# BBA in Low-Tech Tank?



## Xox-Zip-xoX (Oct 16, 2013)

Hi everyone,
I have been dealing with BBA in a very sparsely planted low-tech tank for quite a while now and am wondering what I can do to get rid of it. I have tried spot treating and bleach dips but the algae always grows back so I thought I would try posting here to see if anybody has any ideas on what could be causing the algae and any suggestions on how to combat it?

The tanks specs are as follows

*Tank:* 35g (36" Long x 12.5" Wide x 19" Tall)
*Lighting:* 1x 67k CFL in a 8.5" dome reflector, 1x 12" strip light
*Substrate:*Pool Filter Sand
*CO2:* None
*Dosing:* None (I do have excel, flourish and root tabs on hand thought)
*Plants:* A few smalls swords, Crypts, Hygro and Java Fern.

Any ideas what could be causing the outbreak? My guess would be the lighting because it all grows on the side with the CFL, but I've been told that my light is too low for that to be the case. If it is the lighting, how do I get rid of the algae without lowering the lighting?


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## NeonFlux (Apr 10, 2008)

Do you have decent good water circulation in the tank? Try getting a mini water pump and attach it to sides of the tanks pointing down to help the water in tank moving, transporting nutrients to plants. When there's a dead spot around some plants, they tend to get BBA, in my experience. How long do you leave the lights on? And I recommend you dose a little bit of NPK+Trace ferts once every week just to make sure certain nutrients aren't missing.. sometimes fish excrement just isn't enough.


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## Xox-Zip-xoX (Oct 16, 2013)

Thanks for the reply NeonFlux!
I don't really know what would be considered "good" in terms of water circulations, however if I had to guess I'd say it's pretty good. I just upgraded to a larger filter with more flow a few weeks ago, and I cleared out all of the BBA that had accumulated over the past month or so yesterday so I guess we will see in a few days if it starts to grow back or not.

Now that you mention it I probably leave the lights on way more than I should. Most days they are on for about 12 hours, some days even more.

As far as the ferts go, I know that NPK refers to Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphorus but I am still relatively new to planted tanks and don't really know anything about dosing them, or where I would even get them. I've heard Seachem sells them but I haven't seen them in any LFS. Would Flourish not be enough?


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## NeonFlux (Apr 10, 2008)

You're welcome, glad I could help out. Yeah, twelve hours is quite a bit of lighting time! I would go for about seven hour and half hours; maybe a little more or less is pretty decent.. just gotta find that balance is important haha. Regular Flourish comprehensive is pretty good enough, although I would recommend mixing your own liquid NPK and Trace solution fertilizers using dry ferts, you can save quite a bit of money, but entirely up to you.


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## streeker02 (May 2, 2014)

cut your photoperiod in half, seriously.


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## Frieswithat (Mar 21, 2014)

I just did a search today for "Bala shark bba" when I noticed my new friends eating my bba off the wood in my tank, I'm cutting back the lights to 6 or less hours a day to see if that helps as well. I'm ok with some bba but my mopani wood is almost completely covered and the Anubis leaves have been covered lately. Still new to a planted tank and plan on doing bigger weekly water changes too. Hoping to get it under control, I know I'll never rid my tank of it completely.


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## Mikeygmzmg (Mar 19, 2015)

Yeah too long of a photo period. Once you fix that you'll be golden.


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## Jcstank (Jan 3, 2015)

What I did to stop my BBA and all other algae:


8 hours of light no more than 35 PAR at substrate on timer (this is very important). I use a Planted + but any decent light works if set up properly.
lots and lots of fast growing plants and floaters, which for reasons I cannot explain slow algae to almost nothing. What you have is not enough plants and slow growers, which is not ideal as sole plants in my opinion for low tech.
Fertilize with dry fertilizers 1/3 EI method or just one dose after 50% water change (this really helps).
Weekly 50% water change with more fish, bi-weekly with less fish.
3 times the dose of excel after 50% weekly water change and then 1.25% of the recommended dose for the rest of the week. Excel is a carbon souce for plants so they grow faster and algaecide too.
MTS because they eat all the dead plant matter and algae at night helping keep the tank clean.
Larger canister filter or over filtering of some kind.
When doing water changes with tap water dont fill the tank under the water line. Instead let the water splash in so it off gases as much as possible.


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