Think I'm Developing BBA

[DGalt]

I'm pretty sure. I'm seeing nodes of it on the tops of the dwarf clover leaves, a few spots of some of the anubias leaves, and a couple nodes on one of the pieces of driftwood.

Not really sure what to do about it. I saw a little bit of it maybe a month ago, but I removed the leaves it was on and figured that was the end of up. Apparently not...

I can continue removes it piece by piece, or spot treating it with Excel, but I don't know how effective that's going to be.

Could use some suggestions.

Tank Conditions:
15 gallons
40W spiral CFL lighting
Dosing Excel daily, Flourish and Potassium 2x a week
weekly water changes

Nitrate levels are usually between 5-10ppm (although I haven't checked in about 2 weeks because I was getting consistent readings for about 2 months)

thanks

[jmhart]

Two options, reduce light/ferts or increase co2. You can increase the amount of excel you dose, should help. Alternatively you could look into diy co2.

Adding more co2 always kills it. Overdosing excel will kill it but won't necessarily eliminate the conditions that brought it on. Increasing co2 or regular excel dosing will do both.

[DGalt]

well atm I'm dosing Excel based on what the bottle says to use. Should I double that?

I would like to do CO2 injection, but I'm waiting until I have enough money to set up a pressurized system. I've been avoiding DIY simply because I'm in a dorm and I think DIY would end up being more of a hassle than I can deal with.

[jmhart]

Doubling your excel dosage would definitely be an overdose. It would kill the BBA, but I wouldn't recommend it for the long run. You could do that for a week, and then go down to 10-20% above what you are doing now....make sense? Overdose to kill it, and then increase your regular dosing to avoid it in the future.

[DGalt]

alright I'll try that

[Riiz]

Actually if you have alot of fast-growers and high-light, you'll see that it takes double the recommended dose to maintain that high growth-rate. In my 80gal which is Co2 injected now, was run on a double dose of excel daily for about 5months+, but the startup dose after waterchanges was the same though.

[DGalt]

well I'm definitely not in the high light range.

the only fast grower is probably the rotala, but since I trimmed it its growth rate seems to be down a bit (maybe it was just recovering from post-pruning shock) - it is growing, just not as quickly as I had thought it would