# How have you fixed your bad algae outbreaks?



## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

I think it could be a good source of info to get people's experiences with bad algae outbreaks. I know there are lots of posts out there asking for help re algae but this would be more of a summary of cause, description and remedy.

Here's the info that I think would be useful to everyone so try to include it in your input:

- What you think caused the outbreak.
- Description of the outbreak (if you have pics, even better!).
- What you did to regain control of your tank (or at least what you *think* was the action that made the algae go away). Even if you never regained control and just tore it down and started from scratch, say so...

Any takers? Don't be shy... ;-)


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

Ok, here's one of mine that comes immediately to mind:

I think my worst algae outbreak in one of my tanks was BBA. About a year ago I suddenly started getting bushy BBA all over the place and it was expanding. Pretty soon it looked like I was growing BBA, not plants!

I spent two or three months going crazy trying to track down the cause. Light was good, CO2 was good, nutrients were good...

I did notice though that when I did my monthly pH controller calibration, it was off by 0.25 every time (Before calibration it showed 6.8 and after it was showing 6.55). I found this strange and since the probe was only 5 months old, the LFS exchanged and gave me a new one; still the same variation every month!

Finally, after a calibration, I decided to test the pH in my tank with a liquid test and guess what? it was showing 6.8 while my newly calibrated probe was reading 6.55! :-x 

Tested my calibration fluid and what do you know, it was off by 0.2! So here I was happily but unknowingly setting my controller to *reduce* the CO2 concentrations in my tank...

I stopped calibrating and instead just tested the pH with the liquid test once a month to see if it corresponds to the pH controller reading. Once I corrected this, the BBA stopped growing.

Had a fun time though manually getting rid of the existing BBA!

Moral: Even if you think that your parameters are optimimum and are still having a problem, doubt the parameters. Find a way to double check them!


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## alexperez (Oct 8, 2004)

This is going to be a long list and its broken down into 2 categories

Before and After I knew about EI

-------------- Before EI ----------

Green Water - has happened only once. 

*Cause:* Unknown

*Description:*Tank Started Getting that green water look to it one day and 2 days later it was like Pea Soup.

*Action: *Diatom Filter used every other day for 2 weeks and 20 % Water Change before using the Diatom Filter. After the end of the second week I woke up one morning and saw that the water wasn't as green as the previous days. So I left it alone and 3 days later water was clear. 

BBA - 1st Major outbreak

*Cause: *Trying to run PO4 at <0.5ppm (read the Sears and Colin paper about limiting Phosphates to prevent algae growth) 
*Description:* BBA was everywhere and was growing and growing.
*Action: *I was doing so much testing to try and fix things that my PO4 Kit ran
out Luck would have it that I got a Bad PO4 Kit and I was actually dosing at
2-3 ppm of PO4 thinking I was keeping it at <0.5 (LFS verified) at the same time I replaced my filters from HOB to a Canister and installed a CO2 Reactor. BBA stopped growing but never got any better.
I think it was because of the CO2 reactor and the canister filter gave me better levels of CO2. Cause I replaced the PO4 kit and kept levels at <0.5
After a few months of cleaning and trimming there was little BBA left.

BBA and Fuzz - 2nd Major outbreak

*Cause:* Bad NO3 test kit, it would read like I had > 10ppm so I wasn't dosing any NO3. 
*Description: *This outbreak was as bad as the first one but to make it worse
I had lots of fuzz algae with the BBA.
*Action: *After weeks of seeing the algae get worse and worse. I was reading all I could on the net and I found an article about test kit inaccuracy. So I went and got me another NO3 Test Kit and found I had 0ppm of NO3.
Started dosing and testing with the new kit and things got better after a few weeks.

BGA - 1st Outbreak of BGA
*Cause: *Unknown, But I think I brought it in with some plants I go at petco.
*Description: *In about 2 weeks most of the bottom and some of the plants
was covered in it.
*Action: *I tried to remove as much as possible but it would come right back.
Got online and saw that some folks use Marycn to get rid of it. So I got me some Marycn and used it as directed. BGA was turning brown after 3 days and gone after 1 week. 

After that I had a few outbreaks but nothing to bad. Removing it by hand and keeping things clean kept it under control. then I read about EI.

-------------- After EI ----------

I read about the EI method and started using it. We'll my tanks improved by leaps and bounds. You had to look very hard to find any type of Algae in the Tanks. Once in a while I would see some algae start to grow, as soon as I saw it I went after it, I clean, pruned, replaced plants if needed, 50 % water change 2-3X a Week, and after 1- 2 weeks of this it was back to Algae free tanks. 

BGA - 2nd Outbreak of BGA
*Cause: *Unknown.
*Description:* This outbreak was worst than the first one.
*Action: *I thought I could get it under control so I started double checking everything. Everything checked out Ok, and just said the heck with and nuked it with Marycn. and a few days later it was gone. 

BBA - 3rd Major Outbreak

*Cause: *After a water change for some yet unknown reason I lost about 70% of the Fish and about 50% of the plants. The plants that where left had stopped growing and where looking bad.

