Black Beard Algae

[Fish are friends]

hi folks.

I have this unsightly black algae growing in my tank and i have looked it up and it looks like its black beard algae. Its all over the bogwood, the outer leaves of my swords and on the ( grrr) snails in my tank. I have read up on several different ways on getting rid of it but some seem to be very conflicting. any ideas how i can remove it permanently.

The tank is a 60l tank with black gravel a bit of bogwood with moss on it and some Amazon swords. i have an eheim 2213 external and the stocking is 4 guppies 4 cardinal tetras, 4 black neon tetras, a black molly and a danio...

 

[Ps3Steveo]

Best thing to do is identify why you have it in your tank, are you doing water changes wile the lights are on and do you dose any CO2in your tank?

 

[Fish are friends]

dont dose co2 anymore the plants are growing well enough without it. i have to do water changes with the lights on or i cant see what i am doing..

 

[Ps3Steveo]

That is where the BBA is coming from, unless you stopped dosing CO2 very recently, tap water has a lot of CO2 in it, so when changing with lights on it can cause fluctuations in CO2 levels resulting in BBA. I'm guessing that you have a lot of flow in the tank too if you were dosing CO2 as low flow can cause it also but if you have good flow its more than likely the water changes. The CO2 in tap water can take a few hours to fully gas off from the aquarium surface where as your plants will respond to it much quicker than this so a good idea to prevent this is to fill some clean containers with the clean water ready to go into your tank a few days before the water change which will give the CO2 a chance to gas off and be fully out of the water before it goes into the tank. This should prevent this happening in the future, a good way to rid it quickly is too lower the water level so the algae is exposed to air, then, mix some liquid carbon (flourish excel/ easycarbo or aqua carbon) with water 1:5 ratio, fill a spray bottle and get spraying the algae. Leave for a few mins and refill the water in your tank, then after a few days you'll notice it turning red and it will vanish.

Hope this helps.

Steve.