I'm Loosing The Battle

russellbrooke said:

I think it starts to work straight away. The doco that comes with rowaphos says when using for the first time, you may need more than stated does as there may be quite a bit of phosphate in the substrate.

b.t.w, when you say you

I change 25ltrs a week using RO water

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do you use just RO? I use tap water and RO to bring down my gh/kh.

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Hi I use equalibrium to buffer the RO water. Im getting in my tank tonight to remove what's clinging onto the Co2 ladder, if need be I'll remove my bogwood and boil I hate the stuff.

Update
The three day blackout was completed last night. I followed that up with a 50% water change this morning.
I noticed that the fish were all gasping near the surface before the water change. I also discovered that instead of 2 Amano shrimp I actually have at least seven! They've been hiding for over 2 years! The BGA is still evident in places although the great majority of it has gone.

Anyway, I'm back on the EI route. I'll be dosing 10ppm of nitrate and 10ml of Flourish on alternate days.

Here's hoping.

WK

I've had a few issues with BGA and got over most of them with the help of reading george's advice to other's. I agree with what he says, but I found that a combination of stratedgies seemed to work best for me. Blackouts are obviously effective, as is erythromycin. I found that the combination seems to work synergistically. With either blackouts or erythro there always seemed to be some BGA left over. My last two breakouts I have pretreated my tank with erythro then performed a three day blackout. Afterwards the BGA was completely gone (or very obviously dead). I then of course tried to remedy the reason the outbreak took place in the first place.

Carl

Waterloo Kid said:

The BGA is still evident in places although the great majority of it has gone.

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I'm surprised there is still some BGA. A 3 day blackout should clear it 100%. The only way it could have survived is if you had a bit of light leeking in (doesn't take much) or if you peeked in or fed the fish. I recommend that you run an airstone in the tank while doing the blackout.

James

No peeking done. Some light must have leaked in.

Hi, thought I'd jump in here as 4 months ago I had a nasty outbreak of BGA every morning the sand was covered in nasty patches, which would break up and attach to everything. After syphoning it out every day for a month I used eSHa Protalon-707 which completely cleared it with no ill effects to any of the fish. Now 4 months later the tank is still clear
How it started I don't know, the tank has been running for nearly 2 years and until then I never had a problem.

http/www.aquatics-online.co.uk/catalogue..._treatments.asp
HTH

Anita

I have used that twice before. Both times my vallis melted to almost nothing within days. Don't know why. Anyway, that's killing the BGA not stopping the cause. Doesn't work for me for any length of time. Looks like you were lucky there.

WK

An update.
I'm a week and a bit in and things are looking better. The BGA is still present and after a week has started to cover the leaves of the H. Difformis again. the amount of BGA is significantly less that it was a few weeks ago though. The substrate has a thin covering by the end of the (water change) week. I performed a 50% water change and manually removed the BGA from the gravel and some plants. I have upped the CO2 to approx 4 bubbles per second but I'm not sure how much that's going to help. The diffuser I have appears to be running at near maximum already. It's starting to become less efficient with more loss of CO2 through it. I'll leave it run for a week to see what happens.
If that makes no difference I'll start upping the NO3 dosing to 15ppm on alternate days. I think this is a little on the heavy side but it'll be interesting to see if this helps.

One thing I don't do is dose phosphates. I'm pretty sure that phosphate deficiency isn't a cause of BGA but I'd be grateful for a confirmation of that please. My test kits always report at least 0.5ppm of phosphate throughout the week. I assume it's coming from the fish (food). the tap water round here has a 1.5ppm level to start with.

WK

OK I spent five hours yesterday scrubbing plants and picking BGA off leaves. The dosing of NO3 and trace obviously isn't working as well as I hoped. I'm going to start dosing PO4 in the new year. That's all I can think of that could be missing now. My CO2 diffuser is working at maximum so I can't up the CO2 any more. I'm swapping over to a ceramic diffuser in the new year too (presents are great) . I've slightly changed the direction of flow from the filter to try to create more current throughout the tank but I don't think that's too much of an issue. I'm getting fed up with this and am starting to think of stripping the tank down and going African. Unless I can sort this out I can't justify the time I'm having to spend cleaning the tank each week.

