# What's the product that kills blue-green algae?



## j-gens (Dec 11, 2008)

is it ultra life bga destroyer>?? stuff is great at killing bga... also i have heard you can use red slime remover for salt water tanks... 
when using any product to kill bga make sure you pay attention to water conditions... 
remove as much bga before you try to kill it that way when it dies it does NOT create an ammonia spike from excessive rotting bga... also some people claim that the bio bacteria is affected by products of these nature... i believe it should not affect your bio colony as it targets the opposite of whatever bacteria is in your bio filter..
ex targets gram+ while bio filter is gram - or vice versa... i dont remember which is in your bio filter and too lazy to hunt it down right now...

on a side note many use eyrthromycin(sp?) to kill bga... kinda expensive imo...


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

Erythromycin is usually the active ingredient in commercially available BGA removers.

Buying the powder in bulk is cheaper than buying commercially packaged products.

Also, erythryomycin will probably hit both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria, so it can potentially destroy your biological filter.


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## j-gens (Dec 11, 2008)

ultra life actually goes a longer way than erythryomycin for the price... (unless you have a prescription for it)
i have a 125 gal and in the early days i tried both... to dose with the erythyromycin it cost around 20 dollars or so...
with the ultra life i think it was like 8?\

if you buy erythromycin in bulk i think you need to buy nearly 80 dollars worth... at least that was the smallest bulk purchase i could find...

also erythromycin is effective against the gram positive bacteria, and gram negative bacteria has RESISTANCE to iti

the reason many people think it will destroys your bio filter is because they do not properly remove bga manually before starting their treatment... as the bga dies it will rot in your tank just like a dead fish, leftover food etc... when that happens is your bio filter can not keep up and many people blame in on the treatment chemical instead of user error...


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

j-gens said:


> if you buy erythromycin in bulk i think you need to buy nearly 80 dollars worth... at least that was the smallest bulk purchase i could find...


I guess it depends on your supplier; for me it is cheaper to buy erythromycin, rather than commercially available products.



j-gens said:


> also erythromycin is effective against the gram positive bacteria and gram negative bacteria has RESISTANCE to iti


Erythromycin has activity against Gram negative bacteria such as those from the genus _Legionella_. The peptidoglycan of both Gram positive and negative bacteria will be affected by this macrolide antibiotic

Perhaps more information than you wanted to know


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## j-gens (Dec 11, 2008)

i think you need to understand erythromycin a little better... while they both can be affected, gram positive will accumulate 100 times more than gram negative.
hence the word resistance...not immunity


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

j-gens said:


> i think you need to understand erythromycin a little better... while they both can be affected, gram positive will *accumulate 100 times more than gram negative.*
> hence the word resistance...not immunity


Do you have a primary journal for this? I'd like to see if a group actually did this.

I would imagine the LPS/LOS keeps most antibiotics out anyway, hence the general resistance to antibiotics in Gram negative bacteria.


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## j-gens (Dec 11, 2008)

i dont really need to defend my point anyone can even google and simply figure this out. 

on top of erythromycin being more effective against gram positive vs gram negative its also not going to kill your bio filter unless you dose LARGE amounts(probably more than the recommended dose) of the antibiotic... The antibiotic is not typically going to kill(not bacteriocidal) bacteria but instead inhibit the growth of it(bacteriostatic)... 

if you really think it is otherwise show ME the evidence otherwise i will follow the wide belief of how erythromycin works...

with that said-that my contribution, if you want to take it take it, if you want to prove it wrong prove it wrong it will be a learning experience for me and hopefully anyone else reading 
annnnd im out.


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 4, 2008)

Ah, the amount of misinformation that can be found from a quick Google search.

Here are some articles for your reference:

Katzung Pharmacology, 11th Edition, Section VIII. Chapter 44. Tetracyclines, Macrolides, Clindamycin, Chloramphenicol, Streptogramins, & Oxazolidinones.

Specifically, page 799 has reference to erythromycin.

It says that levels as low as 0.02 mcg/mL to 2 mcg/mL can affect some Gram negative bacteria. It then goes on to say there are other Gram negative bacteria are also susceptible.

As a comparison, levels required to treat BGA are upwards of 2.5 mg/L (equivalent to 2.5 mcg/mL....)

I'll also point you in the direction of:

Bactericidal action of an average dose of erythromycin in the bronchi. Curr Med Res Opin. 1979;6(2):111-7. Fraschini F, Avallon R, Copponi V, Fumagalli G, Mandler F, Scaglione F, Scarpazza G.

While quite old, the article demonstrates quite nicely the effect of erythromycin as a bactericidal agent.

All of this from ~5 minutes of Pubmed searches.

*Edit*: A few more for your reading pleasure.

Plasma bactericidal activity after administration of erythromycin estolate and erythromycin ethylsuccinate to healthy volunteers. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 1988 Aug;32(8):1227-30. Bérubé D, Kirouac D, Croteau D, Bergeron MG, Lebel M.

Comparative study of the bactericidal activity of ampicillin/sulbactam and erythromycin against intracellular Legionella pneumophila. J Antimicrob Chemother. 1993 Jul;32(1):93-9. Ramirez JA, Summersgill JT, Miller RD, Meyers TL, Raff MJ.

Intracellular multiplication of Legionnaires' disease bacteria (Legionella pneumophila) in human monocytes is reversibly inhibited by erythromycin and rifampin. J Clin Invest. 1983;71(1):15–26. M A Horwitz and S C Silverstein 

The last one is quite interesting; the authors find that only bacteria in stationary phase were not killed by the macrolide; when growing in exponential phase, bacteria showed susceptibility.


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## Tim335 (Aug 27, 2013)




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## Tmuck44 (Mar 17, 2013)

the erythromycin wiped out my bga and didn't have any problems with beneficial bacteria. 


_Posted from Plantedtank.net App for Android_


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## ipkiss (Aug 9, 2011)

Really? All this to kill BGA? I must have been lucky. The only time I ever got BGA was when I got too lazy to clean out my substrate from too much fish waste, lack of water changes, or dirty filter. All from my own laziness.


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## gSTiTcH (Feb 21, 2013)

Darkblade48 said:


> Ah, the amount of misinformation that can be found from a quick Google search.
> 
> Here are some articles for your reference:
> 
> ...


I do believe we call that a win. Nothing more fun than responding to a call to cite your sources by actually citing credible sources.


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## Chronados (Jan 28, 2013)

This thread is 2.5 years old, fyi


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