I do not know how many times I swore the CO2 was optimal, only to find out later, it was CO2.
Plants also, you can just look and tell if the CO2 is good for most all plant species, or not.

Algae are good for telling you what you need to work on and do.
Fixes are not one dimensional, you should use everything to beat it back. Maybe some get lucky with a single thing, but aggressive treatment of surfaces, plenty of pickers like shrimp, good general aquarium care and routine maintenance, stable CO2 delivery and stable degassing, are just some of this.

 

[Tom Barr]

I've seen BBA in plenty of high CO2 tanks, but never on the plants.
New growth is absent or very very slow growing.

Now if you have some good pickers, like a horde of Amano shrimp, well, then not much can establish.

There's a range that seems optimal for BBA to start growing. the old stuff is tough to get rid of.
Non CO2 planted tanks certain get BBA and quite bad also, seem plenty, but if you do not do the water changes, toss some driftwood/tannins etc, use lower light etc........then it's pretty rare.

This goes back to this low range CO2 ppm enrichment. It also explains a lot as to why non CO2 tanks rarely have it, why it is common in areas of high current(It comes from streams) and why water changes on non CO2 can be detrimental and induce it.
It also explains why many hobbyists have it that use CO2 poorly or assume they have enough even though they keep getting BBA.

FYI, I spent 3 years trying everything a long time ago with BBA. Amano said he spent 10 years. We both just kept adding a tiny bit more CO2 and watched.
That's what did it. Problem is, many do not add a tiny bit, they either add not enough, or way too much.
Then they rely too much of test and drop checkers, not plants and the BBA itself.

Many have low O2 and gas their fish, so they just live with BBA rather than learning to better manage CO2.
Some fiddle with ferts and claim that cures it(via limiting plant growth, thereby reducing CO2 demand).
Plants do not like a large flux in the CO2 daily.
Some degas their CO2 too much in effort to prevent gassing their fish and are never able to add/or provide stable enough ppm's.
Some do not use algae eaters, clean the BBA that's still there etc.
Quite a few variables really, but still gets back to the same old same old.
I had it for sometime in a client's tank mostly because I'm never around after the service is done to observe fish and algae, I only see things for 2 hours a week etc.
So if a few fish die, I might not see or notice, I never get to see later on if they are being gassed, but I'd hear about it if they do get gassed!
So very small slow adjustments are done there.

Takes longer.

BBA will also go after rock, equipment, wood etc before plants. But these can be bombed with excel and water changes can expose and treat these things easily with excel/H2O2.
You might have to work pretty hard to get rid of it all, but the main thing is to prevent new growth, CO2 seems to be 90%. I do not know how many times I swore the CO2 was optimal, only to find out later, it was CO2.
Plants also, you can just look and tell if the CO2 is good for most all plant species, or not.

Algae are good for telling you what you need to work on and do.
Fixes are not one dimensional, you should use everything to beat it back. Maybe some get lucky with a single thing, but aggressive treatment of surfaces, plenty of pickers like shrimp, good general aquarium care and routine maintenance, stable CO2 delivery and stable degassing, are just some of this.

 

[scottward]

Thanks Tom.

(For some reason your posts are doubling up)

I have been progressively adjusting the Co2 up one tick mark at a time via the Swagelok vernier handle. I just took some rocks out and painted them with H2O2, that nuked the BBA on them. I will use them as my reference point, if any BBA grows backon these now squeaky clean rocks, I will know I need to up the CO2 some more.

I just have a surface ripple via the Tunze; without a sump I have to diligently maintain the water level to keep the degassing consistent.

Like most others, my CO2 comes on 1 hour before the lights are on and CO2 off 1 hour before the lights go off.

Tom, are you still happy with this as a general approach, or would you suggest a more aggressive co2 ramp up and then perhaps co2 off earlier? Could I have the co2 off sooner? I have a 10hr photoperiod.

From memory, I believe you like a stronger current up near the surface, with a slower current down lower?

Scott.

