Bba Invasion

[darenshan54]

Wow in a matter of days my tank has so much BBA, it's not currently covered my tank, but at this growth rate it will be. I have otos, but they don't really eat any of it. What can i do to get rid of it? I heard SAE and plecos were good against BBA.

 

[baron von bubba]

no much will touch BBA.
spot dosing "liquid carbon is the usual remedy
you should be looking at why it occurred also, fluctuating CO2 is the usual cause.
do you add CO2?
or is it a low tech that you are doing water changes on?

 

[Mr Bliss]

Otos and bristlenoses only seem to eat BBA when the algae is already dying. SAE does eat it, but you need several juvenile SAEs to fight back an existing BBA problem (the adults most likely won't bother at all unless you starve them). Rumor has it some snails of the "pest" varieties eat BBA, but again, you'd need a lot of snails and I don't even know if this is true; my pond snails certainly didn't keep BBA from becoming a problem when it did.

Shortening the daily lighting period helped when I had to fight BBA after a summer of relative neglect. Stable conditions in the tank can keep it from spreading, and like baron von bubba said, products like Flourish Excel can kill it (use syringe to achieve concentrated dosage where the algae is growing).

Did you do anything special in the few days before the BBA started growing (major water change, disturbing the substrate, etc)? If you did, avoid repeating it.