How to Eliminate Black Beard Algae - Treating Stubborn BBA
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- čas přidán 25. 07. 2024
- Hi All,
Black beard algae is one of the most stubborn and difficult algae that we come across in the fish keeping hobby.
Today I am going to give you 3 ways to eliminate it for good.
Hope you find it helpful.
Please Comment, Like & Subscribe.
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#HowtoTreatBBA #BlackBeardAlgae #BlakesAquatics
I wanted to say thank you so much as I tried to get rid of black beard algae as I got some siamese algae eaters on your advice and they eliminated it! Nothing else would work so thank you so much!!!
Awesome! So glad to hear it
Mine didn't 🥲 stuff is a menace
Ever since i added a h.o.b filter to my 2o long my plants got black beard algae on my cripts, and all other stem plants
I’ve always found that the cause for BBA to be one of the most confusing things . Too much/too little flow, too much light, too much nutrients/ too little . It’s no wonder it can drive people mad
Definitely
To much feeding
Great video.. and Blake you always have great no-nonsense effective tips.. thanks for always sharing!! And I hope you have a fantastic week my friend!!
Aslo along the lines of using Flourish Excel or H2o2 or even a bleach treatment. Is if you can take the said item out of fish tank, even a plant, take it out and brush on the product, let soak in bucket, for a min or two, remove and put back into tank. This way I find easier and safer than dosing inside tank.
Great video, didn’t waste time and had a couple of great solutions!
Great video mate, I have a big Siemease algae eater in my community tank he is quite large lol. I use the flourish excel for the plants and it works very very well, never had black beard algae before, thanks for sharing mate
After using the wife's tooth brush in the toilet, I wouldn't dare use it in my tanks. Guess I'll have to buy one especially.
😂
Nice tips thanks I have some easy carbon I'll try that
Great vid 👍🏼
Great methods Blake, Im lucky to not have had any big outbreaks of BBA so far. The small bits I did find were quickly ripped right out of the tank haha
G’day mate. Nice tips as I’ve never had it but I got this black sheet like stuff
Good tips! I luckily never had bba, but will come in handy if/when I do.
Thats living the dream 👌👌
Good vid; there’s more to BBA. I’ve had it appear growing on the side of plastic CO2 diffusers actively dumping CO2 into the water of squeaky clean aquascapes. Incredibly invasive algae. Not the end of the world but H2O2 works well in a pinch.
Very interesting video, Thx 👍.
Thanks 😊
You got a great wrap on King and Queen Cichlids... well done mate...
Thanks Craig 👍
great tips i can second this method, bloody hate BBA
Great info and video !! Nearly at 1.5k !!!!
Thanks Cody, yep super excited
First in They work amazing was impressed how they cleaned up rumballs tank also 👍👍
well done
great info
Cheers Blake...
Tanks soooooooo much!!!!!!!
I make my own C02. I have a container that I mix sugar, water, and yeast. I then have a tube that goes into the tank and the C02 goes up a long bubbler latter. A super easy cheap way to have endless C02 in a tank.
I have a planted tank, so I got the flourish excel and put my light on a timer to be off for four hours during the day. A siesta is said to increase CO2 in the tank. My bba has turned red!! Looks like it is dieing off❣️. I'm just dosing the whole tank with the flourish. Too many spots of bba to take everything out. My plants seem to be happy with the flourish and my red cherry shrimp are doing just fine!
Hey Blake awesome vid. I just had a question about using hydrogen peroxide on the plants to get it off, have u heard of using such method?
Ive heard of it but never done it myself to know the ins and outs of it
I had a horrible green algae water problem in my 55g denison barb tank and nothing would work. I couldn't even see my fish up close. I bought a UV sterilizer and it was crystal clear in 6 days, but there are 2 small fake plants that have this black hair like algae. I happen to have some flourish excel because I was going to do live plants but decided against it because I like to change the scape too much for live plants. Except amazon frogbit....I have frogbit in both my tanks. I think my tank is on the verge of being overstocked so I definitely don't want a SAE, so I'll try the flourish excel as I happen to have an unopened bottle of it...thank you
Hi. Thanks for a great video. I've been using flourish excel with a pipette. It's starting to go red now. What's the next step once it dies off to removing it?
