Juwel 180, Long'ish Brown Aglae Threads. Inc Photos

[Tron]

Tank specifications - Juwel 180 Vision / 123 litres, 32.49 US gallons.
Lighting - T8 2x 25w (As of two days ago Changed from 2xT5 35w).
Lighting period- 7 hours day.
CO2 - Excel Flourish daily 6ml.
Filtration – Standard juwel compact Bioflow 3.0 filtation system including Bioflow 600 pump
Fertilisation routine – Flourish ¾ single dose twice a week, Flourish iron ½ single dose twice week , flourish trace ¾ single dose once a week.
Water used – Tap water which is hard 133.7 mg/l ca, Nitrate 20 mg/l no2, Potassium 10.2 mg/l k, Phosphorus 822 µg/l P/l. 25% water change weekly.
Water temp- 24c.
Tank critters- Glow light danio, X-ray tetra, Green fire tetra, Corys, 5 amano shrimps x5. (Tank is up to the limit with fish stock when they all fully grown)

Tank photos with OLD T5 lamps a few days ago.



Close ups Left hand side.
]
Close up Right hand side near filter.


Polysperma close up (sure the snails love eating this plant, always have holes in leaves!)


The tank has been setup for about 1.5 years.


Up until a few days ago I had the 2xT5 35w lamps above which I knew where too bright but have now managed to change for some T8 25w type lamps x2. This I am hoping will help a great deal. With lower CO2 need and slower growth.

98% of the algae grows on the back 3D background and the plants stay mostly clear, but it is spreading on the back ground and not looking very nice (wish it was a green algae if I had to choose I could probably put up with that).
It looks like BBA but it is a lot longer and more like a hair type algae. It is soft and slimey to the touch and grows to about a couple of cm’s or so.
When out of the tank it has a brown/black, dark green look to it (some websites says BBA grows to 0.5cm.) http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm

I have read most of the forums with regards to BBA (which I am not positive it is) and that it is a CO2 issue.

Steps I have taken so far.

1) I tried shielding light with diffusers- did not really work. (so changed the lamps to T8 from T5)

2) I cut down the time from 10 hours 6 to 8 months ago to 7 hrs – Helped a small amount I think.

3) Dosed excel 3x dose for a week – did not really do anything to the algae.

4) Spot dosed onto the algae – killed algae BUT also bleached the 3D back ground permanently which looked terrible (would not use back ground again even though it looks very nice to start with).

5) I would have more shrimp but the little sods keep stealing the corys food.


What is this algae?

Without getting into CO2 gas and RO water is there anything else I can do ? Any advice. Comments please?


Please ask if you need more information or if I have not made myself clear

(I hope I have not made this post too long)

[Zapins]

Judging from the pictures the algae you have is black beard algae (BBA), it grows like a plant once it gets established in your tank. CO2 gas doesn't have anything to do with it. You could gun your CO2 reactor until the water fizzed and your fish died and it would still grow.

The only effective method of getting rid of it is with flourish excel. Spot dosing is the best method, but 2-3 x daily dose will also eventually get rid of it.

The good new is the BBA you have is red, which means it is dying. Keep doing what you are doing with the excel and it should be gone within a few weeks. It will turn gray in a little while and then decay away. Luckily BBA is a slow growing algae, so once it has been killed off it will take months or years to grow back if at all.

Your background should gradually get darker with time as spot algae grows on it, so give it a bit of time and it should look more normal.

[Tron]

thanks for your reply

The BBA I think has always been that colour, and its spreading so I am not sure it is dying. And I would love to do spot dosing but it leaves a big white bleach mark on the background which takes many months to fade and even then you can still see it , and I think it damages the background surface and makes it flake


I wonder if a 3-4 day blackout would help to kill it off ?

[Zapins]

Originally Posted by Tron

I wonder if a 3-4 day blackout would help to kill it off ?

Not likely.

Hydrogen peroxide spot treatment might kill it off eventually if you dose daily. But it also might bleach the background. Don't use more then 2-3 mL per gallon per day.

[Tron]

darn , its a shame the black out will not work, and the peroxide may bleach as well.

Also I can't work out why the 2-3x dose of excel dose not seem to work in my tank to kill the algae, like other people have used.
I know light/UV affects the half life of excel from seachems website, so I am wondering if now that I have less light and co2 needs for the plants the excel might be more effective?

I'm running out of things to try

[Zapins]

How long have you been dosing excel for?

[Tron]

Well I have been doing a 1.0 -1.5 dose for about a year. And not long ago I did a 4 or 5x dose after a large water change and then done 3x for a week. I do not want to do much more than this as I have shrimps too.

I also dont want to kill animals just to have a better looking tank quickly.

Maybe I have a bad/weak batch of excel as other peoples use of excel seems to make bba die off in a few days at 3x the dose.

Thanks for you interest in my problem

[Zapins]

Hmm, give it a bit of time to go away. The most effective way to kill it is spot treating which is why it goes away within a few days in other people's tanks. Since you are 3x dosing the water column it will be more dilute when it reaches the BBA and so will take a longer time to kill it.

Perhaps its the color of the photo but the algae really does not look like its growing well. The third picture in particular shows the different color of the algae from the tip to the base. The tip is a gray color and the base is a darker green-red color. When BBA is gray it means it has died and is in the process of decaying. The green/red color usually means it is damaged. Healthy BBA is a very dark green color, almost black.

[Tron]

Maybe it is a time thing, maybe it was dying off?

I do get what you are saying and it has a point, but the algae seemed to be also expanding at the same time too.

[OTPT]

That looks like a type of Cyanobacteria. Red brown in color (redder than diatom).
Soft & slimy, very easy to pluck off. Can be 4 inches long if the condition is right.

I've found high DOC (dissolved organic matter) causes it.
Frequent water change, clean filter help. Some of the strands will turn pale or white
when it's receding.

BBA is strongly attached to the surface, not slimy and not that long.