Black Beard Algae

[Miss Wiggle]

as above!

heard overdosing flourish excel gets rid of it, how does this work, how much do you overdose by and for how long?

 

[George Farmer]

I've never suffered from BBA (lucky me!) but I understand that in a non-CO2 tank overdosing Excel works well.

It also works in a CO2 injected tank, but the reasons behind it are poor CO2, so that should be addressed to prevent re-occurance.

If you google, "Flourish Excel overdose BBA" then you will get some hits.

Here's one - http/www.arofanatics.com/forums/archive/...p/t-183380.html

 

[xing]

I'm in the middle of doing this now. If you dose 3x recommended level every day for 14 days it should do trick i.e

day 1 - do about 40% water change then dose 15ml per 40l (10us gal)
days 2-14 dose 15ml per 200l (50 us gal)

Continue with water changes, but no more that 25% per week. I've continued to dose ferts as normal, however.

My BBA has just gone from black to red to white in last day or two (today is day 11). Took a while to see any change so persevere with it.

Once I'm, done I will continue using excel, but at recommended levels.

hope this helps

take a look at http/www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumap...rid-of-all.html

 

[Glod]

Yep, I got the algae when I was not adding CO2. So I added a yeast based CO2 and used excel to help with the algae. If the BBA is in limited areas you can add the excel from a syringe aimed directly at the BBA.

It can take a couple of weeks or even more to completely remove the algae but it will die pretty much immediately. You'll see it turn pink/red in a matter of hours. How much is open to debate. Personally I added CO2 and once it was at a decent bubble rate I did an initial x3 dose then normal dosing for about 3 weeks. All traces of my staghorn are gone (seems to react very similarly to BBA).

One minor thing I noticed is, my shrimp did not touch the algae before I used excel. Afterwards they happily munched it down to nothing. Not sure why, but I'm not ocmplaining.

Good luck with it Miss W.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I dont know if this will help, but when I was overdosing Excel to combat an outbreak of BBA, I turned my filter off for 5-10 mins whilst dosing it with a dropper direct onto the BBA.
This way there was less water movement in the tank whilst dosing and the concentrated excel spent more time in direct contact with the BBA.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

excellent thanks for the tips people, will try a 3x overdose initially then normal dosing for 3 weeks after combined with Co2 injection...... if it's showing no signs of going a week or so into it then i'll do 3x overdoses everyday.