Attempting to remove BBA with liquid co2

[Aimee16]

Hi guys, just wondering if anyone has any advice for getting rid of black beard algae with liquid co2. I’ve been doing my tank daily with easy carbo but haven’t seen an improvement and still seems to be spreading I have a 57l and have been dosing 1ml should I be putting more in? I’ve seen it’s suggest upto 2ml if it’s heavily planted but I wouldn’t consider my tank heavily planted. Would there be any harm adding 2 ml for a short period to see if it helps?

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Hi, Aimee. I don't know anything about easy carbo, but I've had pretty good luck with Flourish Excel. You can get away with doubling the dose, short-term.

A few years ago I had such a terrible BBA infestation that I almost quit the hobby. As an act of desperation, I came up with The Excel Bomb. It worked.
Here's how I did it.

Now, a few caveats about the following method: First, it will only work long-term if your tank is otherwise healthy and balanced. If your water parameters are off, or your light and nutrients are out of balance, or whatever, the BBA will come back. On the other hand, it is my experience that once this stuff takes hold, it simply doesn't die without drastic measures. Second, this is sort of an extreme measure. If your tank is a simple one that you can tear apart, it would be a lot easier to just remove the decorations and boil them or spray the with H2O2. If your tank is too densely planted and/or aquascaped to do that, read on. Finally, I don't get all the credit for this idea, but if you use it I will except royalty payments in the form of pet store gift cards, if you insist.

What you need:
A smallish spray bottle
A bottle of Flourish Excel (Maybe Easy Carbo would work too?)
Enough water for an 80% + water change, temp equalized and conditioned
A way to get said water into your tank in a fairly slow, gradual manner.

What you do:
1. Figure out the dose of Excel needed to treat your tank, according to the instructions on the bottle. For my 55g tank, this was 5 to 6 caps full. Add this dose to your spray bottle.
2. Fill the bottle the rest of the way with tank water.
3. Drain the tank, leaving just enough water to keep the fish reasonably comfortable for couple hours. (2-3" did it for my critters--they didn't like it, but they were OK) You could remove the fish and drain the tank entirely, but in a fully 'scaped tank I find that this isn't practical.
4. Take the aforementioned spray bottle, and spray the living daylights out of everything in your tank. Really get in there and hit things from every possible angle, making sure you get undersides of leaves, shady spots, anywhere this crud might even THINK about growing.
5. Slowly refill your tank with temperature equalized, conditioned water. I use one of these cheap little filters off ebay and a piece of rubber tubing to pump the water back in over a period of an hour or two.
6. It might be a good idea to add an air stone for a week or so, since this will kill ALL the algae thus sprayed, and the decomposing algae can use up a lot of Oxygen.

Over the next several days, the BBA will turn gray or reddish, an indication that it has officially cashed in its chips. Any critters in your tank with the slightest interest in eating algae are going to have a field day.
7. Administer additional treatments as needed, t least a week apart. My tank, which had a very severe infestation, required two such treatments. Other than very small growths here and there, which I can live with, it has not come back.

Good luck. I hope this is helpful to somebody. Thomas

 

[Aimee16]

Hi, Aimee. I don't know anything about easy carbo, but I've had pretty good luck with Flourish Excel. You can get away with doubling the dose, short-term.

A few years ago I had such a terrible BBA infestation that I almost quit the hobby. As an act of desperation, I came up with The Excel Bomb. It worked.
Here's how I did it.

Now, a few caveats about the following method: First, it will only work long-term if your tank is otherwise healthy and balanced. If your water parameters are off, or your light and nutrients are out of balance, or whatever, the BBA will come back. On the other hand, it is my experience that once this stuff takes hold, it simply doesn't die without drastic measures. Second, this is sort of an extreme measure. If your tank is a simple one that you can tear apart, it would be a lot easier to just remove the decorations and boil them or spray the with H2O2. If your tank is too densely planted and/or aquascaped to do that, read on. Finally, I don't get all the credit for this idea, but if you use it I will except royalty payments in the form of pet store gift cards, if you insist.

What you need:
A smallish spray bottle
A bottle of Flourish Excel (Maybe Easy Carbo would work too?)
Enough water for an 80% + water change, temp equalized and conditioned
A way to get said water into your tank in a fairly slow, gradual manner.

What you do:
1. Figure out the dose of Excel needed to treat your tank, according to the instructions on the bottle. For my 55g tank, this was 5 to 6 caps full. Add this dose to your spray bottle.
2. Fill the bottle the rest of the way with tank water.
3. Drain the tank, leaving just enough water to keep the fish reasonably comfortable for couple hours. (2-3" did it for my critters--they didn't like it, but they were OK) You could remove the fish and drain the tank entirely, but in a fully 'scaped tank I find that this isn't practical.
4. Take the aforementioned spray bottle, and spray the living daylights out of everything in your tank. Really get in there and hit things from every possible angle, making sure you get undersides of leaves, shady spots, anywhere this crud might even THINK about growing.
5. Slowly refill your tank with temperature equalized, conditioned water. I use one of these cheap little filters off ebay and a piece of rubber tubing to pump the water back in over a period of an hour or two.
6. It might be a good idea to add an air stone for a week or so, since this will kill ALL the algae thus sprayed, and the decomposing algae can use up a lot of Oxygen.

Over the next several days, the BBA will turn gray or reddish, an indication that it has officially cashed in its chips. Any critters in your tank with the slightest interest in eating algae are going to have a field day.
7. Administer additional treatments as needed, t least a week apart. My tank, which had a very severe infestation, required two such treatments. Other than very small growths here and there, which I can live with, it has not come back.

Good luck. I hope this is helpful to somebody. Thomas

Thank you I’ll give it a go

 

[Mick85]

I've been spot dosing with Flourish excel and that seems to stop the BBA from growing and spreading but i've only got tiny amounts of BBA right now. I've let BBA take hold of previous set ups and it was an absolute disaster so now whenever i see those little tufts popping up i straight away hit it daily with 5ml of Excel applied with a turkey baster and it seems to do the trick.

 

[Stan510]

Hydrogen Peroxide and a Turkey baster works for me. In fact when it was at its worst,I dosed three days in a row..going over the more resistant patches. It worked very well. H.P. is like $1.50 for a half quart?..something like that