Peroxide on blue-green algae

[confused_aquarist]

Blue-green algae is starting to eat away at my water sprites so I want to get rid of them. I think it’s due to my tank being too lowly stocked causing unbalanced nutrition, since I can barely detect any nitrates or phosphates.

Since I use the water sprites as floating plants I don’t think I need to treat the entire tank, the idea is I’ll dip them in a bucket containing certain concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, and then do my regular glass cleaning in the meantime and hopefully the reaction will stop within a few minutes or an hour or so. Is this feasible and if so what final concentration should I use? Preferably I want the treatment to be as harsh as possible without damaging the plants.

Also confused on the idea of spot treating. Do I spot treat with a concentrated solution (what percent?) and then still leave the plants for an hour in a certain final percentage or do I spot treat with that final percentage and don’t care about the concentration in the bucket. Really confused since I know so little about plant diseases.

 

[confused_aquarist]

Also I’m guessing I can do the same thing with antibiotics- I have kanamycin and tetracycline, will an hour be fine or do I need to let it go longer. At what concentration?

 

[SammyTargo]

Hi,
I don't know the exact concentration you would want for your species of plant, and much less the antibiotic dosages as a whole.

I do however know that almost all tropical aquarium plants are good for a concentration of 3%. That would mean 1.5-3mL per gallon; the safe-zone is 2.6ml/USg for dosage inside the aquarium.

However, the best method IMO is to do targeted treatment via 2-3mL/USg, and dip the plants in for ~5 minutes. Some species are more sensitive like crypts and valisneria.

Good luck,
Samuel

 

[GaryE29]

I have actually shot the blue green algae with a syringe of peroxide, direct. But there may be another level to the problem. Water sprite, and water wisteria have a weird history in my tanks. I keep trying, but am beginning to suspect they draw minerals from the water and actively aid cyanobacter. They always become coated, while other plants in the tank don't. They're magnets for the stuff.

I've taken the coward's way out and gotten rid of them, but one of our greener thumbed people might be able to help. Years ago, I got talked into an experiment where I dosed a tank with Potassium nitrate. It seemed counter intuitive to non chemist me, but it eliminated blue green cyano for quite some time, and did no apparent harm to anything else in the tank. It so happens that because of the tactics of domestic terrorists across the border, potassium nitrate is controlled and I can't get it without a bureaucratic process. I don't want to blow up my aquarium - I swear!

But there may be a fert with a higher content, or it may be a secret ingredient in the red algae destroyer products (they work, but I mistrust no listed ingredients remedies). Can anyone comment?

I wouldn't use antibiotics. It seems a misuse of a precious resource to me, in this era of growing resistance to the medications.

When I had my worse problems with cyano, it actively correlated with the outside environment. When local lakes were affected by blooms and the warnings went out, it was a hard to stop force in my tanks. When outside environmental levels were low, it rarely flared up in my tanks. It must have been getting through the water treatments.

 

[OldFishKeeper]

Blue-green algae is starting to eat away at my water sprites so I want to get rid of them. I think it’s due to my tank being too lowly stocked causing unbalanced nutrition, since I can barely detect any nitrates or phosphates.

Since I use the water sprites as floating plants I don’t think I need to treat the entire tank, the idea is I’ll dip them in a bucket containing certain concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, and then do my regular glass cleaning in the meantime and hopefully the reaction will stop within a few minutes or an hour or so. Is this feasible and if so what final concentration should I use? Preferably I want the treatment to be as harsh as possible without damaging the plants.

Also confused on the idea of spot treating. Do I spot treat with a concentrated solution (what percent?) and then still leave the plants for an hour in a certain final percentage or do I spot treat with that final percentage and don’t care about the concentration in the bucket. Really confused since I know so little about plant diseases.

I would go with the thought of the lack of liquid fertilizer.

I have kept floating and planted water sprite for years. I used liquid ferts in the water for the floating and root tabs for the planted.

Although neither developed BGA, the floating ones thrived while the planted ones didn't. In fact, bottom leaves of the plant ones turned yellow and that was with equal lighting for both planted and floating (I made sure the planted were not shaded by the floaters).

As far as I know, BGA attacks plants that are distressed and in water with little current flow. Just my .02...

 

[confused_aquarist]

Hi,
I don't know the exact concentration you would want for your species of plant,

So just to be extra clear, if I were to follow the standard procedure, I should spray 2-3mL/USg of 3% H2O2 directly onto the plants with a pipette while submerged inside the bucket, and then don’t mix, and leave the plants in the bucket for another 5 minutes? That’s easy to do, but because the bacteria stick very hard on the roots I cannot manually rid of it beforehand, it’s surprising if a single treatment is sufficient to kill the bacteria. There are just a few patches on some roots but I think it has a lot of bacteria.

 

[confused_aquarist]

I have actually shot the blue green algae with a syringe of peroxide, direct.

BGA suddenly showed up a few weeks ago but only in 1 of my 4 tanks. I had this tank for a year, but I think the filtration is not perfect; when I open the filter media, it seems the bacteria growth is not so robust. Maybe it’s because the density of stock is too low. I think BGA is either in tap water or came with the fish.