Usually either scrubbing or a sort of algae eater. Once it dies it becomes alot easier to eat for majority of algae eating species
My secret weapon is nerite snails. They don't overpopulate the tank, since they can't breed in fresh water. I had a log the size of a loaf of bread that was COVERED in bba like the driftwood in your vid, added one (1) nerite snail and it was completely clean in less than a week. The only trouble is they can't clean spindly little leaves : / That's what I'm dealing with now.
I checked a. Few shops, said we don’t have them in Australia 😢
Can you make a dip using Flourish Excel? If so, in what dosage? Thanks
You can do an excel dip but if you are going to do a dip you may as well do a bleach dip as excel will work out way more expensive
Black Beard Algae seems to come from algae wafers (like from Tetra brand).
I actually want algae in my tank because everything i have in there, are algae eaters, and a million plants, so it's nearly impossible for me to grow algae for them, because as soon as it shows up, they are already there eating and it's gone. So I bought the algae wafers and started putting them in there, and sure enough, got a little bit of black beard algae, just like someone else warned me against. Of course, I am happy, because I wanted it. I even hung some yarn in the return for the water, that had a little on it and now it's growing on the flowing water on the yarn.
This algae is SO hard to get rid of a week into a treatment and hasn’t touched the sides it’s shocking.
Some shop owner told me, the Siamese won’t eat the BBA unless they are killed , so he won’t recommend the method , saying going to use the treatment anyway. But I already got 4 Siamese , do I really still need to buy the florish excel? 160L tank lots of BBA covered my plants and part of side panel - thanks 🙏
Usually less flow and cleaner water work for me. A few times I have treated with a bit of H202.
True that never hurts
less flow?
@@xisotopex yes bba thrives better in high flow environments. Its why the fiter output is usually the worst infested. The misunderstood premise of high flow cures it is only if you have really poor flow to begin with so areas of your tank are deprived of nutrients, oxygen and co2. If thats not the case, and ample flow and co2 is present, increasing flow actually makes it worse.
@@DaleMeaney my intake had zero bba growth. it covered everything else in the tank pretty much equally... treated my tank with lots of h2o2.
@@xisotopex what did you do to treat? i am thinking to use H2O2 on drift wood and rock. remove them from tank and brush on as well as trim the plants. Also increase CO2.
So...
Get Siamese algae eaters
Add CO2 to the tank
Spot treat with flourish excel
Got it. I will try these things, and get back to you. Thanks!
Sounds great!
I put dead leaves and a little mud from the ponds in all of my tanks and there is no algea problem
I would like to hava a patch of that beautiful algea but it never appeard so faf
If using this excel do i remove the carbon from my filters?
Yep
Is the Flourish Excel safe for shrimp? I’ve wanted to try hydrogen peroxide but you can’t do that with shrimp so I was wondering if this method is shrimp safe? Thanks!
Yes its safe for shrimp!
Yes it is
mines all over the gravel i started with normal algae treatment that did nothing iv since cut the leafs off my plants with the algae iv taken rocks out soaked and brushed them and taken the top part pf the gravel and soaked in boiling water started flourish excel today underdosed as iv seen people saying its killed there fish guna aad afew ml everyday now
Best of luck mate, its a tough battle 🤞
how about LCA Triple B? is it shrimp safe?
Yes, the LCA website says it’s shrimp safe. However just to be sure I’d start with a half dose to see how the shrimp and snails handle it. Also make sure you don’t use Flourish Excel at the same time as Triple B or you could hurt your fish.
Florida Flagfish will eat black beard algae (and also ramshorn snail eyes, because they look similar).
I had some that were maybe too well fed but did 0 for algae eating for me
Recently had an outbreak of black beard algae. I posted some clips on my channel and with the help of the community here on CZcams. We identified black beard algae. I've done a deep clean And hopefully that's the end of black beard algae. I'll post updates on my channel.
