# Is this BBA?



## caymandiver75 (Sep 7, 2006)

Is this BBA? I've got it on pretty much every plant in my tank and even the drift wood. Doesn't seem to be getting too worse, but it's not going away either. I have 6 SAE's, which may be helping and a few snails. Also my black mollys seem to eat it a bit. I'll check my C02 level tonight and see where I'm at.

**edit** went home at lunch and checked my CO2 levels. PH 6.7 and KH 7 which equals 41.9ppm C02. I now have the lighting set to:

8hrs a day with 4 of the 8 hours being at 3.3wpg and the other 4 hours at 2.2wpg. Keeping with this schedule and ensuring the CO2 stays around 40 is it safe to assume the algae will go away?


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

I'd say that looks like BBA to me, I willing to bet your CO2 calculation is off, not that its your fault just that measuring CO2 using PH and KH charts isn't that reliably accurate and it usually errors on the side of saying you have more CO2 than you do. could give some details about your aquarium, size, co2 system, and fertilization schedule, this might help a little. 

BBA is usually a sign of low CO2, so if we can garantee you have enough co2 then we can work on getting rid of it. BBA is an algae that once you fix the source of the problem you might still need to manually remove the existing algae because it will still survive even if its not growing worse. It might require removing the effected leaves, you could also try a spot treatment with Hydrogen peroxide or excell. The SAEs may also just eat it all, but for now I'd say lets eliminate the possibility that your CO2 reading is off and try to get this thing at the source first.


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## caymandiver75 (Sep 7, 2006)

davis.1841 said:


> I'd say that looks like BBA to me, I willing to bet your CO2 calculation is off, not that its your fault just that measuring CO2 using PH and KH charts isn't that reliably accurate and it usually errors on the side of saying you have more CO2 than you do. could give some details about your aquarium, size, co2 system, and fertilization schedule, this might help a little.
> 
> BBA is usually a sign of low CO2, so if we can garantee you have enough co2 then we can work on getting rid of it. BBA is an algae that once you fix the source of the problem you might still need to manually remove the existing algae because it will still survive even if its not growing worse. It might require removing the effected leaves, you could also try a spot treatment with Hydrogen peroxide or excell. The SAEs may also just eat it all, but for now I'd
> say lets eliminate the possibility that your CO2 reading is off and try to get this thing at the source first.


As for the rest of my tank I listed pretty much everything in my signature. Basically doing the EI method in combination with 3.3wpg lighting for 9 hrs a day. 
0-60 Gallon Aquariums
+/- 1/2 tsp KN03 3x a week
+/- 1/8 tsp KH2P04 3x a week
+/- 1/8 (10ml) Trace Elements 3x a week
50% weekly water change

Thanks for the help! I was informed by another member on plantedtank that I may have too much light in combination with not enought CO2. How much light do you think is good enough for 50 gallons of water? Should I just stick to my 110watt PC bulb fixture and not use the 65 T5 light fixture? Keep this 110watts on for how long? 8,9, 10 hours? I do have that drop checker, but it uses my aquarium water so it may not be accurate for C02 readings. I'll get some Distilled water tonight and baking powder and get the KH to 4 and see what it says. I've been doing my CO2 check by just taking my PH with my digital ph reader and checking the KH via drops and plugging it into this site.

Measuring CO2 levels in a Planted Tank Guess that doesn't work well.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

it can work its just not reliable, mainly because there are many things in aquarium water that have an effect on PH or even KH that are not associated with dissolved CO2 creating carbonic acid, these outside factors can skew your reading for CO2 considering that the tables do not factor in other influences on PH other than the addition of CO2. 

anyway, try the drop checker with distilled water, you might be suprised what your results are. If the results are good, you have several choices to attempt to remove the bba. the most drastic being removal of the effected leaves/plants, the least being wait it out your SAEs might eat it. 

You could also do spot treatments of hydrogen peroxide before a big waterchage. To do this, turn off all pumps, filters, sources of water movement, fill a cup with some hydrogen peroxide, get a plastic syringe and use it to shoot some directly at the algae and let it sit for 30mins or so then do a 50%+ WC and try to physically remove any algae you can. You can do the same with excell. I'd do a combination of all three, removing the most effected leaves and spot treating the rest, leaving any remaining algae to the SAEs. 

by the way sorry I didn't see your aquarium details in your signature, my bad I was reading to fast. Another thing to remember is to be sure your CO2 is consistant, fluctuations can also cause BBA or other algae.

