# Bba algae and co2



## Patriot (Dec 22, 2010)

how much dissolve CO2 is in the water? 

Go back to the ceramic diffuser to see if the BBA goes away. If it does then maybe you don't have enough Co2 in the tank.


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## gunnerthesnowman (May 28, 2016)

Take a cup of tank water , let it off gas for 24 hr , then take the PH , to get 30ppm of CO2 , the PH should be 1 full point lower with CO2 on to What it is with CO2 off


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## angyles (Oct 1, 2015)

I am going about 1-1.2 lower


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

How much light to do you have? What are the tanks dimensions, and what specific lighting are you using? Are you also fertilizing with NPK and trace elements?


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## aqbii (Nov 9, 2016)

gunnerthesnowman said:


> Take a cup of tank water , let it off gas for 24 hr , then take the PH , to get 30ppm of CO2 , the PH should be 1 full point lower with CO2 on to What it is with CO2 off


Doesn't it also depend on the KH level? I thought the higher the KH, the lesser PH will drop due to the same amount of injected CO2. Because I could not do the math, I simply opted to use the drop checker.
I assumed the drop checker was always 2 hours behind, so whatever the color its showing, I would take that reading as 2 hours ago.


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## JohnsTank (Jul 16, 2016)

angyles said:


> I need some input on what 'unstable co2' actually means for my specific situation. I've just gone through a radical purge of bba and want to make sure it doesn't come back.
> 
> For about 8 months, I ran my co2 through a little fluval ceramic diffuser. It worked, and I had no algae, but I got tired of the bubbles and wanted better distribution. I decided to upgrade to the atomic inline diffuser. Plants were happy, everything seemed good, until about 2 months later when bba moved in. I've manually removed it twice already but it keeps coming back. Its been about 6 months. This 3rd time I've taken my hardscape out indefinitely, bleached my equipment, threw out 3/4 of my plants and soaked the rest in excel. I've had the co2 off for 6 days as I double dose excel daily and am ready to stop the excel and turn the co2 back on, but I'm scared! If it comes back, I may throw everything out and start over.
> 
> ...


Just reading your post and so much of it sounded similar, I thought I would respond. I am using an Atomic diffuser now also but actually, I'm thinking about trading it out for something that will put less of a cloud in my tank. The diffuser is installed about 20" from the lily pipe and while there were no bubbles when I had it set at 1 BPS, at 2-3 BPS it's very cloudy.

My water is also 7.6 at tap but I have the opposite problem with water quality. My GH from tap is around 15 and KH is 8. I have chosen to use 75% RO and 25% tap. This gives me a GH of 5 and a KH of 6. Co2 is at 30 ppm. 

Although you didn't mention much about your lights, I'm hoping maybe you would share your photoperiod. I'm using a Finnex Ray2 and it is my belief that this light is not helping my tank. I have reduced the light at least temporarily to about 6 hrs per day. I believe this particular fixture just provides too much light for just so few clippings that I've only recently started in my tank. I believe that the excess light is the single biggest contributor to the BBA in my tank. That extra energy has to go somewhere. Without many plants in my tank, I think the algae spores are using it. Then I learned I was feeding it with excess fertilizer from the PPS-PRO system.

Getting back to the BBA, although I did try to target dose the H2O2 on this plant, because of its long slender leaves, it's difficult to know whether it made contact with the whole plant. Clearly it didn't because the BBA is still there (most of it anyway). I guess it can't hurt to target the plant with Excel and see what happens. If that doesn't work, I'm inclined to cut the leaves off or remove it completely.


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## dzega (Apr 22, 2013)

BBA thrives on dead plant matter and dead GSA. Keep tank clean of those two


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## angyles (Oct 1, 2015)

The tank is a 35 bowfront. I dose EI and use a Current Sat+ Pro at 70%. I have turned it down (was at 80) although light doesn't seem to be as big of a factor with BBA as with other algae. My photo period is 8 hours. 

I took the drop checker out quite a while ago but I know from the kh/ph charts, I'm right around 30-35ppm co2.

At this point, as much as I love my big driftwood, I'm not putting it anywhere near the tank. The equipment is clean, the plants are groomed, the tank is algae free. The note about noticing 2 new tufts was wrong. the next day they were red so they were old and dying.

Other than having no hardscape, making sure I don't skip any water changes, and being completely fanatical about cleaning debris and old leaves, I'm thinking of extending the co2 until after the lights turn back off to make sure there's no dip during the photo period. Also, reducing the light to 60 and then having 1-2 hours in the evening where I bump it up to 80 for the red plants to get their 'fix'.


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## houseofcards (Mar 21, 2009)

Me thinks your putting way too much weight in co2. It is but one variable to a BBA free tank. No one even asked how heavily planted your tank is. Co2 itself is dependent on how heavily planted you are and well the plants are uptaking nutrients. Otherwise co2 is feeding algae as well. 

Algae spores are everywhere. It's impossible IMO to rid your tank of them. They will come out and multiply based on conditions.


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## angyles (Oct 1, 2015)

It's a very heavily planted tank, mix of fast and slow growing plants. In 18 years of keeping co2 enriched planted tanks, I've never had a problem with bba, until this tank, and specifically this diffuser. ThereS always been the random anubia but that's it. So I've done a lot of reading about bba recently and understand Tom barr's concept that it's tied to unstable co2, that's why I'm trying g to figure out what that actually means for my situation. It makes sense since the change corresponded to my new diffuser and that's the only change.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

If the pH/KH charts say you have 30-35 ppm of CO2 you almost certainly have no more than 15-20 ppm, if that much. Those charts work very well if you use them with distilled water that has nothing dissolved in it except baking soda, but they almost always give you a much too high CO2 "reading" when you use them with typical planted tank water. You can get much better accuracy by determining how much the pH drops when you take thoroughly outgassed tank water and add CO2 to it. The amount of dissolved CO2 will be higher than it was in the outgassed water by a factor of 10 raised to the drop in pH power. So, if you start at 3 ppm, which is at least close to what it will be outgassed to, you have 30 ppm if the pH drops by 1.0.


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## houseofcards (Mar 21, 2009)

Well again the co2 helps drives uptake, uptake removes algae causing nutrients from the water. If the uptake slows because of lower co2 at different times it could allow an opening for spores to become actual algae. Co2 in itself is not an algaecide it simply drives uptake to where the tank needs to be to prevent algae, but this can only happen if there are enough plants, not too much light, and not too much organic content in the water column. For example if you only had a small mass of plants, but steady good co2 the tank might still get algae if your lights were too strong and/or the organic content was too high.


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## angyles (Oct 1, 2015)

Ok I hear what your both saying, and I appreciate this input. So I first dialed in my co2 using a combination of drop checker with 4dkh and the chart. The drop checker was pretty much always nearly yellow so I yanked it and started just going by the ph and growth. I have off gassed the tank water and it goes back to about 7.6. Kh out of my tap is about 2 but it quickly goes away in my tank so I add baking soda to get it back up to 3 usually. So my question is, if I can't go by the drop checker or the chart, and we're assuming it's not really 30ppm, how do I get it higher without dropping the ph into the 5s? I dropped it into the 5s once before, the fish didn't handle it well. 

Regarding how high I should be going for, I believe 30 should be my goal, based on my plant load, dosing and light. But I'm sitting here thinking about my routines over this troublesome time and realizing I have made 2 other changes. First, I cut back on nitrogen. Second, I started sometimes missing my weekly water change and going every other week. I'm thinking those 2 things made this snowball.


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