Black Beard Algae How to Fight It

Hi guys,

I have a 10 gallon dirted, planted aquarium i have 10 cherry shimp, 2 otto cats, and dozens of snails in my algae clean up crew. The tank is heavily planted and almost all the plants are pearling i have a aqueon quiet flow 10 with a 15 watt tetra heater, a diy moving bed internal filter, a 15 watt floramax t8 and 2 23 watt 6500k compact florescents and i do 2 20% water changes a week. If anyone knows how to give me an advantage in my fight please let me know.

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by 2apes2gp667wr on March 3, 2012 at 10:42pm

First trim off any leaves and plants infected. Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a spot treatment and making your co2 more consistent is a good start. See how that works as a start.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Brad on March 4, 2012 at 12:09am

ok thanks ill try start tryin

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ben Fritz on March 4, 2012 at 3:01am

Biggest thing I see is that with that much light you should be at least dosing excel or diy co2 to keep the level more consistent like stated before along with manual removal/spot treating with peroxide. If you dont want the CO2/Excel then Id remove a light and possibly shorten the photoperiod if its very long.

SAE's will eat the stuff as well as Amano shrimp, but my amanos never really did much for that. Id go with a couple SAE's with the intent of rehoming them once your prob is fixed.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Robert Jango on March 4, 2012 at 5:46am

I've found that adding floating plants (Dustin's advice) is the absolute best and easiest way to rid yourself of black beard algae. Its true that cutting down the light will hurt the algae but it will also hurt your plants; so where's competitive advantage there? The advantage that floating plants have is that they get their CO2 from the atmosphere. In other words, they have an unlimited supply of CO2! This allows them to dominate the algae which is limited by the amount of C02 in your 10 gallon body of water - which is not that much compared to our atmosphere.

Also doesn't the 6500K bulb have a lot of blue? I could be wrong here but the algae might be digging your blue spectrum. Some blue is ok but you want mostly red. Google Kelvin and find out the K spectrum for red light. Fun fact: The Kelvin color scale comes from the color that steel turns when heated up to a certain temperature. For example steel turns blue when heated up to (approx) 5500 degrees Kelvin - or something like that.

You've got alot of algae eaters in there! Personally I've found Mollies (and young Plecos) to be the most effective algae eaters but if you give them alternative food they might ignore the algae and Black Mollies need supplemental protein to maintain their black color. Also Mollies like salt. 1 or 2 teaspoons per 5 gallons of water should be ok for the Mollies and too small an amount to hurt your plants.

Good luck!

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by 2apes2gp667wr on March 4, 2012 at 11:37am

Photoperiod has little to no effect on bba. It if it has the nutrients to live it will.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bruce on March 5, 2012 at 11:21pm

My Siamese Algae eaters (Crossocheilus oblongus) love it but you can dose with Flourish Excel but be careful.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dustin Wunderlich on March 8, 2012 at 11:44am

Hit the tank with duckweed. I never get algae... Run your lights 6 hours, feed every other day. IMO algae eaters don't do all that much, its excess nutrients/light... If its really bad, do a black out for 4 days. (no food, nothing)