# BBA and Hair algae outbreak - need help solving



## Mikeygmzmg (Mar 19, 2015)

When you say "water change wed and sat (50%) rest on sunday" do you mean you're going through 100% water change over those 2 days? I believe that's a bit too much.

Also, both types of algae you are explaining sound like inconsistent and/or lack of co2. That is if the parameters you listed are correct. 

I would reccomend upping the co2 as high as you can without gassing the fish, and cut down your photo period a bit. Maybe a 5 hour total.

Not sure about the otto/shrimp activity. Those huge 100% water changes over 2 days could be doing it.


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## sousvide (Mar 22, 2015)

Yes. I should have also mentioned that the reason I moved to 2x a week water changes was because I was getting a lot of bio film but primarily to address a small diatom problem. The diatoms went away but I kept up with the water changes. 

Noted though...I will cut back to say 20% midweek and 50% on the weekend or do you suggest I cut the mid-week water change altogether? 

When you suggest upping the CO2...should I keep the CO2 on around the light schedule as well? So, say I move my light schedule from 11am to 4pm. Should I move my CO2 reg to a similar schedule say 10am to 3pm?


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## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

Algae hates water changes. At the first sign of trouble I do 50% twice a week until things get sorted out. I would not stop doing that.

Find a way to increase CO2, pump more, better diffusion, circulation, etc. I would have the CO2 come on a couple hours before the lights, and go off 1 hour before the lights.

Maintain super clean filters, substrate, manually remove all the algae you can, dead leaves, any real bad leaves covered with algae, dont skimp on ferts. Keep harassing the algae this way and be patient. Spot treating w/excel can help.

I probably wouldnt even cut the light if those numbers are accurate. With good CO2 and ferts that should be easily manageable.


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## sousvide (Mar 22, 2015)

Thanks Burr. I figured more frequent water changes would be beneficial for reducing algae. I cleaned out my filter again and I've turned the needle valve a bit to get more CO2 in. I think I'm at about 1.5 bubbles/sec though I really should double check that. 

What CO2 PPM should I be aiming for? Assuming my measurements are correct on KH and PH, I'm getting a reading of around 30ppm.

I'm also, on my next water change, going to turn off the filter, spot treat with H202, sit for 20 minutes, 50% water change repeat again the next 48 hours. I'll try dosing in spots, don't want to kill my amano so I'll go with 5-7ml treatments per go. Is that a bad idea?

Cutting the plant matter might be tough. The grass is already cut down very low.


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## Doppelgaenger (Jul 20, 2015)

spot treat H2O2 with your filter turned off for about half an hour, just long enough for the H2O2 to burn everything it touches. Important: Then come back 4 hours later and do it again.

I had shrimp, even baby RCS, walk thru treated areas that were still fizzing and it didn't seem to bother them at all. I was treating for BGA and this went on for weeks and none of those shrimp have died and they're all doing great now.

Make sure you don't have BGA anywhere, that stuff is toxic and I've seen Otos shut down like that because of it.


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## Jeff5614 (Dec 29, 2005)

sousvide said:


> Thanks Burr. I figured more frequent water changes would be beneficial for reducing algae. I cleaned out my filter again and I've turned the needle valve a bit to get more CO2 in. I think I'm at about 1.5 bubbles/sec though I really should double check that.
> 
> What CO2 PPM should I be aiming for? Assuming my measurements are correct on KH and PH, I'm getting a reading of around 30ppm.
> 
> ...


The pH/KH tables for calculating CO2 can be a bit deceiving making you think you have more CO2 than you really do. It might be easier and more accurate to forget your KH and just go for a 1.0 drop in pH which will put you around 30ppm on CO2 and then you can tweak it up or down depending on flora and fauna. Just don't go upping your CO2 and then leave for the day.


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## sousvide (Mar 22, 2015)

Doppelgaenger said:


> spot treat H2O2 with your filter turned off for about half an hour, just long enough for the H2O2 to burn everything it touches. Important: Then come back 4 hours later and do it again.


So leave the filter off for 4-8 hours? I assume that's ok or at least better than having any h202 get into the canister?



Doppelgaenger said:


> Make sure you don't have BGA anywhere, that stuff is toxic and I've seen Otos shut down like that because of it.


Damn. I've always had a bit cyanobacteria. Seems to really like one rock in my hardscape. It's hard to tell if I have more elsewhere because the hair algae is essentially a carpet masking everything else. I haven't read Oto's taking issues with BGA but if that's true, I guess I could do a round of erythromycin to see if that helps.


