Black beard algae....😭

[Cat23]

Hello fellow hobbyists,

I'm reaching out because my white flight is waving! 🏳 I have a 60 gallan breeder that has had black beard algae for the last 3 to 4 months and I can't get rid of it.  I've tried hydrogen peroxide treatment, changing my lighting times and intensity, pulling out plants, clupping off pieces of my driftwood and NOTHING has worked.  

Tank has been up and going since August 22.

*I use fluval light on a auto setting from another member "Bentley".

*I use EZ green twice a week

*I do 30% water change ebwry 2 weeks and have a canister filter Fluval #307

* I bought the filter about 2 months ago thinking more filtration would help.

*I also treat with Leaf zone once a month

*was using florish excel daily to see if that would kill it but no luck so far.

*bought amino shrimp and they really don't go after it.

I have all community friendly fish, a nirate snail and ramshorns.  I also have cherry and skittle shrimp with lots of babies!! Also have baby fish here and there.

Any help with that I'm doing wrong or need to try I'm all ears!  I'm sick of that algae. 

[Galabar]

Are you routinely testing your water (and what do your parameters look like)?  Are you doing water changes?

There is a simple, proven method to remove algae: 

 

However, you'll want to get on top of where it came from.

[lefty o]

how many hours a day is the light on for?

[nabokovfan87]

Welcome to the forums! Hopefully we can help out in some way to get things on the right track.  I feel your struggle as it's something I've dealt with for far too long as well.

On 5/20/2023 at 6:37 PM, Cat23 said:

*I use fluval light on a auto setting from another member "Bentley".

Please post a screenshot of your light settings. 

On 5/20/2023 at 6:37 PM, Cat23 said:

*I use EZ green twice a week

How much during each dose? What level are your nitrates at for the tank in question.  From the pictures above it looks like the algae is mostly centered on the wood.  I don't see much on the plants, but perhaps it is there in spots?
 

On 5/20/2023 at 6:37 PM, Cat23 said:

*was using florish excel daily to see if that would kill it but no luck so far.

*bought amino shrimp and they really don't go after it.

You may need a lot more amano than you're thinking.  The state the algae is in right now I would expect them to go ahead and go after it.  The only real technique to get them to go after the algae is to keep them hungry.  I would also suggest checking on the tank at night under blue lights.  They may only be really active at night for exposed and bright spots.  Given the tank size I would also go in search of True SAE for the tank.  They will help as well.

Below are two techniques I used.  I would encourage using the Jurijs method for the wood as it's a very large area to spot treat.  Pull the wood and rocks into a tote and see how it goes.  Hardscape can be difficult to deal with.
 

I would suggest blacking out the tank for 7 days and doing a water change of 30-50% following each day of blackout.  BBA sends out spores and you need to perform those water changes in order to remove them.   This is advice from Bentley via one of his live streams.  During and following the blackout you'd want to do the spot treatment method in order to treat algae on any of the plant leaves or pull the plants and dip them. 

In my case I had to handle cleaning, excess phosphates, excess lights, and a long list of methods to get things under control.  Your tank has a good plant load, but that piece of wood is directly under the strongest part of the light.  The algae will almost always want to grow there.   A method to alleviate that might be to raise the light up higher using risers or by mounting the light in some way.

[Lennie]

That's a pretty tank.

I had this issue on my anubias leaves when I removed lots of floating plants and it got direct light on it. It looks like staghorn algae instead of BBA to me.

If I were you, I would blackout, dim the light, and get hairy type algae eaters, like SAE.

After I took my tank out, I moved all my plants to a tub and it automaticallly got blacked out for a while. Suddenly zero staghorn algae on the anubias after this procedure!

[Cat23]

On 5/20/2023 at 9:35 PM, lefty o said:

how many hours a day is the light on for?

An hour in the morning then 6 hours starting at 330 pm to 9 pm 

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/21/2023 at 3:56 PM, Cat23 said:

An hour in the morning then 6 hours starting at 330 pm to 9 pm 

Can you show the screen with the line graphs by chance? There's a lot of changes and I'm trying to get an idea for how the white channel looks.

