Serious BBA problem...for over a month now...

M

meximan

AC Members
Dec 30, 2012
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Ok i posted this up in my lighting threads but its become apparent that Its not getting any better by any means..

Tank is:
55gallon
Java moss and 2 sword plants
2 t5 HO 6500k
Tanks been running for over a year now.
Water temp currently is about 78...

Fish:
Oto's , Tetra's.



A little over a month ago i started seeing fuzzy stuff on my swords and it was hard to remove...I tried peroxide dipping them outside of the tank and that helped..The moss started developing a brown top...Like this...




So i did a large water change...pulled out a bag of peat rocks i had in the filters because they were in there about a year and looked disgusting...Added Bio balls as a replacement ..

I set up a timer for the lights im about 9 hours a day right now on.....The last two weeks have been crazy hot and the tanks temps jumped up to around 83 degree's..Ive been leaving the glass top open and its reduced it down to 78 ish....

BUT IT KEEPS GROWING!!!.... This was a picture when the tanks temps jumped to 83...I did another big cleaning ...I cant rub off the BBA with my hands...Another 60% water change...My nitrates were about 80ppm so i know something is off...



But it wont stop.....ITs taking over!...Its been another week and the BBA is taking off and getting longer/larger...Another 40% water change today...I tested the water PRIOR to the waterchange and it was down to 40ppm...




Ive been reading all day...and i did have some flourish excel lying around...I stopped using this because it melted my anacharis in my small tank....I didnt have a schrenge (spelling )...but i used one of the API test tubes filled to 5 ml...and held my thumb over it ...Put it under the BBA and released...figuring it would get as close to spot treating as possible...I havent noticed any changes in color..been about 6 hours now...

what else can i do?
 
Can you turn one of your T5's off? Seems like a lot of light on a 55 without CO2. I think it is your lighting that is an issue. The jump in your nitrates gave it plenty to eat. I would trim as much off of your plants as possible. You can take scissors to the moss and cut it back as far as you can. Manually remove as much as possible. Turn one T5 off if you can. If you can't, cut your light period back even further. Spot treat as much as possible. I would wait til water change, lower my water level or take the plant, rock, driftwood out of the tank. "paint it" really well with prime or whatever, wait a couple minutes, put it bak in tank.

It is a royal pain....I was free of it for about a year....now it is back again. I detest/hate the stuff. Good luck....
 
Perhaps that side of the tank is getting hit with diffused natural light from the window at this time of the year and that is causing it to grow more now. Can you rearrange the rocks a bit to the left side, away from the window perhaps?
 
BBA loves the higher light and lots of excess nutrients in the water.

The little bit of moss you have in the tank is not enough to out compete it by a long ways.

Suggestions- put a floater in the water. These will suck up any extra nutrients quickly and add some shade. Also dose trim what you can to remove the stuff and increase your water changes. Excell there are several other treatments you can do.

I've always got a little bit of this in my tank. SAE's combined with val's and lower lighting means it never becomes a problem.
 
I had a huge outbreak of it. Got on everything all my tubing decorations etc. It came in on a rock with java moss i bought from a LFS their tanks now all look like mine did. To get rid of mine I pulled everything I could live without that was covered out and tossed it in the garbage. Cut my lighting down. Bleach dipped everything that was necessary until the BBA was bright white. Then the hard part I manually scrubbed every single bit of it out of the tank as much as possible. Then scraped the dead BBA off of the bleached bits.

I am not a fan of dosing anything unnecessary into my tank at all, but this outbreak was seriously bad and hard on the impellers on my filters. They were stopping and running dry once a day. I treated with an anti algae product that said it was good against BBA. The tetra product. It is chlorine based so be careful. After a week it was almost all gone. I replanted my aquarium with new plants. Nothing spectacular yet, just some anubias, and java fern. I am double dosing flourish excel and it is almost all gone.

I had tried easier ways of getting rid of it. Phosphate sponge in the filter, cutting the lighting off, daily water changes, running carbon (I never run carbon). It just kept growing and got out of hand.

BBA seriously hates flourish excel or API CO2 booster. It has helped considerably.

EDIT: In my case I did not want to control it. I want it out, its ugly. My fish and plants are pretty. I enjoy watching them, BBA took all the fun out of owning an aquarium.
 
It is by a window but i normall have the blinds shut and the black background is a thick Poster paper...I can pull one of the bulbs out of the light if thats needed, or can i just cut down lighting to say 5 hours?

How much excelt do u think i should put in a 5 gallon bucket to dip my rocks/moss in? i think its 5 ml per 10 us gall. should i throw 20 ml in there with wate rand let everything sit for 5 minutes? rinse plants after?
 
I ususally dont like the floating plants , But anacharis is easy to throw on top and remove once its done sucking everything up...Think that would be a good one?
 
First and foremost try to turn one bulb off in your fixture. You have a huge amount of light for a tank that isn't getting added CO2. At that level Excel isn't going to enough, and algae is going to flourish. Even if you get rid of this BBA, other algae will find its way in with that level of light.

Dose Excel every day, bump it up a little higher than the recommended level. Excel can actually kill algae.

If you have easy access to cheap fast growing plants (water sprite, hornwort, etc.) throw them in there to soak up nutrients. If you can get floaters like duckweed/frogbit/floating watersprite etc. then they'll help too by shading a bit and sucking up excess nitrogen. They might get covered in BBA so don't put anything too nice in there, and make sure it grows fast so that the BBA will have trouble getting hold.
 
**** so it sounds like i gotta set up some kind of CO2 system in my tank then huh...I brought a chunk of this stuff to our local fish place and they said to do a ton of water changes, but she also said that i didnt have enough light for my swords. 2x 54watt HO t5's. She said i would need a third...
 
Ok...so it looks like the excel did kind of work on it..check it out...I think i good soaking is in order...

 
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