ANOTHER black beard algae post

[Cmitch524]

Hello all! I’ve read a few posts on here about combatting black beard algae, but what do you do when you don’t know the cause? Even when I soaked my plants and killed it off, it returned! I have a 10gal, have the lights on for 10 hours a day, they are LED, not sure if that matters. I did put some plant root tabs, maybe Flourish, can’t quite remember the brand, but that’s been a few months ago and I haven’t used anymore. I have your typical hang on back filter, heater and bubbler. I tested the phosphates to see and they appear to be around 500 maybe. Hard to tell for certain. I’m just feeling kind of defeated at this point, been dealing with this for months now, have soaked my plants twice now in a hydrogen peroxide solution. Lost a few plants too. I do weekly 25% water changes as well. Help?

 

[Uberhoust]

My experience suggest light and nutrients (ie leftover fish food) the main issues for me. I limit my light to 8 hours and feed sparingly now. I also now use a prefilter where the fish can feed on the food going into the filter rather than have it decompose on the filter's media. Overtime the substrate and filter can accumulate the wastes if there is any overfeeding or overcrowding, this can lead to blooms of black beard algae, cyanobacteria, ...

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

Good news is it's not black beard algae at least not to my eye, it looks more like hair algae to me. And thankfully it's easier to get rid of than the dreaded BBA.

I'd start by lowering the light intensity if you can, I run my LEDs on 70% and I've reduced blue light to almost nothing. I would also increase your water change quantity from 25 to at least 50% to get rid of any excess nutrients available. Some people also suggest making sure there's enough water flow reaching those problem areas

 

[Cmitch524]

I’m glad to hear it’s not BBA! I feel like I don’t over feed and there’s typically none leftover, my zebra danios are like insane scavengers! But I will try to lessen the amount and see. As well as the light. It’s hard to know the % on the light, it’s basically dark, bright and ultra bright. I don’t have control over the blue/red unfortunately. Guess that’s what I get for getting a cheap light!