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## Doppelgaenger (Jul 20, 2015)

I would go with deep cleaning of the substrate first, I've always had BGA problems when I didn't bother to suck up all the extra food that was lying between the substrate. You want to take the rock and whatever it's growing on out and wash it off too. try and dislodge and suck up all the BGA you can because nothing will eat it, you can only burn it.

Deep cleaning will also probably 

I had to pull everything out of my tank and steam it/boil it if there was the possibility to do so. BGA will linger at pest levels until you pass a critical mass of biological , after which it will explode suddenly and carpet everything.

Erythromicin will work, but I didn't have the option to do that in my tank at the time. I preffer to treat the cause rather than the sypmtoms

Bump: Oh, and don't leave the filter off for 4/8 hours, no need for that. 30 minutes should do it. Once peroxide falls into the substrate it's not going to mix with the water column. water and peroxide don't mix well unless you have a lot of flow


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## sousvide (Mar 22, 2015)

How do you deep clean the substrate? I have a hairgrass carpet that's pretty much protecting the sub from being pulled up. But realistically, at this rate, I'm pretty much ready to give up and pull the carpet and start from scratch. Need to find a home for my livestock first.

Rewind a bit on why I'm wanting to throw in the towel.

I did a 12ml H202 (3% concentration) on the front right quarter of the tank. Turned off the filter, left it for 2 hours. Came back and noticed that a) the carpet was lighter in colour - that's good but b) the damn fuzzy hair algae was still there and strong. Waited another hour and turned on the filter and called it night. I came back another hour later only to find my 6 of 7 rummy nose pretty much zombies - floating sideways, not moving or very lethargic. I panicked and immediately shut the filter off. 0ppm Ammonia. 0 Nitrates. PH spiked like crazy though. I'm normally at 6.6, I was off the regular PH chart and into the High PH range but still within what literature says is safe for rummy's. Still, I did a 50% water change, attached a tube to the outflow and ran the filter to remove whatever water was in there. Now the Rummy's are...ok. They're still behaving odd, like they want to vacate the water and one rummy is likely not going to make it (the smallest one).

I feel so bad for what I did. The 4 otos are fine. 4 amanos...I think are fine, though hiding (they do that when I water change). Damn algae is making this miserable. And I'm beginning to think this isn't hair algae - if it were, the h202 should have taken care of it pretty quickly. I took pics this time. 

https://goo.gl/photos/F9zvY9DLfCVUipdo9
https://goo.gl/photos/WE1XqCqkrsC8XaKR7
https://goo.gl/photos/2pMg8rZYuJ4sE5gC9
https://goo.gl/photos/3zkxirBDC7LkdUWA6

edit: I just thought of something. The way I dosed the h202 was with a hypodermic needle (my mom was a nurse). On some of the dosage, I would insert the needle into the sub and jostle it a bit. I wonder if that would have released some anaerobic bacteria but...that would seem awfully fast for the fish to have a reaction to that.


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## Raymond S. (Dec 29, 2012)

If this is this...ADA 60p Iwagumi...tank. Then I have no idea(have not read up on this type of tank) how they keep out algae with the light level usually needed for DHG and not having any fast growing type plants.
But..just in general you have a very high level of light in there for it being about 13" from the sub. That light usually works on a 75g tank/w injected CO2. That tank is 20" tall plus how far over the tank the light is. So you have about 70% more light than the
75g tank would.
Like I said I have no experience/w an Iwagumi type tank. And I don't know how the DHG would grow if you lowered the light. But I see that as your solution to the algae.
I think the Stingray is the correct light for your tank.
When the Planted+ first came out, there was considerable talk on here about the PAR
and over and over again it was stated that the red bulbs/light does not register on a regular PAR meter. If that part is true then any PAR rating that you see on it or the Stingray is fairly under what it actually is. They both have those same red bulbs in them.
On Amazon(the U.S. version) the 24" model has a couple more than half as many bulbs as the 30" model does(red bulbs) so it shouldn't be quite as high in PAR.
Were it not for the shipping cost from you to me I would offer to pay the original cost of the light plus the shipping to me on it if you got one and it didn't work for you as I am thinking about getting the 30" model so I can have those extra red bulbs, but I only
need about 26" of light fixture. The 24" is too short and the 30" is too long for what I need.


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## Steve001 (Feb 26, 2011)

Has the algae sticky helped?
Don't do a deep substrate cleaning. You'll suck out all that reduced organic matter plants like so much. If you made a substrate that's more than just gravel, I don't remember if you've mentioned that, you'll remove whatever you put in there.