 

[Petex]

Some times ago I got BBA from a new plant and the algae spreaded quickly in my HighLight tank. Unfortunatly, fine tuning Co2 had not slowed downd the BBA grow rate. The only thing I noticed that dosing less iron slowed down a little bit the BBA grow rate, but certainly it didn´t die if you just dose a little bit leaner or so.
I also feeled that BBA is much more difficult to remove in soil tanks.
Obiviously some soils release "anything" whatever so BBa likes or so.
Well, at last I nuked it away with copper (such treatment must be repeated) and the stuff never came back again. Certainly in tanks with sensitive fish, shrimps, snails doing so ist not any safe. So, you can mostly still use Excel/H2o2 -but this stuff will only temporary clean areas. It will not kill (all) BBA (spores).

I also have one techless tank here without Co2 and without filterpump.
I use this tank for breeding Daphnia and putted some BBA in the tank, because I was curious how good or bad it grows under such conditions. The BBA never survived long in that tank. I simply guess, no water flow = not much chances for BBA to spread their spores around and to attach more plants. Certainly, this knowledge didn´t help much - because nearly all tanks need some water flow.

 

[Tom Barr]

Scott,
I much prefer the slow patient progressive method, unless your CO2 is WAY OFF.

Why? Because you are much more likely to see and note subtle CO2 deficiencies. This is highly useful since most of us never check stuff unless something is wrong and we mostly use fish and plants/algae as "test kits".

Petex:
Neil Frank use to dose Copper to kill BBA with Crypts, so did Bob Gasser(A semi famous Crypt grower in the USA, now deceased).
Plants killed using (well, aquatic weeds anyway) 1.0 ppm as chelated copper(Komeen is a brand name).
Algae is killed with the same product using 0.4 ppm.

Algae is often killed to clean the aquatic weeds up 1st. Then they add the specific plant herbicide(Say perhaps Fluridone) since we do not want to waste the herbicide that cost $$$ on algae.
So 0.2 to 0.4ppm will kill algae, but not many plants. Certainly, there are copper sensitive plants that will die or take a beating from these ranges of copper.
For environmental reasons, we do not want to use much copper, so using the minimum amount for both herbicides works best.

Citation for Red algae physical factors can be found in Wehr and Sheath's text on pgs. 203-204.
Moderate flow enhances growth(29-57 cm/sec), 94% of all red Freshwater algae come from streams and rivers.
If you "fluff" the BBA, it'll also help them grow better.
Constant gas ppm levels seem to help.
Saturation for light is vs low for the group over all, with 35- up to 400 umols (this includes all of them, BBA is likely on the lower end)
Staghorn algae has a max growth temp rate 30-35C range.

Most BBA will be found in soft low KH waters with CO2 ranging between 5-10 ppm.
Staghorn seems to prefer harder KH's. They tend to be from clean moving waters, low in organic dissolved matter.
So a non CO2 tank is not a good place for BBA to thrive if you do not do water changes and just add water for evaporation replacement.

Look at the Light curves, the group needs hardly any light, see table 2 and the 1st column for compensation points, they are 10X better than any submersed plant.
http://sauber.dzb.ibilce.unesp.br/~orlando/PhotRhodo.pdf

I recall seeing the citation for 5-10 ppm for optimal growth ranges for BBA.
I cannot locate it right now though.

The Goldilocks notion of a mid level for BBA seems well supported for the observations: no CO2 enrichement, higher DOM, slower flows: non CO2 methods.
Higher flow and substandard CO2, perhaps a mix of HCO3 and CO2 are ideal for BBA, or a mid level PPM for CO2, so if you add say 30-50 ppm of CO2, now the BBA will no long grow well and form new spore colonies.
Once you have a bloom, then you have some work to do to get rid of the BBA that's there.
BBA will hang on for months, years perhaps if you do not attack it good in CO2 enriched tanks.

Some hobbyists seem to erroneously use the notion that a non CO2 enriched aquarium falsifies that the bloom is due to poor CO2.
This is not correct however.

5-15 ppm seems to be the range when many get BBA outbreaks and I've seen this hundreds of times.
Maybe more (all in person). This will cause a bad outbreak.

So if the CO2 is poor at the start of the light cycle, takes too long to get up to say 30-40 ppm, then there's going to be issues.
If you think you add 30-40 ppm, but are only really adding say 10 ppm, this is an issue also.
Maybe people with bad BBA and chronic long term issues have that problem.