Not to be negative, but chances are if you get it once you'll get it again... Eventually. I have had it twice in one aquarium. Each time I was sure it was gone. A year from my last issue and it's back!! Stronger than before. GL to you tho! Oh, PS, my best solution so far, without committing to more fish that can be aggressive(like the Siamese Algae Eater can be) was spot treating with the right dose of hydrogen peroxide. I already have CO2 and snails and shrimp and other kind of fish that should deal with it, yet it comes back. Hydrogen peroxide used in controlled doses over days is EXTREMELY effective in killing it.
@@anga9495 thanks for the advice ! I still don't have any blackbeard algae so fingers crossed 🤞
@@ryemax94 That's wonderful! GL with that! I'm glad you responded, because the other thing that's been amazing at pitching all kinds of algae is the Sotching Oxydator. I have a size D in every aquarium. I bought extra oxydators and I use closer to 5-6% solution instead of 3% which is safe. To get higher solution you buy food grade hydrogen peroxide which can be spendy, but it lasts forever. There is a really great tutorial on Marks Aquarium or Marks Shrimp Aquarium? He is a huge supporter of using the Sotching Oxydators and explains everything in detail. The only thing to be really careful of is not to over tighten it. I did that on one and it broke the seal... ended up leaking and killing off all my snails and plants in a 10 gallon(somehow the fish lived). I had been breading them in that Aquarium, so it was a huge loss. Anyway, good luck to you! :))
@@anga9495 oh no sorry about your plants and snails
Very interesting thanks !
I used a little paint brush with some flourish excel and brushed some of the ornaments and plants and it's seemed to do the trick.
My Siamese algae eater is still keeping the the place maintained ! Haha
@@ryemax94 thanks! It was months ago now. But, those oxydators are amazing at keeping the water and fish so happy. I stopped using mine a few months ago and bam another BBA break out!
Sounds like you had the right idea and were able to move things a bit to use that method! Glad it worked! Sadly, the aquarium I have BBA in now, again, is deep and the plants are so rooted and huge, with the wood pieces also being quite large and very carefully placed, with plants growing all over them .. I can't take them out to use that method! I've done the same thing before with smaller pieces and used a 3% hydrogen peroxide solution spayed on or a dip, which worked amazingly well! But everything is so big now I have to rely on other methods. AND I haven't used a Siamese Algae Eater because my plecos had babies three times!! Lolol so it's been a breeding tank for about a yr for them and those guys become large and aggressive eventually as do the Siamese Algae Eaters. I have a few families of chain link loaches, khuli loaches and a few breads of other bottom guys I don't want to have to compete for more space with all the juvenile plecos.... But, maybe I could talk to my local pet store and see if it could get one on loan though?.. hmmm
Hey, great talk! Lolol I might have just thought of another solution for my newest BBA issue because of this correspondence! 😊 Thanks buddy!
I got hair algae for about a month and a half now.It first appeard after a few days of setting up the tank and it never fully gone no matter how much maintenance and scrubbing 😂
Its shocking stuff.
“Dad, my toothbrush taste funny.”
Him: “it’s okay.”
Anyways, thanks so much! It helped a lot.
🤣
Bit of extra greenery in the diet never hurt anybody
Do octocinclus work?
No not for bba
No I have otocinclus and they don't eat it. I also have a hillstream loach, blue eyed golden longfin bristlenose pleco and a golden zebra loach, but nothing eats it except SAE that I know of. I'm going to try the flourish excel because I happen to have it on hand
Seachem excel
i hate this so much it killed all my plants because it grows on the plants and i cant get it off and i cant take the plant out of the tank there roots are down to the bottom of the tank in about 3-4 inch gravel. i cant get a alge eater or a pleco because i have gar
Yeah its shocking stuff
Lol I got a 20 pound co2 tank
I bought 2 Siamese algae eaters the other day.. absolutely useless!!!
Are you sure they werent flying foxes or CAEs
Second 😞
dropping the ball lol. youll get it tomorrow :)
I hate that crap
it is one of the worst for sure