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## sousvide (Mar 22, 2015)

It is an ADA 60p. I can control the output on the light and have toned it down some - not looking at moving to a new light at this point BUT I will consider ditching the DHG and microswords if they don't grow.

I did a full clean today. I cut back a lot of the plants trying to remove all algae from them. Ended up changing out roughly 75% of the water as I was siphoning out all the debris and detritus. I did NOT do a full substrate cleaning as there's no way for me to get down there but a lot of material did get kicked up in the process. By the way, Steve001, it's ADA amazonia with osmocote root tabs at the bottom - no possible way I'm getting to the bottom though as it's a good 2 inches thick in the shallowest spots.

Cleaned out the filter again (twice this week) now picked out as much of the BBA as I could. Still some left but it's damn near impossible to remove. I think what I can try is physically removing the rocks but I don't know since two of the rocks are absolutely massive.

Roughly 5 hours after the plant pruning, water changes, filter cleaning, the rummy nose are super lethargic again - basically being pushed around by the current and generally not responsive to any stimuli. No H202 treatment this time around and nothing out of the ordinary parameter wise. I'm hoping they're just super tired from swimming away from my net trying to catch the plant matter. Hope they make it.

As I was analyzing my tank, I'm wondering if flow might my another problem. I have a large enough filter but I think maybe there's a dead spot where it allows/promotes algae growth. And from there it takes off. Might look into a small power head to move some current around to see if that helps.


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## klibs (May 1, 2014)

pics of tank then I will try to give advice

Don't worry about the rummys too much. They get UGLY if they are even a little stressed. I just introduced 4 more into my tank and they went from colored and bright red > GHOST white pale while acclimating > 1/2 hour later bright red and colored again.

Too much flow + too much CO2 will cause them to stay lethargic and pale. I have seen that with mine. If yours are that unhappy I would consider that you may be pumping in too much CO2 OR have too much flow.

You should not have put osmocote under amazonia - there is no call for that much nutrients

How do the roots on your grass look? if DHG is not doing well you can tell by what's going on under the substrate. If there are nice white healthy root systems then it is doing something - if not then it is unhappy.

Are your plants healthy / algae free or are they being attacked? Usually if you have algae and your plants are healthy and clean then it is a much better scenario than if your plants are being suffocated by the stuff.

Again, it is almost impossible to give good feedback without pics of the tank


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## sousvide (Mar 22, 2015)

Thanks Klibs. I did have pics posted (via URL - google photos for whatever reason won't work with embed):
https://goo.gl/photos/F9zvY9DLfCVUipdo9
https://goo.gl/photos/WE1XqCqkrsC8XaKR7
https://goo.gl/photos/2pMg8rZYuJ4sE5gC9
https://goo.gl/photos/3zkxirBDC7LkdUWA6

Hopefully those work. I can snap more pics when I'm at home (and not at work).

The root system of the DHG is excellent. Deep white roots go pretty much all the way down to the bottom of the tank in the shallowest spots. I'd say the roots on the DHG in the front of the glass are a good 1.5" to 2" I can't say what it's like for the grass away from the glass as I can't see them.

It's tricky with the CO2 and flow. I did up the CO2 at the advice of others over the last few days. That could be it with the Rummy's. I might turn it down a bit but this morning, they're perfectly fine/happy so I'll leave it and monitor.

I'm also about to pre-mix another batch of macro solutions. I'm wondering if I need to go higher in nutrient concentration.
When I first started EI dosing (a while back before I had issues), I *was* dosing in a (500ml batch with 25ml doses):
KNO3 @ 30g
KH2PO4 @ 2g
K2SO4 @ 15g
which was supposed to yield:
Nitrate @ 16.7ppm
Phosphate @ 1.3 ppm
Potassium K @ 17.7ppm

Because I tend to run pretty high on nitrates in the WC, I toned it down (I thought the above was contributing to a diatom bloom) to my *current* macro solution and targets:
KNO3 @ 17g
KH2PO4 @ 1.5g
K2SO4 @ 10g
which was supposed to yield:
Nitrate @ 10.4ppm
Phosphate @ 1 ppm
Potassium K @ 11.9ppm

I think this time, I'll *go back* to my prev. numbers while with the exception of the potassium nitrate.


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## bsherwood (Nov 22, 2007)

H202- learn how to use it. IMO it is a wonderful tool! Fast and very effective.
learn to use it tho- it will kill some plants. (I have read it is not so good with inverts. but I have had zero issues) I keep it in a spray bottle and also in one of the restaurant condiment squeeze bottles.


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