# Ridding Algae from tank ala Tom Barr



## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

You are correct, and my original post mentioned several types of algae I was dealing with in this tank. Original exchanges:

http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.200309/msg00023.html
http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.200309/msg00027.html
http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.200309/msg00083.html
http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.200309/msg00088.html

I've spent the last several hours in the APD archives and found almost the same statement about BBA by Tom. Evidently, the change of conditions post-blackout were what beat it, not the blackout. Sorry for the bad skinny!

EDIT: modified original post to reflect that the method is for algae, not specifically for BBA.


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## pedietz (Dec 18, 2003)

I've been having crazy hair algae and BGA the last few week, so today I started this blackout technique with my CO2 off.

In 12 hours, my PH increased from 6.9 to 7.6.

I'm running an airstone to keep the fish oxyginated... so this might explain the largish jump.

Any tips ??


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

The fish should be fine. Mine went up, too. The blackout lasted 4 days for me, the fish were happy to see me, but suffered no visible ill effects.

Be sure to post back when you're done with the blackout.


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

what did you use to blackout the tank? Garbage bags?


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

Yes. This tank is 20"x10" and 24" high. I had a heavy green trash bag that fit it perfectly, just drop on top. The bag was thick, even for a lawn & leaf bag, and no light shone through. I was kind of lucky to not have to cut or tape anything, but for a different size tank, duct tape and several bags should work nicely.


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

James,

I don't think I'll need to worry about duct tape. I'm only having a problem with my 5.5!


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

No, probably not, lol


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## pedietz (Dec 18, 2003)

Sunday night I covered my tank, turned off the Co2, added a dose of algae killer, and added an air stone.
Its been 4 days, so I decided to uncover my tank.

I still have hair algae on my swords.
I still have green dot algae on the back glass.
I still have some velvety green algae on my hagen diffuser and tubing...

But all in much less quantities.
Hair reduced maybe 50%.
Green dot reduced maybe 60%.
Green velvet reduced 70%

The water is crystal clear.

Now for the weird things....

The anacharis that grew slowly, grew 8 inches.

The 2 pink-hygros that used to lay across the tank (I needed to trim them) are standing staight up.
The 2 bunches of swords that laid flat like a rosette, are all standing completly vertical.
The lily leaves that were brown, are now deep purple.

Wasnt sure if the algae killer would help or hurt.
My guess is neither.

Those vertical swords really look nice now.
It's like a face lift


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

A pretty good listing of changes initiated by the lack of light. In my high light tank, things grow horizontally. Less light, the plants reach for the sky. I had better success with the hair algae- did you trim well before blackout?


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## pedietz (Dec 18, 2003)

I did a really good cleaning before the blackout...
as for the hair algae, every sword leaf was covered...so I could only get so much of it.

I'll probably do a 2nd blackout in the coming weeks, once I get my N-P-K straightened out. Flourish N and K are arriving today.

I'm also replacing the Emperor 260 with a Rena XP2 tomorrow.

Hopefully the sponges and polishing pads will screen the water better and trap the water-borne algae particles preventing future outbreaks.


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## fishpoop (Feb 27, 2003)

I'v got control of my alage, all but the BBA, is there no cure for the BBA? it grows on everything but least on the plants. I dont have any slow growing plants because I know the BBA will kill them! Should I just pull the plants+ fish out and bleach the the tank and equipment?
I HATE BBA It is probably on the plants in small patches and will come back any way.


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

Fishpoop, are you injecting CO2?


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## fishpoop (Feb 27, 2003)

yes,
Do think blackouts will harm the BBA :?: 
I dont think anything can stop that stuff :twisted:


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

Ok, since this is the Tom Barr method we're talking about, you need CO2 levels at around 25-30ppm during the entire photosynthesis period as your first parameter to correct with BBA.

What's your CO2 levels, how often do you check, is this yeast or pressurized system?


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## fishpoop (Feb 27, 2003)

yeast, when its running well i get ~25ppm. I'll check druing the morning ect.


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

Check what you have in the morning at lights on and just before lights out. The number one thing Tom stresses with BBA is CO2- he says there's no point going on to the other nutrients until the CO2 is right. Which means ~25ppm throughout the photoperiod.

I think the reason BBA is associated with yeast CO2 is because it's difficult to maintain steady levels. The tank where I had problems with BBA had yeast CO2. I stopped injecting it. I have now had a relatively stable, algae-free tank for 3 months. I have read reports from aquarists more experienced than myself who have found algae reduction with the addition of Excel as a carbon source. This tank is small enough for me to use Excel without breaking the bank, so I'm starting it just to see what the effects are. Since this is the only change, I feel like I might get some useful results.


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

I have a 5.5 that I use excel on and I get horrible thread algae and very bad BBA. I don't know what to do about the BBA, I know a blackout will do nothing to it. Any other ideas James.


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

This is getting more and more interesting. Do you have a lot of light over the tank, George? What's your maintenance routine on the tank?


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

18 watts pc. 50% water change every week or two. I add some flourish and flourish iron with the water change. Substarte is flourite/volcanite mix.


