dleblanc
New Member
I posted this to a FB group, seemed like it might help people here, too -
I avoided disaster this weekend - here's what's going on, and how it has worked out. My 180 has new tank syndrome, and is getting algae. Most distressingly, it has lately been getting black beard algae. In my established tank, I have some, but it isn't everywhere. This was going everywhere, so I decided to do something about it.
There's not much that will eat this stuff, most fish that will aren't appropriate for discus, and worse yet, they'll only eat it when really hungry, and with enough food in the tank for 5 growing discus, 7 growing angels, and a bunch of tetras and corys, no chance they're going to eat very much. This leaves me with chemical warfare.
So I read up on this particular algae on plantedtank.net, people cited success with two methods - peroxide, and Seachem Excel. It also seemed like dosing was important, and there were reports of killing the fish.
Next, I went over Aquarium Co-op to get more advice. Cory had also heard of people having success with both approaches, and heard of people killing fish with both. If you can nearly drain a tank, and then go after the crud with peroxide in a squirt bottle, then fill it back up with fresh water and do a change, this seems to work well against BBA. In my 180 with a 30 gallon staging tank, this isn't an option.
Most people recommend a double dose of Excel to get rid of BBA, but Cory reported that a discus owning customer had a disaster this way, and lost a lot of fish. He did a double dose, went to bed, woke up in the morning to distressed fish, couldn't go into work late, so did nothing, came home from work to dead fish. He said there had been an ammonia spike.
I decided to use the product as advertised on the bottle, used the recommended initial dose, got up in the morning to happy fish, checked the water parameters - in my well-cycled tank, I had 0.25 ppm ammonia, and about 0.25 ppm nitrite. Happily, the BBA had gone from black to grey on the ends. I also checked dissolved oxygen levels, and everything was good there.
The bottle says you can dose daily at a lower dose once you hit the tank with the initial dose, but I decided not to until the ammonia and nitrite settle down. I checked again today, ammonia is back down to zero, but nitrite is up to 0.50. The BBA is continuing to die off, turning pink now.
If I'd just searched on this, and did what people on the net say, I believe I would have been looking at a disaster.
I think that if someone did want to try the double dose approach, I'd do it on a Saturday morning, come back in about 6-8 hours, do a massive water change, then do yet another before bed, and plan on very frequent water changes until the tank straightens out.
In some cases, the mass of dying algae can be a problem - I'm sure that isn't my case - there just isn't that much volume of the stuff. If someone were dealing with a heavier infestation, it could be a bigger problem.
If a regular dose did that to my water parameters on a well established tank with serious over capacity in a wet-dry filtered sump, I'm really glad I didn't go with the double dose, and the single dose seems to be effective.
I avoided disaster this weekend - here's what's going on, and how it has worked out. My 180 has new tank syndrome, and is getting algae. Most distressingly, it has lately been getting black beard algae. In my established tank, I have some, but it isn't everywhere. This was going everywhere, so I decided to do something about it.
There's not much that will eat this stuff, most fish that will aren't appropriate for discus, and worse yet, they'll only eat it when really hungry, and with enough food in the tank for 5 growing discus, 7 growing angels, and a bunch of tetras and corys, no chance they're going to eat very much. This leaves me with chemical warfare.
So I read up on this particular algae on plantedtank.net, people cited success with two methods - peroxide, and Seachem Excel. It also seemed like dosing was important, and there were reports of killing the fish.
Next, I went over Aquarium Co-op to get more advice. Cory had also heard of people having success with both approaches, and heard of people killing fish with both. If you can nearly drain a tank, and then go after the crud with peroxide in a squirt bottle, then fill it back up with fresh water and do a change, this seems to work well against BBA. In my 180 with a 30 gallon staging tank, this isn't an option.
Most people recommend a double dose of Excel to get rid of BBA, but Cory reported that a discus owning customer had a disaster this way, and lost a lot of fish. He did a double dose, went to bed, woke up in the morning to distressed fish, couldn't go into work late, so did nothing, came home from work to dead fish. He said there had been an ammonia spike.
I decided to use the product as advertised on the bottle, used the recommended initial dose, got up in the morning to happy fish, checked the water parameters - in my well-cycled tank, I had 0.25 ppm ammonia, and about 0.25 ppm nitrite. Happily, the BBA had gone from black to grey on the ends. I also checked dissolved oxygen levels, and everything was good there.
The bottle says you can dose daily at a lower dose once you hit the tank with the initial dose, but I decided not to until the ammonia and nitrite settle down. I checked again today, ammonia is back down to zero, but nitrite is up to 0.50. The BBA is continuing to die off, turning pink now.
If I'd just searched on this, and did what people on the net say, I believe I would have been looking at a disaster.
I think that if someone did want to try the double dose approach, I'd do it on a Saturday morning, come back in about 6-8 hours, do a massive water change, then do yet another before bed, and plan on very frequent water changes until the tank straightens out.
In some cases, the mass of dying algae can be a problem - I'm sure that isn't my case - there just isn't that much volume of the stuff. If someone were dealing with a heavier infestation, it could be a bigger problem.
If a regular dose did that to my water parameters on a well established tank with serious over capacity in a wet-dry filtered sump, I'm really glad I didn't go with the double dose, and the single dose seems to be effective.
