purple_drazi
Fishaholic
As some of you may know, I had a terrific problem w/ black beard algae between Jan & May. It's truly nasty stuff and I had tried various solutions - including draining my tank, baking the rocks and chucking out all of my plants; and on another occasion taking all of the fish out of my tank and dosing it with hydrogen peroxide. That last one worked ....temporarily. But I couldn't keep taking all of my fish out, dosing the tank, and then waiting days until the water was safe for the fish again whenever it reappeared.
and it always did.
I called my lfs (Big Als in Scarborough, btw) around the end of May and the clerk said that you can have all of the perameters correct and still get it; it's just one of those things that is really hard to control and it can be carried in by new additions. She suggested adding something called "Flourish excel: Organic Carbon for the Planted Aquarium" by Seachem.
Flourish works the same as the hydrogen peroxide but the theory is that if you raise the level of H2O2 with an initial dose, and then just add a bit on a daily basis to keep the level up, the H2O2 won't harm the fish and yet it will kill off the black beard algae.
It took a long time - about 6 weeks from when I started to now, but I think it's worked. I'm cautiously optimistic. The algae hasn't spread like wildfire like it used to and I don't see any nasty black threads any where. The pink dead threads are gradually being cast off of the plants and filtered out.
like I said, cautiously optimistic but it's the best news I've had since January with this *%&@ algae.
and it always did.
I called my lfs (Big Als in Scarborough, btw) around the end of May and the clerk said that you can have all of the perameters correct and still get it; it's just one of those things that is really hard to control and it can be carried in by new additions. She suggested adding something called "Flourish excel: Organic Carbon for the Planted Aquarium" by Seachem.
Flourish works the same as the hydrogen peroxide but the theory is that if you raise the level of H2O2 with an initial dose, and then just add a bit on a daily basis to keep the level up, the H2O2 won't harm the fish and yet it will kill off the black beard algae.
It took a long time - about 6 weeks from when I started to now, but I think it's worked. I'm cautiously optimistic. The algae hasn't spread like wildfire like it used to and I don't see any nasty black threads any where. The pink dead threads are gradually being cast off of the plants and filtered out.
like I said, cautiously optimistic but it's the best news I've had since January with this *%&@ algae.