Unstable CO2 delivery in another issue that gets many hobbyists.
Often, hobbyist will add more CO2, but add too much and gas their fish or not quiet, but they act pretty sick etc.
This is generally from poor control of adjusting the CO2, impatience, not watching their livestock closely during such adjustments(they change the CO2, then leave for the day for work and come home to gasping fish etc).
Sometimes the tank degasses way too much CO2.
Perhaps in other cases: poor CO2 equipment makes adjustments harder.
Changes in the KH in the tap water from hard to soft(very common seasonally for most tap water supplies). So if you use the higher pH for the higher KH values, if the tap water now is gone from 4-5 down to 1-2, now you get algae if you pH and do not check the KH also.

Now.........the admission............I've done all these things myself, many times, over a long time frame.
There are certainly many others who have other things that caused BBA.
But these do seem the more common things that lead to blooms.

 

[Tom Barr]

Scott,
I much prefer the slow patient progressive method, unless your CO2 is WAY OFF.

Why? Because you are much more likely to see and note subtle CO2 deficiencies. This is highly useful since most of us never check stuff unless something is wrong and we mostly use fish and plants/algae as "test kits".

Petex:
Neil Frank use to dose Copper to kill BBA with Crypts, so did Bob Gasser(A semi famous Crypt grower in the USA, now deceased).
Plants killed using (well, aquatic weeds anyway) 1.0 ppm as chelated copper(Komeen is a brand name).
Algae is killed with the same product using 0.4 ppm.

Algae is often killed to clean the aquatic weeds up 1st. Then they add the specific plant herbicide(Say perhaps Fluridone) since we do not want to waste the herbicide that cost $$$ on algae.
So 0.2 to 0.4ppm will kill algae, but not many plants. Certainly, there are copper sensitive plants that will die or take a beating from these ranges of copper.
For environmental reasons, we do not want to use much copper, so using the minimum amount for both herbicides works best.

Citation for Red algae physical factors can be found in Wehr and Sheath's text on pgs. 203-204.
Moderate flow enhances growth(29-57 cm/sec), 94% of all red Freshwater algae come from streams and rivers.
If you "fluff" the BBA, it'll also help them grow better.
Constant gas ppm levels seem to help.
Saturation for light is vs low for the group over all, with 35- up to 400 umols (this includes all of them, BBA is likely on the lower end)
Staghorn algae has a max growth temp rate 30-35C range.

Most BBA will be found in soft low KH waters with CO2 ranging between 5-10 ppm.
Staghorn seems to prefer harder KH's. They tend to be from clean moving waters, low in organic dissolved matter.
So a non CO2 tank is not a good place for BBA to thrive if you do not do water changes and just add water for evaporation replacement.

Look at the Light curves, the group needs hardly any light, see table 2 and the 1st column for compensation points, they are 10X better than any submersed plant.
http://sauber.dzb.ibilce.unesp.br/~orlando/PhotRhodo.pdf

I recall seeing the citation for 5-10 ppm for optimal growth ranges for BBA.
I cannot locate it right now though.

The Goldilocks notion of a mid level for BBA seems well supported for the observations: no CO2 enrichement, higher DOM, slower flows: non CO2 methods.
Higher flow and substandard CO2, perhaps a mix of HCO3 and CO2 are ideal for BBA, or a mid level PPM for CO2, so if you add say 30-50 ppm of CO2, now the BBA will no long grow well and form new spore colonies.
Once you have a bloom, then you have some work to do to get rid of the BBA that's there.
BBA will hang on for months, years perhaps if you do not attack it good in CO2 enriched tanks.

Some hobbyists seem to erroneously use the notion that a non CO2 enriched aquarium falsifies that the bloom is due to poor CO2.
This is not correct however.

5-15 ppm seems to be the range when many get BBA outbreaks and I've seen this hundreds of times.
Maybe more (all in person). This will cause a bad outbreak.

So if the CO2 is poor at the start of the light cycle, takes too long to get up to say 30-40 ppm, then there's going to be issues.
If you think you add 30-40 ppm, but are only really adding say 10 ppm, this is an issue also.
Maybe people with bad BBA and chronic long term issues have that problem.

Unstable CO2 delivery in another issue that gets many hobbyists.
Often, hobbyist will add more CO2, but add too much and gas their fish or not quiet, but they act pretty sick etc.
This is generally from poor control of adjusting the CO2, impatience, not watching their livestock closely during such adjustments(they change the CO2, then leave for the day for work and come home to gasping fish etc).
Sometimes the tank degasses way too much CO2.
Perhaps in other cases: poor CO2 equipment makes adjustments harder.
Changes in the KH in the tap water from hard to soft(very common seasonally for most tap water supplies). So if you use the higher pH for the higher KH values, if the tap water now is gone from 4-5 down to 1-2, now you get algae if you pH and do not check the KH also.