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

I'm coming to think I don't want to do anything under 10 gallons anymore, too unstable for me. What would I have to do with the h2o2? Use a pipette and just apply on the affected areas. Can I do this in the tank, or should I remove the plants? I can't add SAE's to a 5.5 gallon tank! Will japonica eat BBA? I have 2 in there and I've seen them "browsing" on it, but it doesn't seem as though they actually eat it, just pick out some detritus bits. It is almost al on my wood and my petite nanas. I was thinking about Algae fix, I might give that a shot, but it won't prevent it from coming back.


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

I had no success with H2O2 against BBA using spot method with a syringe. It was really cool to see driftwood "pearling", though :lol: . If you want to do it, the instructions I saw were to dose the whole tank (remove all fauna you want to survive). I'll see if I can find the link.

I really don't think this will solve anything. The spores will show up again, even if it works. If you want to defeat the BBA, you're going to have to inject CO2. No one else seems to have an answer for it outside of the 25ppm parameter. Add to that a liberal dose of elbow grease to remove by scraping, cleaning, pruning and replacing plants, etc.


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

once co2 is added, how long will it take for it to disappear? And once it's gone would I have to continue using it, or could I stop and revert back to excel?


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

Did you forget the link, OW?


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## Buck (Oct 13, 2002)

I wonder if the connection between Excel and algae could be coincidence only because small tanks are harder to balance and small tanks are normally the only tanks that Excel is used in.
Excel would be to expensive to use in larger tanks therefore we all used pressurized but also larger tanks are easier balanced and more forgiving when it comes to conditions. 

Anyone here using Excel in a larger tank ?


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## George Willms (Jul 25, 2003)

I'm not tearing it down. It's my bedroom tank for the endler's! I'm just going to have to persevere, that's all and try to destroy it as best as I can.


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## aquaverde (Apr 15, 2003)

Well, you can reduce the light if you don't want to inject CO2. Do you have a pic of the tank you can post?


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## pedietz (Dec 18, 2003)

Since my 1st blackout....
I've set my co2 up (so its 6.8 )...
my No3 is 5-10 ppm and Potassium added....
and I have a new canister filter with a fine sponge to grab the fine algae out. Its running without carbon unlike my old emperor.

After 2 weeks, my algae grew back and in vengence. Now I have the green slimey stuff and the thread kind to go with the greyish hair algae.

I just ripped out 40% of my plants. Anything with slime or algae went.

I took out my root cave that had thread growing from it. It had a pretty nasty scent.

Cleaned the flourite gravel. Clouds and clouds and clouds.

I changed 50% water. Put in an airstone, and covered the tank for a 2nd Blackout.

The last blackout eventually killed my huge Angel. Hopefully this wont kill my other. My PH will ramp back up to 8.0...

I have an echinodourus sending out a 28 inch stem to the surface. I'll have to say goodbye before it can flower for the 1st time.

Oy.

I wonder if the Flourite bed is at fault. It sure kicked up a cloud.

After the blackout I think I'll drop my lights from 12 hours down to 9 with a 3 hour pause at noon. This plant book by Peter Hiscock says the pause will hurt algae more than the plants.

X'ing fingers.


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## Kris (Feb 27, 2004)

aquaverde said:


> The blackout instructions


thank heavens i found this!
thanks james for posting this.i started a blackout friday afternoon and will remove the covers tomorrow. i had done most of what the instructions suggest, so i think that i am developping some good judgement (which come from experience, which comes from bad judgement) with the tank...
kris


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## Betowess (Dec 9, 2004)

I had a really *bad* case of BBA. Couldn't get rid of it even with pressurized CO2 because I was using one of those mini turbo reactors. If I cranked the CO2 up much the power head would fill with gas and start running dry. So I built a DIY reactor with Rex Grigg's online help, and voila, within a couple of weeks my tank was free of the menace almost completely... as long as I kept CO2 near 30ppm.


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## Robert H (Apr 3, 2003)

> After 2 weeks, my algae grew back and in vengence. Now I have the green slimey stuff and the thread kind to go with the greyish hair algae.


Well that answers the question I was going to ask...after all the trouble of a black out, how much grew back a week later? I never found blackouts to make a huge difference, and with BGA in particular. Now I realize we are not talking about BGA here, but that is one thing I will never do blackouts with again. In the past I fought with BGA doing blackouts, massive water changes one after the other, constantly cleaning the plants, but some BGA always hung on and always grew back. After two months of this I used an anti biotic and it was gone in one week. It took three years for it to come back again and this time I got rid of it in three days. Sometimes doing the the "natural way" and trying to "fix the source" is simply spinning your wheels.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

You made not one mention or reference to the root cause, lack of NO3 dosing.........

Low NO3 can induce BGA time and time again.
Adding 1/4 teaspoon of KNO3 1-3x a week will prevent the BGA from coming back. It's been about a 12 years since I've had BGA and I can bet it'll never come back because I focused on the cause.

I can add a mat of it and it will not grow in my tanks.

Also, my plants look better because I'm providing them with good NO3 levels by adding KNO3, antibiotics don't grow plants. So adding KNO3 will make the tank look better and improve plant growth more. Growing plants is the goal and when there are poor(or slowed) conditions for the plants, algae will move in.

This approach is free but you can use antibiotics and then dose KNO3 also.
But flipping a switch off is not exactly tough, and it is free so I'm not sure why a pill is needed(unless you get them free or sell them), although it can be used.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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