Bba?

Re: Bba?

Increasing the C02 content in the water will help, along with consistant nutrient's, and more NFO...
What is the tank size?
Type of C02? DIY or Pressurized?
lighting? nutrients? filter type? (HOB, canister) reactor? diffuser? etc etc etc.

 

Re: Bba?

I had a problem with BBA a few weeks back. It grew mainly on the edges of my sword plant, and was well covering my bogwood, there were small outcrops on some of the in-tank equipment also.

I pulled off the bits from the edges of the sword, the leaves that were too badly affected I pruned off. The equipment was either scrubbed clean or removed and bleached. The bogwood was removed together with the badly infested anubias nana and treated to a 2 1/2 minute immersion in a 20% bleach solution, being thoroughly cleared of any bleach residue.

The anubias has never looked better, after removing the fur coat it leapt into vigorous growth. No negative after effects from the bleaching at all. The bogwood has remained algae free after about a month. I was worried initially as the dead BBA turned quite white but all traces of this were gone in 36 hours.

Ian

 

Re: Bba?

How much KN03, KH2P04, Trace are you dosing these three days a week?
I have not had the pleasure of working with an 200gal tank, but I would suspect at least 1 to 2Tsp of KN03 3x a week...depending on how much you feed, plant mass etc..
I'm curious as to hear what you're parameters are..
As with any algae I have found its growth to be inspired by a lack of nutrients for the plants, in the water column, along with insufficent C02 content for amount of light being used.

What do you mean by you're C02 being maxed out?

 

Re: Bba?

This I understand..

But this is harder to understand. Is it to reduce the CO2-levels before lights out so there will be no CO2-leftovers for less light requring algae?

 

Re: Bba?

defdac,

I think it's so the rest of the CO2 will run out of the lines...as well as allowing the fish to breath a little easier at night.

*****

I just won a battle with BBA in one of my tanks. It was pretty hairy for a while, then I started to get it under control. Went out of town & CO2 bottle ran out and resulted in a massive explosion of BBA. Got it refilled, well sort of. They didn't fill it up all the way. Ran out of CO2 1 week later (grrr) and got some more BBA. Finally got it back up and going steady, and BBA stopped spreading. You can prune away all the BBA infected leaves all you want, but if it's still in the tank, it's very difficult to get it to totally disappear. I also enlisted some hungry SAE's to work on it as well (they did a fantastic job on my hairgrass, but not much of anything else).

Yesterday, I pulled all of my plants out, pruned off all old leaves, vacuumed the substrate (Flourite) really well, removed some, & capped the rest with 4 bags of Onyx, and replanted. Currently, there's still some BBA on the equipment, but I'll get that today. Other than that, everything is pristine...for now.

In summary, Tom is right--having enough CO2 and keeping it rock steady is the key to prevent and beat BBA.

 

Re: Bba?

Hello Duane

Build a better reactor, such as something simular to this...
Or reduce the lighting a bit, or both for awhile.
http://www.aquaticscape.com/articles/co2reactor.htm