When I cycled this tank I confirmed the nitrite peak at 1 ppm and nitrate peak at 10-20ppm and then decrease to 0. So I know the bacteria are there but I think the community is not perfect.

I know 2hr aquarist fertilizer has nitrates and phosphates but I am afraid if adding more nutrients will make algae worse. It’s interesting that adding potassium and nitrates would rid the algae rather than increase it.

Recently I completely ridded a tank of green hair algae by changing almost all of filter media from ball type to sponge type. It was surprising, it’s 2 hours worth of algae cleaning every week and after switching filter media the algae disappeared overnight, now I barely see a spot. It’s also a very lowly stocked tank and has trouble with bacteria growth so it’s a balance issue. I was hoping trying the same thing would eliminate BGA. But, it didn’t seem to work for this tank.

The only tank that I have running perfectly with no algae and fast plant growth is highly stocked with 1 aphyosemion/2-3L, this is a lot but I have not seen any algae at all and there’s a lot of filter bacteria. But, low nitrates may not be the full story because there’s also no detectable nitrate in this tank, it’s very confusing.

 

[confused_aquarist]

I would go with the thought of the lack of liquid fertilizer.

It’s true, I think it’s related to the water flow, some BGA is growing in the tank corner that has no water flow. The first time I saw BGA was on a tank corner. But, it’s confusing because almost all BGA growing on water sprites is growing on the roots that receive a lot of water flow. Water sprite itself blocks water flow, and the ones in the region with no water flow are not covered with any BGA and are growing faster. Because I have Norman lampeye in this tank, they don’t swim so much when the flow is too weak, so I want to increase the flow. But the floating plants are blocking the flow, so it’s difficult.

I will try the liquid fertilizer if the issue recurs too often. I recently switched the filter media from ball type to sponge type (allegedly twice as effective) so hopefully it can help to eliminate cyanobacteria.

 

[GaryE29]

The version of cyano I get here thrives in the highest flow. I get it sitting on the plastic of the HOB outflows. I only saw it in slow moving killie tanks when I used a sand with high silica content, since moved out.

KNO3 (saltpetre can be this, but not always. It's like fish common names...) knocked it out. It demanded careful dosing, and I no longer recall the formulas.

Darkness for 5 days also set it back, but it returns. Right now, it's barely present, but in the summer, it generally reappears, once local water levels get lower. In Spring here, when the snow is melting, it is a rarity. So I suspect my source is local tapwater, in which some cyanobacteria get through the filtration system. Then again, it could be in the tanks from plants, and nutrients it likes may get through instead. Either way, it's seasonal here. I only have to hate it for a few weeks in the year...

 

[SammyTargo]

So just to be extra clear, if I were to follow the standard procedure, I should spray 2-3mL/USg of 3% H2O2 directly onto the plants with a pipette while submerged inside the bucket, and then don’t mix, and leave the plants in the bucket for another 5 minutes? That’s easy to do, but because the bacteria stick very hard on the roots I cannot manually rid of it beforehand, it’s surprising if a single treatment is sufficient to kill the bacteria. There are just a few patches on some roots but I think it has a lot of bacteria.

rather to create a basin with water and that concentration of H2O2 and then drop the plants in for 5 minutes, but its the same idea just safer and more optimal

 

[confused_aquarist]

Update: I did the 3ml 3% peroxide to gallon dip (5 min) and it definitely wasn't a dramatic halt but it did slow down the BGA growth. Meanwhile, the tank corners also have less BGA (and I did not treat the tank with peroxide) so the filter media change also seemed to have some effect. But actually, in the meantime the uneffect plants have nearly doubled in size, so I just ended up throwing away the affected plants and then split the healthy ones. It was also getting annoying with so many plants because during feeding some of the lampeyes would hide away and never notice the food and it takes forever for them to find their school when they're lost.

I think my tank sort of has a cycle going on but it isn't really mature. I have 2 separate linked canisters where I put plastic media in 1st and then it gets to the sponge media in the 2nd. But there's a lot of undigested debris trapped in the 1st canister. I'm not sure if I should switch to 100% sponge, but then I also have the exact same setup in one of my successful tanks.

 

[BrianK]

This stuff works really well:

https://www.amazon.com/Ultralife-Green-Slime-Stain-Remover/dp/B000QSK31M/?tag=ff0d01-20

 

[confused_aquarist]

Update: the BGA is almost gone, just a few spots here and there on glass like when I first found it. It’s no longer on the plants and the plants are growing robustly. I have no idea what did it but here are the changes I made:

Added bottled heterotrophic bacteria to help clear out debris from filter

Lowered dGH from 4 to 2, dKH from 0.5 to 0, pH from 6.8 to 6.5, CO2 from 1 drop/2s/100L to 1 drop/4s/100L, lowered lighting

Cleaned the piping

Added fertilizer containing 0.2 ppm nitrate per day

Changed air stone from ceramic to plastic to prevent melting

 

[anewbie1]

I normally use chemi-clean to get rid of the stuff - it is cheap and works well - or used to be cheap. there are a few other products with similar ingrediants. What causes it - who knows for sure - imbalance maybe - at least it is easy to get rid of unlike bba.