Black Beard Algae

[JaredL]

First off, just need confirmation this is black beard algae. Secondly, how to treat. Was hoping to get a fish to control various algae on plants. Had ottos, but they all died except one and I never see evidence of him eating anything other than his belly is still plump when I do see him. I have 10 harlequin rasboras, 50+ cherry shrimp, 6 panda coryadoras, and various snails.

Edited November 19, 2020 by JaredL

[Daniel]

3 minutes ago, JaredL said:

First off, just need confirmation this is black beard algae.

Yes that is classic black beard algae.

[JaredL]

@Danielsorry just edited. Should have one now 

[Daniel]

The Co-Op had a good blog post that included black beard algae.

How to Fight 6 Types of Algae in Your Fish Tank

WWW.AQUARIUMCOOP.COM

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Do you dream of having a beautiful aquarium but end up constantly fighting to keep algae at bay? In this article, we discuss the root causes of algae, the...

 

[JaredL]

@Danielthanks for the link. I know I've read that before but the refresher was helpful. I've been struggling to find that balance of nutrients and lighting, just hard to tell which way they need to go(too much or too little). I'll try some of these tips in the article and see how it goes. Thanks again

[FrozenFins]

2 hours ago, JaredL said:

First off, just need confirmation this is black beard algae. Secondly, how to treat. Was hoping to get a fish to control various algae on plants. Had ottos, but they all died except one and I never see evidence of him eating anything other than his belly is still plump when I do see him. I have 10 harlequin rasboras, 50+ cherry shrimp, 6 panda coryadoras, and various snails.

Try amano shrimp

[Garren]

Here is a video from @Irene that may help as well. 

https://youtu.be/CyevfeqkRAM

 

 

 

[Nana Finopolis]

I have a 40 gal breeder that I fought black beard algae for a couple years, ugh! I tried everything I could find on the internet.  Nothing seemed to work, it just kept coming back. It got really bad. I finally decided to just embrace it and quit stressing about it. I made sure I had separate nets and equipment for that tank so I wouldn't bring it to my other tanks. I swear black beard algae can fly! Sure enough it got into my 29 gal next, LOL. (I wasn't laughing then) That stuff was growing everywhere. It was even on the glass and substrate. Every time I walked by my tank it just waved at me, so frustrating.

The last thing I did was to drain my tanks half way and remove all the plants. I cut off the leaves that were really bad. I did a quick peroxide spray or dip for the rest of the plants. It was summer, so I put some of them outside in a bucket (an experiment). It disappeared on the outdoor plants! I scraped off everything else I could see from the glass, heater, intake/output tubes and filled the tank back up. I gave the plants some root tabs and used easy green. I lost a couple plants, they didn't like the peroxide. But....

Hallelujah! It's gone! My tanks are really full of plants, including floating plants. No more black beard algae. Since I've kept the tanks plant dense it hasn't returned. 

 

[Ben_RF]

Typically I take a syringe and dose 2 ml of peroxide right on it.  The next day I do a 50% water change.   Certain plants like valisneria and sagittaria may lighten up but they do bounce back.   Also I think @Irene did a video too that might be helpful.  I would hunt it down for you but alas waiting to get my pc fixed.

Edited November 23, 2020 by Ben_RF

[Ben_RF]

K. At work now but on lunch, and found @Irene's awesome video.  I hope this helps you out! By the way, if you aren't following her yet on Youtube, you should be 🙂

 

Edited November 23, 2020 by Ben_RF

[Ali]

I just got over this myself... 😫   It's a nightmare!

I had success with H2O2 soaks for my plants. First, I clipped bad leaves that seemed too far gone. I then soaked them individually in a cup of H2O2 for 2 min, submerging the entire plant except the roots. This cured my crinum, amazon sword, ammania gracilis. I ended up fully submerging my bacopa, and its roots survived just fine. All of my plants survived and are absolutely fine, even the crinum! 

For rocks & decor, I tried spraying with H2O2 and scrubbing with my aquarium-only toothbrush and an algae sponge. It worked. I also submerged some rocks for 2 min just like the plants. The submersion method worked better and was a lot easier. I did this for the heater and affected equipment as well. Unfortunately, I used a lot of peroxide, which is such a precious commodity during the pandemic.

I followed up with larger water changes throughout the week until my parameters were back to perfect. This was successful until I got lazy AGAIN as a busy medical student and let my parameters go all out of wack. I noticed though that I had BBA growing in my substrate, which was a mix of black sand & larger gravel. Last week I decided to change my substrate, again a nightmare! Though I'll have to watch closely for new tank syndrome, I think this helped wipe out any dormant BBA colonies I had hiding in the substrate. My parameters have been great for a week with no signs of NTS. 

Much of my problem in the first place was that I let my tank go way too long without a change. I'll never make that mistake again. I agree that the best way to "treat" BBA is to prevent it. 

