best way to get rid of Beard algea on rocks in a terrace

4090 Views 6 Replies 6 Participants Last post by gpodio, Mar 11, 2004

jdigiorgio

Discussion Starter · Mar 4, 2004

Greetings,

Since I had a few problems with my tank as of late, I lost many plants and the beard algea has taken over most of the exposed rock surface and gravel. I do not want to loose my glosso carper and I dont want it to spread. Also what is the best way to get rid of this stuff without breaking down the terraces? THANKS!!!

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niko

· #2 · Mar 10, 2004

Jdigiorgio,

Sorry to say that but there is no remedy for that algae.

If you research you will learn that beard algae feeds on organic waste that floats in the water. You may conclude that shutting down your filters will deprive the beard algae of food. Or you may think that clearing the water with a micron filter, diatom, or resins that bind organic molecules will help. Starving the fish is another idea...

Nothing kills that algae. I had some plants in a complete darkness (a black plastic bag) with no water for 4 months or so. The algae did not die from the lack of light or water.

Manually scraping the leaves can't be done.

This type of algae apears to show up from nowhere and for no reason. It also dies in about 2 days for no reason.

The best way to fight it is to remove all plants or equipment that is infested by that algae. And that is ot a guarantee.

Beard algae seems to prefer certain areas in the tank and does not spread in others. You may be lucky and your beard algae will limit its growth in a small area. If that is so you may be able to just wait for it to disappear.

Preventive measures are rather simplistic - do not put any plant that has that algae on them in your tank.

--Nikolay

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gpodio

· #3 · Mar 10, 2004

Nikolay,

I will solve your impossibilities with a simple trip to your local farmacy

H2O2!!! (Hydrogen Peroxide)

For treatment in-tank, use no more than 1ml per gallon of water and do a 50% water change within the hour. Use a sirynge or similar to spray the algae directly with H2O2, turning the filter off will help keep the H2O2 around the algae as long as possible. Unless you have a large tank you will only be able to treat a small area at any one time before reaching the 1ml per gallon of H2O2. When I had to get rid of BBA I used this method and eliminated a small patch every week before the regular water change, within 4-5 weeks the tank was free from BBA. Thread algae also died during this treatment. Same thing for beard even though I never really had major issues with beard.

It's really very effective and easy to do this. I had no problems with any of the plants or fish in the tank. Any leftover H2O2 in the tank will loose it's extra oxygen atom and become regular H2O so besides it's oxidising properties it presents no other threat to any life in the tank.

Hope that helps
Giancarlo Podio

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Dave B

· #4 · Mar 11, 2004

Hydrogen Peroxide? Could it be that easy? I hope so. Maybe you should move this to the "Algae Remedy" topic for further discussion.

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sergioveterano

· #5 · Mar 11, 2004

i use this method, but, i advise to shot the lights of.

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aquaverde

· #6 · Mar 11, 2004

Do you have fish, shrimp in the tank at this concentration, Giancarlo?

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gpodio

· #7 · Mar 11, 2004

Fish yes, shrimp no. But seeing the goal is to locally treat a small bit of algae at a time using a syringe or similar device, you can easily half the total amount of H2O2 used at any one time. It will just take more time to get everything cleaned up. You are not treating the entire tank with H2O2, just a small local area for a short amount of time until it dissipates into the water. It does however, at the concentration I used, oxidize other algaes such as thread algae, but very slightly as the overall concentration is extremely low. Keep in mind that we are working with 3% H2O2 out of the bottle and only dosing 1ml per gallon...

Here's some interesting reading for anyone wanting to dig deeper:
http://www.h2o2.com/

Regards
Giancarlo Podio

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