*Description: *I should have eased up on the ferts but I kept adding the same amount. We'll in no time the BBA showed up faster than I could get rid of it.

*Action: *Went to the LFS and got all the fast growing stem plants I could fit into the tank. Kept up with the cleaning, Ferts, Water changes and in a few weeks it had improved dramatically. 

Hair Algae & BBA - 4 th Major Outbreak 

*Cause: *Didn'tcalibrate the Ph probe. I had taken for granted that the ph probe needed calibration. it was reading 6.3 when the actual PH was 6.9 with a KH of 3 I had only about 11ppm of CO2.

*Description:* I had never had Hair Algae before so I wasn't sure what to do about it I kept picking out as much a I could but I couldn't keep up with it, Then the BBA started showing up and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. 
*Action:* While reading lots and lots of post. One of the post mentioned something about checking the CO2 cause what you think you have might not be what you actually have. We'll I took out the old ph test kit and checked the water got a reading of 7.2 and bam! It hit me my ph probe and my test kit don't even come close to each other. So I calibrated the ph probe and after calibration put in back in the water and got a reading of 6.9. We'll after a few weeks of cleaning and pruning All was we'll again. 




It's been about 4 months since I had any Algae and I hope to keep it that way. All the above happened in about a 2 year time frame. From the time I started with planted tanks till present.
And When I say Algae free , there is always a few puffs of BBA around a little bit of fuzz here and there and the glass get a bit dirty once in a while. But overall the tanks look great and I''m growing all types of plants.


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

Great, thanks for that. It seems like alot of the causes were linked to some type of nutrient imbalance.

Anyone else?


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## Edward (May 25, 2004)

Laith said:


> Tested my calibration fluid and what do you know, it was off by 0.2!


 Just curious how you test the calibration fluid?

Thank you
Edward


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

I tested it with my liquide pH test and my LFS tested it with both a pH probe and another liquid pH test.


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

Sorry, that's "liquid"!


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## Gomer (Feb 2, 2004)

My first major outbreak was the nastiest Stagnorn infestation I have ever seen. ..it looked like a moss tank..but it wasn't moss.

I had to go drastic and went the H2O2 route as the normal methods had no effect. I hadd a massive floatign mass of plants that I used to help withe excess nutrients...numerous waterchanges and re-dosing, manual removal...cranking the CO2 etc etc. I used 2oz of H2O2 in 30g. For the next 2 days I kept the lights off. Then I did another 2oz (no WC). I left on vacation then and had the lights on for the 2nd dosing. When I came back (~ 3 days later) the tank was COMPLETELY spotless. the Staghorn id a houdini act. Anyone who would have looked at the tank would have NEVER IN THEIR WILDESS DREAMS thought there to ever be staghorn in the tank.
..it was glorious


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

That's such a great feeling isn't it? going from a mess to sparkling and healthy!

Staghorn is one algae I don't think I've ever had... knock on wood!

It's interesting that sometimes it seems that the algae get such a dominant hold on the tank that getting nutrients back in balance does nothing. One has to in one way or another remove the algae before the nutrient balance allows the plants to get the upper hand again... This algae dominance is directly related to the physical amount of the algae in the tank.


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## plantbrain (Jan 23, 2004)

Laith said:


> Ok, here's one of mine that comes immediately to mind:
> 
> I think my worst algae outbreak in one of my tanks was BBA. About a year ago I suddenly started getting bushy BBA all over the place and it was expanding. Pretty soon it looked like I was growing BBA, not plants!
> 
> ...


So it was CO2, like I said and many others in Germany did many years ago.
The lights and other stray current influences the pH measurements so relying on a pH controller for dosing is a poor method IME/IMO.
A decent Needle valve + good reactor will be a better method for maintaining adequate and stable CO2.

You are correct though about removing what is there to get the plants back on track and to remove the algae. Adult algae still can produce spores which will hang on for dear life.

CO2 accounts for close to 90% of all nutrient issues I come across.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

Any other "case studies" for us to learn from?


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## Blinky (Mar 2, 2005)

I've got a 14g that had a nasty hair algae outbreak a while back when I added more light to the tank (I'm using CF spirals, upgraded from 2-15W to 2-15W & 2-13W). The light was the only thing I changed, but what I didn't realize is that the level of CO2 in the tank had decreased (waited much too long to replace DIY bottle), so the plants weren't growing as well as they might have. Within a week, major hair algae was covering my Crypts.
I removed all of the older leaves that were covered in algae, increased the CO2 from ~12ppm (eek!) to ~25ppm by changing the mix and adding another bottle, started using Flourish Excel, and bought some Amanos for backup. I'm still not sure if it was one thing or a combination, but the important thing to me is that the hair algae hit the road and hasn't been seen since


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## Laith (Sep 4, 2004)

Thanks.

Still most of the algae solutions reported so far revolve around fixing a deficiency of a/several nutrients...

Keep the case studies coming! I really think that with enough of these, we can see certain trends and solutions...


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