Treating Cyanobacteria w/ Nitrate

[webcricket]

Well, when it rains it poors! First my stem rot issue in the 10 gallon, now I get home to find my 5 gallon sheeted in blue-green slime!

I tested the water and all is normal except I have 0 nitrate (AP test, even my tap has just a bit, I've never seen a test come up so yellow). I do have two fast growing plants in there, cabomba and a red melon sword under 15 watts of light and I was not fertilizing at all - the betta probably wasn't producing nearly enough waste to provide adequate nitrate. I did some reading from different online sources - cyanobacteria seems to take a hold when nitrate is the limiting factor in plant growth and there is an excess of phosphate. The cyano takes over because it is able to fix atmospheric nitrogen. I'm not sure where the excess of phosphate possibly came from - I have inert gravel, no plants rotting, no food rotting (the betta eats only 4 pellets), and though I have not tested it (don't have a test) supposedly our source tap water tests below measureable levels for phosphates (according to the annual water report). I do have some colorful lake rocks in there - do rocks release phosphates? Could driftwood release phosphates?

Anyhow, I did a 50% water change and removed as much of the algae as possible. The cabomba was badly covered, so I uprooted it and rinsed the algae off. I've added in Flourish Nitrogen at the recommended dose (.3ml). We'll see how the next few days pan out! Anyone here ever tried treating cyanobacteria this way before? Any success?

 

[webcricket]

Ah-ha, just found a mention that bog driftwood can release phosphate. Mine is cypress bog driftwood. May have to try removing it if I cannot correct with the nitrate. These pieces didn't get the same soaking as my others and one of them was a different coloration altogether. I'd bet that is the offender.

 

[plantbrain]

Crypress is not going to release much PO4, nor does the species of BGA we have fix N2 gas.

There's plenty of NO3, NH4 in our tanks for most any algae once it's blooming.

You can kilol the BGA easily with a 3 day blackout, search, it'll all over. Antibiotics are another method. Both take the same time. After, you start adding KNO3 ansd keeop some in the tank for the plants, when the plants slow down and stop growing actively, the algae move in.

So grow the plants, and you do not have algae.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[webcricket]

Been 24 hours and no sign yet of the algae return. Red melon sword has 2 new leaves and the cabomba has a bunch of new green growth. I'll test nitrates later when I do my regular maintenance and see where things stand. Added some K to the tank today as well.

 

[webcricket]

Up to 48 hours and still no return of the cyanobacteria. Nitrates are measurable, but under 5 ppm. I'll probably dose again tomorrow if all continues to go well.

Right now it's looking like that article I found was correct , treating with nitrates seems to be doing the trick here. Here's the link: http://www.cam.org/~tomlins/algae.html

 

[twig]

keep your nitrate above above 5 but below 10

Nitrate usually fixes bga and i hear its unhealthy to keep nitrate below 5 in a planted tank.

Nitrate isn't TOO bad for fish. It's more like a proxy as to when you need to do water changes. High or low you just use it to measure where it was when you did a water change and where it is now ... Good way to keep the tank clean

If you start dosing make sure you don't just dose micro nutrients because that will encourage moer BGA ... get some macros in there befroe you add trace stuff.

 

[webcricket]

Yeah, so far I just added the nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) to the tank. I didn't want to fool around too much with adding anything else while trying to make sure the BGA doesn't come back.

And actually, looking at the Flourish Nitrogen again, according to the bottle I should double my nitrate reading on the test - that being the case, I'm probably just at or just above 5 ppm.

I'm really not sure why I wasn't dosing this tank to begin with, especially with it being 3 wpg, having fast growing plants, and a low fish load. I have a lot of other stuff on my mind lately, so I sometimes miss the obvious, LOL.

 

[plantbrain]

Oh wow, it's a very old article, but very relavent for the time, they had one thing very wrong, PO4 does not limit algae.

Algae are not out competed, they just grow well in very stressful conditions for plant, basically qwhere plants are starving(CO2, NO3, PO4 etc).

I can name an algae for each low condition environemtns above.

BBA=> low CO2
BGA=> low NO3
Green spot => low PO4 and/or low CO2.

Here's a much cheaper way:

Order from www.gregwatson.com

2 lbs KNO3
1 lb KH2PO4
2 lbs GH booster

Traces, you can get from greg is you wish, CMS+B will last for a few years, decades, I like Tropic Master Grow personally.
Some like Seachem Flourish.

That's about all any one needs unless their KH is less than 1-2 degrees.
See EI for a dosing routine that will maintain a 10-30ppm NO3(as well as others)range easily without testing.

Noter, NO3 from KNO3 is radically different in terns of toxicity to fish/livestock that NO3 derived from fish waste and rotting plants etc.


Regards,
Tom Barr