I hope one more perspective helps you @JaredL and anyone else fighting this pain of a problem. ❤️   🐠

 

[Ali]

On 11/22/2020 at 3:35 PM, Dice said:

I have a 40 gal breeder that I fought black beard algae for a couple years, ugh! I tried everything I could find on the internet.  Nothing seemed to work, it just kept coming back. It got really bad. I finally decided to just embrace it and quit stressing about it. I made sure I had separate nets and equipment for that tank so I wouldn't bring it to my other tanks. I swear black beard algae can fly! Sure enough it got into my 29 gal next, LOL. (I wasn't laughing then) That stuff was growing everywhere. It was even on the glass and substrate. Every time I walked by my tank it just waved at me, so frustrating.

The last thing I did was to drain my tanks half way and remove all the plants. I cut off the leaves that were really bad. I did a quick peroxide spray or dip for the rest of the plants. It was summer, so I put some of them outside in a bucket (an experiment). It disappeared on the outdoor plants! I scraped off everything else I could see from the glass, heater, intake/output tubes and filled the tank back up. I gave the plants some root tabs and used easy green. I lost a couple plants, they didn't like the peroxide. But....

Hallelujah! It's gone! My tanks are really full of plants, including floating plants. No more black beard algae. Since I've kept the tanks plant dense it hasn't returned. 

 

How did you handle the substrate? I ended up changing mine out of desperation. I'm still deciding if what I did was necessary or not. 

[Streetwise]

BBA is ugly, slow, and non-lethal. You can take your time to figure out the cause, while you pick away at the effects.

 

[Fishmonger_X]

I dose about 3x the recommendation of Flourish excel for a couple weeks. It starts breaking down and turning white. My ottos and snails clean it right up at that point. Excel will kill thin leaf plants like vals and hornwart so you do have to be careful. It's kind of a trial and error thing at first.

 

[JaredL]

Thanks for all the advice guys. Here's what I've done:

I have reduced my light time from 13hrs to 9(11hrs w 2hr off time mid day). I also turned down brightness to 50%.

I did a gravel vac and was amazed how dirty it was despite it's clean appearance(thought the rcs, snails, and corys were doing enough to keep it clean).

Today I started dosing w easy carbon. Will start w every other day and see how that goes.

I trimmed back all plants that had alot of bba on the leaves.

I will continue to gravel vac when I do weekly water changes. I will also probably cut light time back another hour. I will update this when and if I notice improvements. Thanks again for all the advice.

Edit: also bought a phosphate test kit. Looks like my water is 2ppm. Not sure what is normal levels, but I'll do some research on this.

Edited November 28, 2020 by JaredL

[Ali]

On 11/27/2020 at 8:56 PM, JaredL said:

Edit: also bought a phosphate test kit. Looks like my water is 2ppm. Not sure what is normal levels, but I'll do some research on this.

If your water was really dirty, it makes sense that phosphates would be at 2 ppm, which is high. The phosphates fluctuate with the nitrates, so I would imagine your nitrate was also high. However, some people (like me) have high phosphates in their tap water, so I would test against your tap water to so you know where your baseline is. I believe you want phosphate as close to zero as possible as I don't think it offers any benefit, and I know high levels can be very bad for fish. 

I know Cory talked about how the phosphates correspond to nitrates at some point in a video, possibly during a live stream. I can't find it. Does anyone else know which video it was?

Looking forward to hearing your progress @JaredL!

[JaredL]

@Ali From what I've seen my nitrates never go over 20ppm, which is partly why I never bothered to gravel vac or deep clean. I actually did some searching in these forums and found this Redfield Ratio Chart. It shows ratios of phosphate to nitrates and the effect it has on algae growth. Although it doesn't reference BBA, I assume it has its own preferred ratio. So perhaps my ratio of phosphates and nitrates, not just a concentration of one or the other, is one contributing factor to my BBA growth.

I have yet to test my tap water, but it's ph is over 8 and very high kh and gh. So I assume it has high phosphates as well. I have actually been doing water changes with a 4:1 ratio of RO to tap water, so I had assumed that mixture dilutes anything in my tap water to pretty low levels.

Thanks for taking time to offer your advice/experience! I will look for that video by Cory to see if I can learn anything more on the subject. And I will test my tap water and water change water to find out what I'm putting in my aquarium.

 

[Ali]

@JaredL Awesome chart! Thank you! That actually helps me out a lot because one nano tank I have is starting to show blue-green algae. Its ratio is definitely lower. 

This makes me so happy to have this forum. I wouldn't have learned this if it weren't for our conversation, so thank you!

[Nana Finopolis]

On 11/24/2020 at 5:26 PM, Ali said:

How did you handle the substrate? I ended up changing mine out of desperation. I'm still deciding if what I did was necessary or not. 

So sorry I haven't checked back for a while, life kind of gets in the way.  I didn't do anything with the substrate. In fact, I'm just changing it today because I'm tired of the Caribsea black sand. I think what really helped me was the peroxide dips I did and then using peroxide on spots I see starting. I believe the biggest impact was a HEAVILY planted tank. I put tons of fast growing plants in there, including floating plants. I occasionally see a tiny bit of BBA and just hit it quickly with peroxide. I know it's still around but my plants seem to be out competing it (for now).

[Colu]

I spot treat with seachem flourish excel