Good Luck!!!!!


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## caymandiver75 (Sep 7, 2006)

davis.1841 said:


> it can work its just not reliable, mainly because there are many things in aquarium water that have an effect on PH or even KH that are not associated with dissolved CO2 creating carbonic acid, these outside factors can skew your reading for CO2 considering that the tables do not factor in other influences on PH other than the addition of CO2.
> 
> anyway, try the drop checker with distilled water, you might be suprised what your results are. If the results are good, you have several choices to attempt to remove the bba. the most drastic being removal of the effected leaves/plants, the least being wait it out your SAEs might eat it.
> 
> ...


Thanks, I'll let you know how the Distilled water works out. I also have my CO2 on a timer that kicks the CO2 on an hour before the lights and shuts down with the lights. Hopefully that doesn't constitute as too much of a fluctuation.

BTW...Love your signature. After I saw the documentary with Al Gore (Inconvenient Truth) I replaced all my most commonly used lights with those new energy saving compact fluorescents.


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

This appears to be staghorn algae, not BBA. BBA is not that long and not that disheveled looking.

If it's BBA forget trying to save the leaves and just pull them out. Remove every little strand of BBA that you see. Do frequent and small water changes. Be patient.

If it's staghorn from my experience you need to lower the N to practically 0 for a few days. Even use some activated carbon after your tests show 0. But don't keep the tank with 0 Nitrogen for too long.

In any case good stable parameters will help reduce both algae.

--Nikolay


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## houseofcards (Feb 16, 2005)

Is it possible there is both staghorn and bba there. I see some fuzzy looking growth as well. 

Caymandiver,
I'm curious about what else is the tank fishwise and how much plant mass there is in particular fast growing plants. If you don't have alot of plant mass and your using that kind of light your going to have algae problems even if you bumb up the co2. If you have a healthy fishload then that's just adding accelerant to the algae situation. You have alot more wiggle room with light if you have a low fishload and high plantload.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

I've never seen staghorn that looked like that but maybe a better pic might help, or maybe I've just seen weird staghorn... who knows, i'm no expert.


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## caymandiver75 (Sep 7, 2006)

davis.1841 said:


> it can work its just not reliable, mainly because there are many things in aquarium water that have an effect on PH or even KH that are not associated with dissolved CO2 creating carbonic acid, these outside factors can skew your reading for CO2 considering that the tables do not factor in other influences on PH other than the addition of CO2.
> 
> anyway, try the drop checker with distilled water, you might be suprised what your results are. If the results are good, you have several choices to attempt to remove the bba. the most drastic being removal of the effected leaves/plants, the least being wait it out your SAEs might eat it.
> 
> ...


Ok, just removed as much algae as I could possible with trimming, scraping etc and the tank looks darn near algae free. I also filled my CO2 indicator with distilled water at 4kh and it's showing almost yellow after being in the tank for 2 hours. According to the calculation my CO2 ppm should be 30 when green and around 70 when yellow. So I'm sure that I'm around 45ish ppm CO2 and with that I'm confident that my CO2 system is working well...maybe a bit too well so I turned it down just a bit and now the color indicator is showing very light green almost yellow.

My water is as follows:
Degrees: 77F
PH: 6.7
KH: 7
CO2: 40+
NO3 (Nitrate): 20ppm
NO2 (Nitrite): .05ppm Must have stirred something up removing the algae. 
NH3/NH3 (Ammonia) 0

As long as I keep these conditions in the tank, continue EI dosing and 50% weekly water changes, should I have any reason to worry about the algae coming back? I also have the UV running now as of a few days ago.










Notice the algae in the background is gone.  Lots of manual work...hopefully pays off.


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

it should hopefully stay in control now. keep things as consistant as possible and give it a couple weeks, I can't say anything for sure but this should work for you, in my experience its worked perfectly. as always your milage may vary. 

if you can, please keep me posted.


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## caymandiver75 (Sep 7, 2006)

davis.1841 said:


> it should hopefully stay in control now. keep things as consistant as possible and give it a couple weeks, I can't say anything for sure but this should work for you, in my experience its worked perfectly. as always your milage may vary.
> 
> if you can, please keep me posted.


Thanks I sure will keep you posted. I forgot to mention I also have 6 SAE's and a few small snails that may help keep this algae issue in check. I'm going to run the H.O.T. Magnum overnight to help filter out all the stuff I stirred up while removing the algae. I ended up taking an old toothbrush and scrubbed the driftwood and that sure caused some mess.


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