[Cat23]

Yes, of course 

On 5/21/2023 at 6:18 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Can you show the screen with the line graphs by chance? There's a lot of changes and I'm trying to get an idea for how the white channel looks.

 

On 5/20/2023 at 8:51 PM, Galabar said:

Are you routinely testing your water (and what do your parameters look like)?  Are you doing water changes?

There is a simple, proven method to remove algae: 

 

However, you'll want to get on top of where it came from.

Yes, every two weeks I do about a 30%.

Gh 60

Kh 120

Ph 7.5

N03 little high 80 I'm treating for that currently to bring it down.

N02 0.5

 

[Cat23]

On 5/20/2023 at 10:34 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Welcome to the forums! Hopefully we can help out in some way to get things on the right track.  I feel your struggle as it's something I've dealt with for far too long as well.

Please post a screenshot of your light settings. 

How much during each dose? What level are your nitrates at for the tank in question.  From the pictures above it looks like the algae is mostly centered on the wood.  I don't see much on the plants, but perhaps it is there in spots?
 

You may need a lot more amano than you're thinking.  The state the algae is in right now I would expect them to go ahead and go after it.  The only real technique to get them to go after the algae is to keep them hungry.  I would also suggest checking on the tank at night under blue lights.  They may only be really active at night for exposed and bright spots.  Given the tank size I would also go in search of True SAE for the tank.  They will help as well.

Below are two techniques I used.  I would encourage using the Jurijs method for the wood as it's a very large area to spot treat.  Pull the wood and rocks into a tote and see how it goes.  Hardscape can be difficult to deal with.
 

I would suggest blacking out the tank for 7 days and doing a water change of 30-50% following each day of blackout.  BBA sends out spores and you need to perform those water changes in order to remove them.   This is advice from Bentley via one of his live streams.  During and following the blackout you'd want to do the spot treatment method in order to treat algae on any of the plant leaves or pull the plants and dip them. 

In my case I had to handle cleaning, excess phosphates, excess lights, and a long list of methods to get things under control.  Your tank has a good plant load, but that piece of wood is directly under the strongest part of the light.  The algae will almost always want to grow there.   A method to alleviate that might be to raise the light up higher using risers or by mounting the light in some way.

I have one Otocinclus Catfish also but he doesn't touch that algae. I've actually rescheduled the first video but I will need to watch Bentley's for sure. 

in doing the balck out for 7 days I would if affect the fish and shrimp?  I've worked hard to get these mommy's to bear eggs for me and right now it's a shrimp baby factory in my tank so of course I don't want to jeopardize anything with them.

I've also already took a bunch of plant's out because it was spreading.  And yes ita on my other taller plants.  I'm currently thinking about taking more java fern out because its just everywhere within it.  And my shrimp love to be in it so ive been holding out to do it.

I will also look into raising the lights i did put them on about an 1" block but i waant sure ofbit was enough height. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/21/2023 at 5:39 PM, Cat23 said:

in doing the balck out for 7 days I would if affect the fish and shrimp?  I've worked hard to get these mommy's to bear eggs for me and right now it's a shrimp baby factory in my tank so of course I don't want to jeopardize anything with them.

No, I wouldn't think so.  If anything it would reduce stress for them.

 

 

On 5/21/2023 at 5:39 PM, Cat23 said:

I will also look into raising the lights i did put them on about an 1" block but i waant sure ofbit was enough height. 

In the 3.0 thread I went ahead and broke down the LED QTY per color channel as well as a spectrum chart for each LED type involved.  You can use that along with the details in Bentley's videos about what channels to push if you ever decide to say, push more pink/red to encourage a specific type of growth.   Is there any particular reason for having two windows as opposed to one?  I don't think that initial window is doing a lot given how short it is. 

If we look at your second window:
15.45-20.15 is just about the lighting window and that puts you at right around 4.5 hours. 

