Bro, it is BBA. Cut away the affected part.

What algae is this and how to fight it?
It appear about 2~3 weeks ago. I think it happen after I remove Taiwan moss from drift wood and replace it with fissiden.
Only hair grass and glosso affected, in other word only the foreground plant.
Tank: 2ft x 1ft x 1.2ft
Light: 55Watt PL
CO2: 3 bps using external reactor.
Fert dossing: EI
Substrate: ADA Africana
filter: 1000l/hr run through external reactor
Last edited by Shadow; 27th May 2007 at 11:03.

Bro, it is BBA. Cut away the affected part.
The passion for aquascaping and apistogramma never fade away

don't think BBA, because excel does not work on it
Black Beard Algae strand is much finer, this one is thick strand around 0.5mm ~ 1mm.
It also have brach on some of them, so I was thinking maybe stack horn

You have a problem with your CO2. Firstly it shouldn't be 3bps with a external reactor, you usually can make do with a much lower rate like 1bps.
There must be some problem with the way you're dissolving it, or your water circulation.
BTW, it looks like BBA to me =/




Looks like the nasty looking er...nose hair kind of algae. SAE will eat this.
Gary, most use a shringe, turn off the pump and infect onto affected part. It will redden then whiten in a day.
Or you can double the dosage on the bottle.
There's dozens of threads regarding killing BBA with excel, just do a search for more details.
You can if you dare to fail - Stan Chung

This might sound weird but do you have any plants on top of the BBA-affected ones? My BBA in my non-CO2 stopped after I covered the lights with tracing paper as well as introduced HM to block some light from reaching the BBA-happy Java fern below.

no plant on top, it is a foreground plant. How about direct sunlight in the morning? I tank received direct light maybe 1 to 2 hrs in the morning.

Last edited by Shadow; 2nd Apr 2007 at 12:47.
Looks like BBA to me. Maybe you can introduce a combo of some SAEs with some yamato shrimps to do a complete cleaning job. But the fastest way is to prune away infected parts and check your CO2 concentration cum circulation.
Sorry, but what is shrimps fery? I observed that SAE has an insatiable appetite, you probably need to side feed it alot when your algae issues/symptons are settled. Else you need to catch them out and kept them seperately IMO.
Last edited by Ah_ZhaN; 2nd Apr 2007 at 12:38.

Sorry I mean fry, does shrimp baby called fry?![]()
Curently what I did is cut the infected are, but not easy for hair grass.
Still trying to figure it out what did I do last month that cause this. Do you think trimming will cause this outbreak? I'm thinking plants need to adjust after trimming, during that time algae taking over.

Looks like two types of algae. BBA is not curly.![]()
It always appear as tufts.
Variable CO2 and dirty filter will cause it. SAE can eat the nose hair looking one but may skip the tougher BBA. Small SAE might eat it if you weaken/kill it with excel treatment.
Advise you to just trim it. Plants with dead BBA looks crappy anyway.
You can if you dare to fail - Stan Chung
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