# BBA in shrimp tank. Can not figure it out.



## Cr9 (May 25, 2020)

Any help? I know there are 1,000,000 bba threads, but any ideas? I want to fix the problem, not just get rid of it.


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## Cr9 (May 25, 2020)

So, does anyone have any ideas? I know I posted this awhile ago, and I've gotten some under control, but any extra help would be appreciated!


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

Cr9 said:


> Any help? I know there are 1,000,000 bba threads, but any ideas? I want to fix the problem, not just get rid of it.


The fix is somewhere in the light/organic waste numbers. If you don't have a heavily planted tank the odds are waste is decomposing, releasing ammonia/toxins and fueling the BBA. Are you dosing or is the nitrate naturally occurring? What size tank is it?


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

Cr9 said:


> Any help? I know there are 1,000,000 bba threads, but any ideas? I want to fix the problem, not just get rid of it.


 Truth is, nobody knows.


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## stlhokie (Aug 21, 2018)

Try bigger water changes. At least 50% seems to have a better impact on plant health


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

There is an excellent 45 page thread with 449 posts written by experienced aquarists trying to link BBA to dissolved organic compounds by analyzing the concentration of Total organic carbon TOC. Unfortunately there was no correlation found. 

The fact of the matter is that one remedy helps someone but the exact opposite helps someone else.


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## Blue Ridge Reef (Feb 10, 2008)

stlhokie said:


> Try bigger water changes. At least 50% seems to have a better impact on plant health


I could not agree more on big water changes helping plant growth, could not disagree more on big water changes being a good thing in a shrimp tank. I have two high tech shrimp tanks currently, and will never say it can't be done but WRoD is almost entirely a large parameter change issue in my view. It's a tough balance.

I agree with @Edward that I can find no direct cause. Among my 12 current tanks, the 2 that get BBA make no sense at all. I can move a Buce covered with it from one tank to another without BBA growth and it dies off in a week or two. I can only state with any certainly that it hates being sprayed with peroxide, but comes right back if you put it in the tank it has conditions to grow in, and doesn't elsewhere. Maddening algae.


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

My BBA theory is linked more to the development of periphyton. There is also an excellent thread started by experienced @Deanna describing biofilm and periphyton. Also I agree with niko from APC who talks here about having all the technology today but still struggling with BBA. He says we need to return to the basics we used to have decades ago, the time when we had not heard of BBA. Perhaps we are missing the right beneficial bacteria. 

It's worth noting that one of the reasons why disinfectant glutaraldehyde Excel, large water changes and use of dechlorinators affect BBA is because they cause changes to periphyton. I believe BBA spores need the right periphyton composition as a substrate for further development.


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

Asteroid said:


> The fix is somewhere in the light/organic waste numbers.


 People struggle with BBA under lights between 30 and 300 PAR, that’s very low to very high intensities. People also struggle with BBA when they do little water changes and also when changing 90% water daily. 

So please enlighten us , what is the light/organic golden ratio?


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## Eric Tran (Jul 7, 2016)

This treatment wiped out all bba, and string algae from my shrimp tanks. Give it a try. Also, cleaning up all organic waste and matter in the tank is a good tip.


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## varanidguy (Sep 8, 2017)

What helped me get BBA under control after a rescape was toning down my lights and doing a very thorough cleaning of my filter and tank. Removing all the dead leaves, dying leaves, and floating leaves. Increasing the plant mass goes a long way too. Making sure co2 is consistent and you're saturating the water well.

Once it became obvious the BBA was no longer spreading, I added in an SAE to eat what was there (without manual removal or killing it with chemicals, BBA will stay there forever even if it's no longer spreading).

This formula has worked for me. Some people say to turn up the flow, but that's never worked for me. I had BBA on my spray bar output holes so it clearly didn't mind a lot of water movement. 

Now that it's been beaten back and isn't reappearing, I've been able to turn the light intensity up a little. Only time will tell but so far so good. Hope this helps you.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

varanidguy said:


> What helped me get BBA under control after a rescape was toning down my lights and doing a very thorough cleaning of my filter and tank. Removing all the dead leaves, dying leaves, and floating leaves. Increasing the plant mass goes a long way too. Making sure co2 is consistent and you're saturating the water well.


That's usually the case for most folks, unless you live in an alternate aquarium universe where no water changes, high light, heavy fish load, low plant mass and accumulation of organics has no effect on whether BBA or any algae will grow. On my 3-foot long I removed the Bolbitis which accounted for probably 75% of the plant mass. For the first time I started to see a few tuffs of BBA. Increased water changes, put fresh carbon in the filter and decreased peak lighting and duration a bit and the BBA was gone. 

There's a host of things you could do, the more the better, each one has the effect of removing organics or increasing uptake of waste. Redundancy is king.