Any suggestions?

WK

OK, here's a few pics of the tank after the clean.
One the tank in general and the other is the progress of the BGA two days after the clean.
You can see that it doesn't take too long to get a grip back once removed as much as possible. That's all the glosso I have left as the BGA smothered and killed the rest. So long as it's cleaned of BGA often the glosso grows quickly, each plant putting out a new set of leaves ecvery other day or so (minimum).
In the general tank pic you can see the stream of bubbles on the left is from the Anubias Nana. I promise, most of the plants in the tank were black before I cleaned it! Not a pretty picture.

I think I'm planted densely enough!

Waterloo Kid said:

I think I'm planted densely enough!

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I actually don't think you are. There's room for lots more. I'm sorry to see that you're still having problems. It can be extremely frustrating, I know. I've been through it. Do you have an egeria species in the tank, like egeria densa or egeria najas? It also goes by the name elodea or anacharis. I recommend continuing with your Nitrate dosing and then adding some clumps of egeria in it, or more if you already have some. It may be a myth, but supposedly egeria contains a chemical in the leaves that is a mild antibiotic. I don't know if this is true, but whenever I have egeria in the tank, I tend to not have BGA. Could be a coincidence, I don't know. But right now, you seem desparate and I feel very sorry for you. At any rate, it'll get another weed in there, which is what I think you need.

llj

I've already got H. polysperma, H. Difformis and two species of Vallis in there so i don't think that I need any more nutrient gobblers. I once tried E. Densa but it died and melted within three days.
The only spaces left to plant are on the left hand side infront of the swords and in the center front. The space to the left has a small patch of H. polysperma in it which I put in there a couple of days ago and the patch in the middle has the small (at the moment) patch of glosso in it. The picture is a bit deceiving and flat. I promise, the tank has an aweful lot of plants in it. That patch of vallis is approximately 18 inches wide by 14 inches deep. Also the picture was taken after a rather drastic 'haircut'. I removed nearly a half bucket of vallis and H. Difformis and much Java Moss.

I might try the E. Densa again but don't hold out too much hope for it. Thanks for the tip.

It's not so much desparation as frustration.

WK

Try this: deep vacuum the gravel there, replant etc.
You need to get the plants growing well, they will knock the algae back once you.

Clean filter etc often.

You can also do more water changes if you want and dose there after.
Good cO2 will help, plants will produce more O2.

Poorly growing plants that are slowed, in a lull etc, tend to be more likely to have algae issues.
PO4 should help if the CO2, NO3, trace dosing is good etc.

Blackout means a 2 layer black trash bag etc and no other light for 3 days, this is virtually 100% effective in killing what is there.

It does not by itself in any way prevent reinfestation.
Good trimming, good, CO2, PO4 etc, everything that makes plants grow well will prevent all algae from entering in. The focus is much more about the plant's needs, rather than worrying about the algae.
You do that, algae is much less an issue.

Another thing you can use that's much less harmful for algae is seaChem's Excel.
This at least grows plants(Not Vals, Hydrill, Egeria, liverworts- non stomata bearing aquatics-other than vals).
and is very mild to fish and shrimps etc.

Do daily water changes(50-70%) and full excel dose and a balckout for 3 days for any species of algae, this is a very effective method when combined with good dosing and maintenace thereafter.
It's also very selective and does no harm to the plants/critters.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Thanks for the info Tom. My current regime is aimed at ramping up the plant growth to out compete the algae. Unfortunately I'm still somewhat wide of the mark and my plants aren't doing as well as could be expected.
I'm guessing that my blackouts have been more of greyouts. I've used thick towels, doubled up, as light covers. I guess that's not enough.
Personally I think there's something wrong with my dosing. My main problem is that I cannot get consistent readings from my test kits and can no where near afford high end test kits. I'm a little blind. So, as stated above I'm going to start dosing PO4. My guess is that I'll either see a step change in plant growth or the tank will turn bright green (for all the wrong reasons) in days.
I am thinking of removing that portion of gravel around the glosso and giving it a super clean using heavy scrubbing and tap water. Then it'll be boiled, cooled and placed back into the tank, probably mixed with laterite. That should cure that patch for a few days!

WK