Bga Help Asap Please

[XeroTolerance]

Hello everyone,

I have a blue-green algae breakout and I want to get rid of it. It was really bad until I lowered the light down to 4 hours a day. I read that you can use hydrogen peroxide, so I was wondering if any of you have had any experience with it. I have taken pictures of the progress. These pictures are actually good progress believe it or not hahaha.

Front View:

Ride Side:

Left Side:

Left Pane:

Right Pane:

Decor:

 

[RyanV]

You have Blue-Green Algae. Needs to be treated with Erythromycin Phosphate, you can find the treatment at your LFS called Maracyn. That alone will not cure it though... You will need to scrub everything until you can't see it anymore, do daily water changes, and I highly recommend keeping the lights off completely for a minimum of 2 days.

Can I ask how often you did water changes?

 

[SO19Firearms]

Needs to be treated with Erythromycin Phosphate, you can find the treatment at your LFS called Maracyn.

/Facepalm

 

[DrRob]

OK, to try to expand on SO19's point there, Maracyn will work but will then kill all of the BGA which will release all of it's nasty contents back into your tank.

BGA is generally, IME, a curse of low tech tanks that are doing quite well. The plant load uses up the nitrates and traps plenty of organics in the system. When the nitrate runs out, the plant growth stops and the organics levels start to rise. The organism that loves this situation is one that can fix nitrogen from gaseous form (the reverse of the anaerobic denitritying bacteria that are occasionally used to lower nitrate levels). The organism you tend to find in this situation is BGA, an organism that thrives in a low macronutrient environment.

So, feel free to use maracyn, I have nothing in particular against it's use, and BGA can be a real pain to clear, but do please remove as much of it as possible and give the tank a good clean. Then take a look at the plants nutrient levels/light balance.

 

[Ps3Steveo]

As Rob is getting across, always identify the cause before treatment otherwise it will come back, blackouts work well with this too btw.

 

[MrsM]

ive just wrapped my tank in 4 layers of black bags, i had/have BGA, i scrubbed all deco and gave the glass a good clean, did a 75% water change, no one replied to my thread , so i would like to ask those who know....how long do you recommend the blackout? ive read from as little as 2 days up to a whole week...wont my fish starve? ive only got fake plants btw thanks in advance, Claire

 

[Ps3Steveo]

4-5 days is fine and the fish will be ok, no peeking.

 

[MrsM]

4-5 days is fine and the fish will be ok, no peeking.

thanks

 

[gregswimm]

You have Blue-Green Algae. Needs to be treated with Erythromycin Phosphate, you can find the treatment at your LFS called Maracyn. That alone will not cure it though... You will need to scrub everything until you can't see it anymore, do daily water changes, and I highly recommend keeping the lights off completely for a minimum of 2 days.

Can I ask how often you did water changes?

Never ever ever treat BGA with antibiotics. This is a sure way to 'make' a antibiotic resistant strain and other super illnesses for your fish.

There are some important points of information we need before anyone can make an infomed decision on how to prevent the BGA from returning.

Specs plz:

1. Tank volume:
2. Light wattage:
3. Number of Bulbs:
4. Photo period (how long u leave your lighs on):
5. Filtration:
6. Stocking:
7. Ammonia:
8. Nitrates:
9. Temperature:
10. Fertilization regiment:
11. Water change regiment:

From the looks of it, the main cause appears to be, too much light, too few plants and too little flow. I will personalize this depending on what you give as your parameters. One of these things wont work without the others.
1)You should get either another HOB or a power head (bga cannot grow in flow and are intolerant of O2),
2)raise your water level to minimize splashing (for O2 and CO2 stability)
3)keep your lights on for 6 hours after you see algae go away you can raise it to 8hours
4)get TONS of stem plants (8-10 bunches of Brazilian pennywort, cardamine, hornwort, watersprite, water wisteria etc). If when buying your plants you think you have enough, you don't and need more.
5)Keep up with weekly water changes to clear out that crap but don't let your nitrates fall below 10ppm; with TONS of fast growing plants you can eventually ease back on the water changes all the way to 4x a year(only with TONS of plants). Just monitor your nitrates and don't let them get above 40ppm
6)Dose ferts - your micro (iron, manganese, molybdenum, boron, sulfer, calcium, magnesium, zinc etc) and macro (nitrogen, phosphate, potassium, you can even lump iron, calcium, magnesium in macro too). Ferts fuel plant growth wich in turn will slow algae growth. Never ever stop ferts when u run into an algae problem, just reanalyze what your are lacking or have to much of and adjust accordingly.

 

[gregswimm]

Also: glass/ghost shrimp will eat the dead/living BGA, but wont 'fix' the problem only help you clean it up and eat leftover food. They are also dirt cheep.

 

[Ps3Steveo]

She identified the problem in another thread so once gone shouldn't come back.

 

[gregswimm]

Well, what a waste of my time >_> . This sort of thing really needs to be specified in the post.

 

[MrsM]

Well, what a waste of my time >_> . This sort of thing really needs to be specified in the post.

i found your post helpful