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## varanidguy (Sep 8, 2017)

Asteroid said:


> That's usually the case for most folks, unless you live in an alternate aquarium universe where no water changes, high light, heavy fish load, low plant mass and accumulation of organics has no effect on whether BBA or any algae will grow. On my 3-foot long I removed the Bolbitis which accounted for probably 75% of the plant mass. For the first time I started to see a few tuffs of BBA. Increased water changes, put fresh carbon in the filter and decreased peak lighting and duration a bit and the BBA was gone.
> 
> 
> 
> There's a host of things you could do, the more the better, each one has the effect of removing organics or increasing uptake of waste. Redundancy is king.


A lot of the times, returning to the basics is better than looking for a complicated solution. ;-)

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

Eric Tran said:


> This treatment wiped out all bba, and string algae from my shrimp tanks. Give it a try.


 Eric
how long did it take the BBA to go South after the application?


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## Eric Tran (Jul 7, 2016)

I first cleaned my tank and filters of all organic waste and matter. Then did this 3 times, every other day. By the next week everything was gone. Hope this helps!


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

Agree, removing as much of the organics is key. Although BBA can grow in low light as well it’s growth accelerates as light increases.


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## Edward (Apr 11, 2005)

Eric Tran said:


> This treatment wiped out all bba, and string algae from my shrimp tanks. Give it a try. Also, cleaning up all organic waste and matter in the tank is a good tip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th3FFTiuzJo





Eric Tran said:


> I first cleaned my tank and filters of all organic waste and matter. Then did this 3 times, every other day. By the next week everything was gone. Hope this helps!







The video instructions say turn off filtration, dose 3% Hydrogen peroxide 1.5ml / gallon, wait 1 hour, turn filters back on, and can be applied three times in three days. It is safe with shrimps, snails and fish. 

Thank you Eric, it is very helpful information.


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## Eric Tran (Jul 7, 2016)

Yes try it out. Make sure you mix around the water after dosing in the tank. I left my lights off for a couple days after treatment. It worked for me. Also, it is supposed to be 1.2 ml in the guy was not using US gallons.

Bump:


Edward said:


> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th3FFTiuzJo
> 
> The video instructions say turn off filtration, dose 3% Hydrogen peroxide 1.5ml / gallon, wait 1 hour, turn filters back on, and can be applied three times in three days. It is safe with shrimps, snails and fish.
> 
> Thank you Eric, it is very helpful information.


One more thing which is possible. Every time I've had bba problem I found that my co2 output was low. Make sure you're dosing 20-30ppm. BBA doesnt seem to like clean and acidic environments. Make sure filters and lines are cleaned as well. You mentioned you have a shrimp tank but you are dosing co2. In all my years I've never had shrimps thrive in a co2 injected tank. I thought reading other posts that this doesn't matter if you do it right. No way, there is a huge difference. Once I removed that and only grew low light low maintainence plants in my shrimp tanks their population exploded. I guess it matters which is more important, plants or shrimps.


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

Eric Tran said:


> Yes try it out. Make sure you mix around the water after dosing in the tank. I left my lights off for a couple days after treatment. It worked for me. Also, it is supposed to be 1.2 ml in the guy was not using US gallons.
> 
> Bump:
> 
> One more thing which is possible. Every time I've had bba problem I found that my co2 output was low. Make sure you're dosing 20-30ppm. BBA doesnt seem to like clean and acidic environments. Make sure filters and lines are cleaned as well. You mentioned you have a shrimp tank but you are dosing co2. In all my years I've never had shrimps thrive in a co2 injected tank. I thought reading other posts that this doesn't matter if you do it right. No way, there is a huge difference. Once I removed that and only grew low light low maintainence plants in my shrimp tanks their population exploded. I guess it matters which is more important, plants or shrimps.


Co2 will only impact algae growth if you have the plant mass to make use of it. Simply adding co2 won't do a thing to a plantless or minimalist setup won' do much. Good co2 will increase uptake thus make quick work of decomposing toxins. 

I run high co2 on my tank that houses tetras and shrimp and the shrimp are breeding out of control. Quality of water with low organic load, far more important.


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## sbo80 (Oct 13, 2019)

Asteroid said:


> Agree, removing as much of the organics is key. Although BBA can grow in low light as well it’s growth accelerates as light increases.


I think this is the real reason for "increase your flow" success. More motion to churn up debris off the bottom where it can get sucked into the filter (and then, theoretically, physically removed). I had a recent short bout with bba, that was simply from trying to turn up my lights higher than necessary. I dropped my intensity and duration, and most of it has melted away in a few weeks. I really did nothing else.


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## Cr9 (May 25, 2020)

Holy smokes. I more or less stopped checking on here because I didn't think I was going to get a response... Thank you to everyone for proving me wrong about that! I'm going to look into that shrimp approved h202 treatment much, much more, and probably do it. 

I also decided to rip up most of my monte carlo shortly after the last time I checked on this thread. I found that helped a lot, and for a while. So there is probably more truth to the idea of organic waste. 

It was also mentioned that I may have an issue with the ppm of CO2 in my tank. I've seen a few threads where that's talked about, but I haven't seen how people actually measure the ppm of CO2 in their tank. Because of that, I've just used an old fluval drop checker from when I first started to try using co2. What would you say is the best way to measure your CO2? And how do you do it?


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