Some of your plants may demand 6-8 hours for that lighting window, but given things like the algae on wood pushing spores around the tank and that affecting the plants, I can understand the mindset to cut down on hours and duration of light.  It's an interesting dilemma.  Bentley's advice to me when things got ridiculously bad was to limit my light to 4 hours or less (you'd cut yours down by 30-45 minutes or so and remove that first block) and that should limit the growth on the algae.  You should see it start to cut back as well as the plants able to utilize that amount of time to "catch up" so to speak.  Your plants generally seem healthy.  They generally do not look infested apart from that bit of moss.  Trimming the moss, RR treatment on it, propagate out that new moss into other surfaces would encourage a nice look and reduce or eliminate the algae there.

Treating the wood is going to be a bit of a hassle.  It's just how wood is sometimes.  One of my most frustrating moments with this algae I'll share below, the algae still grew back, but needless to say you have to find a way to remove it, manually, and get as much of it out of the tank as you can.  Hopefully the tub / algaecide (flourish excel dip) method works well. 
 

On 5/21/2023 at 5:23 PM, Cat23 said:

N03 little high 80 I'm treating for that currently to bring it down.

N02 0.5

You want to be sure you don't have nitrites.  This points to some sort of filtration capacity or bioload issue causing the algae to bloom.  On your normal maintenance schedule, I'd encourage you to go from 30% up to 50% to ensure that is reduced long term.  In the short term, the water changes during the blackout should all but eradicate any water quality issues.

 

On 5/21/2023 at 5:23 PM, Cat23 said:

Gh 60

Kh 120

Ph 7.5

Per Green Aqua, you want your GH to be higher than your KH for success.  the GH contains some of the nutrients that are used up by the plants.  Given you have a discrepancy, can you please verify the GH in your tap water?  If the GH is normally higher, it points towards the start of nutrient deficiencies.  Your KH looks great, but you might need to add some GH just to balance that mineral demand out.
 

 

[Cat23]

Yes, reason for the short light time was to try to kill the algae.   No reason for the morning light other to see my tank before I go to work in the morning.  I will remove it and keep the lights off for the next week.  Would you recommend that I wrap the tank with a blanket or something to keep natural light out?

I have to do a water change this weekend and I have new media filters to change out so maybe that will help my levels.

I have a set up to hold 20 gallons of water for 5 days and I treat it with Fritz complete to remove ammonia etc from my tap water.  I have pump to pump it out into my tank and out of my tank which is great and makes water changes a breeze.

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/22/2023 at 5:40 PM, Cat23 said:

  Would you recommend that I wrap the tank with a blanket or something to keep natural light out?

Yes correct.  I usually use one big towel for the back and one for the front and it ends up covering.  Some people use foil, there's a lot of ways.

On 5/22/2023 at 5:40 PM, Cat23 said:

I have to do a water change this weekend and I have new media filters to change out so maybe that will help my levels.

I have a set up to hold 20 gallons of water for 5 days and I treat it with Fritz complete to remove ammonia etc from my tap water.  I have pump to pump it out into my tank and out of my tank which is great and makes water changes a breeze.

Sounds good.  What do you mean "new media filters to change out"  are you referring to the one use cartridges?

[Cat23]

Sorry, I have replacent pads and ammonia remover bags, zeo- carb bags and clean the media out of my canister.

 

Thank you for all your advice.   After I do my water change I'm going to black it out for 7 days and pray. 😆 🤣 😂  but for real!

[Greenspace]

How is the flow in your tank? I get BBA where there is stagnant water.

Your nitrates are on the high side, but no direct correlation with BBA that I know of, unless others can chime in. Biggest thing is doing the maintenance to clean it off as people have suggested, then continuing to monitor and clean off during your weekly water changes.

[nabokovfan87]

On 5/26/2023 at 8:49 AM, Greenspace said:

How is the flow in your tank? I get BBA where there is stagnant water.

The type I have likes strong flow.

Cory had the same stuff show up in his 800G right across the output flow path.