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Permalink Reply by Mc Fish on April 1, 2012 at 1:09am

The BBA is a pain to get rid of, you want to lower u photoperiod to 6-8 hours.  One method is to OD flourish excel but since you have vals I wouldn't use that method.  Excel melts vals.  You can try spot treatment on the plants that aren't vals.  To do this you use a syringe and get a little bit of excel, turn off all you filters, empty out some water, and use the syringe to spray directly onto the spots with algae.  Leave filters off for 10-30 minutes.  Finish the water change, about 50%.  The algae will turn red and die off.  There are several algae eaters that supposedly eat algae, I've tried them all, and even though they will eat a little of it, they wont rid your tank of the algae. (MTS, siamese algae eaters, ghost shrimp, netrite snails)

The green stuff seems to be mostly on your ornament, just take that out and clean it off maybe use a highly diluted bleach solution.  The black stuff tends to grow more on older leaves so trim off leaves effected by the bba.  Maybe you can also try to add some floaters (hornswort, frogbit, maybe even duckweed in a net) to block out some light and control your excess nutrients.

Best of luck and keep us updated on how your battle with BBA goes, that thing is a nightmare towards many planted tank enthusiasts.

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Permalink Reply by Aqua Hound on April 1, 2012 at 10:47am

Thanks for the advice I will definatley give this a try since I still have the problem.  Like you said algae eaters just don't do justice.  I have four amano shrimp and they hardly touch the stuff, so I will try your method and see what happens.  Thanks

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