Now.........the admission............I've done all these things myself, many times, over a long time frame.
There are certainly many others who have other things that caused BBA.
But these do seem the more common things that lead to blooms.

 

[scottward]

I've slowly increased my CO2 using the tick marks on the Swagelok vernier, I'm about 6 tick marks higher than when I last wrote and I'm watching everything carefully.

I've been manually removing BBA from hardscape, pruning etc. Too early to say if I have it just right yet though.

I do have a couple of questions based on some observations though.

Some details first though:

CO2 on: 12pm
Lights on: 1pm
CO2 off: 8pm
Lights off: 11pm

At around 6 - 7 pm, my tiger barbs are hanging about at the top of the tank. Tiger barbs are the fish that, because of where they come from, have the highest O2 demand. Other fish in my tank, neons, platies etc, are down the bottom swimming normally.

I'm guessing the tigers are at the top because O2 has dropped. But why would this be? Isn't O2 going to be at its lowest before lights on in the morning before the plants have started adding O2 to the water? Why aren't the tigers at the top before lights on?

If its the CO2 level causing the O2 problem (I've forgotten how this works so Ill have to refresh my memory) wouldn't the fish be affected right after the 1 hour ramp up when the water should be at its highest CO2 level?

Scott.

 

[Tom Barr]

Some species can learn to slow down during the light period etc.
Some do not.

Barbs will slow down, but they should not be at the surface.
Low O2, not enough surface movement etc?

 

[Tom Barr]

Some species can learn to slow down during the light period etc.
Some do not.

Barbs will slow down, but they should not be at the surface.
Low O2, not enough surface movement etc?

 

[scottward]

I'll tweak the surface turbulence some more.

Another thing that I've been thinking about is the "vertical circulation" in my tank. The water may be moving at the surface, but I'm not sure how well that layer is being drawn down to the lower layers. I will think about this a bit more.

Not quite sure I follow why the fish aren't at the top earlier on though....

Scott.

 

[scottward]

Any thoughts on "top to bottom" circulation of the water?

I have my tank setup as a "vertical gyre" (meaning the water flow looks like a racetrack from above). So there is good movement of water horizontally, but I have a suspicion that my top to bottom circulation isn't so great, and this might be my problem with O2.

I do have a Tunze nanostream up near the top creating a slight ripple, and it is pointed downwards along the front glass, the plan being that it helps to move water from the upper layers down towards the bottom, thus mixing surface O2 rich water down into the lower layers (and also pulling water from below up).

Hard to visualise and watch it though.

Any thoughts?

Scott.

 

[scottward]

Raising the CO2 has definitely slowed down, possibly even stopped, BBA.

Cool.

Hey Tom what is it about the higher level of CO2, i.e. once outside that 5 - 20ppm range, that slows it down/stops it?

If the tank was completely devoid of plants I presume the BBA would still do poorly once the CO2 was pushed high? Is it just that the plant is programmed by nature to think the competition will also do well here even if no competition actually exists?

On a related note, the BBA I've been referring to is the fluffy variety. If I understand correctly, there is a related species which is flatter, more like a black scale.

I need to prune these leaves back, but I'm hoping it to is now outside its optima CO2 range?

Scott.

 

[Gerryd]

Scott,

If u r using canisters, these retain c02 and help to cause a buildup that can be dangerous to fish/critters. This used to occur when I used canisters on my tanks. Later in the day, or even the next morning, fish would not be happy. Once I swapped to wet/dry, the issue went away. You may want to check again on your surface ripple. An eheim surface skimmer may help as well.

- - - Updated - - -

Scott,

If u r using canisters, these retain c02 and help to cause a buildup that can be dangerous to fish/critters. This used to occur when I used canisters on my tanks. Later in the day, or even the next morning, fish would not be happy. Once I swapped to wet/dry, the issue went away. You may want to check again on your surface ripple. An eheim surface skimmer may help as well.

 

[Tom Barr]

+1 on wet/dry vs Cansiter

 

[scottward]

Thanks, but I'm not sure of the connection between the canister filters and the black scale algae that I am seeing?

Scott.