How to get rid of BGA?

[celebskin]

Hi,

I have a 1ft tank (under-gravel filter) which houses my 10 tetras and snails. I've noticed that BGA is starting to grow around my tank especially around the gravel area and now I saw some of it on my plants!

I tried the black-out method for 2 days and lost one fish in the process, so is there any other way to get rid of BGA? Any chemicals that I can use, please help! Thanks.

[Loopy]

- I changed 10% of water everyday.
- Manually removed as much as I could with tweezers
- Switched off the light
- Stopped dosing

Took like a week or before things started going better At least that worked for me.

[barmby]

Do a 3 day blackout yet?
Fully cover the tank(old newspaper followed by trash bags, say 2-3 deep of the black tash bags work well)

Clean prior and after, 50% water change on pre and post blackout, clean filter, lightly vacuum the surface to remove any detritus on the surface of the gravel, scrape below the gravel line if any algae is along the glass=gravel
line.

Add KNO3, at 1/4 teaspoon per 20 gal of tank pre and post treatment and then at least 1-2x a week thereafter.

This should address the issue.

[barmby]

Also, it will come back if you do not solve the root cause.

Up your CO2. And CO2 is everything that matters

[StanChung]

Celebskin,
The measures Colin and Loopy works.
To add, I would resist overdosing CO2 if you have low plant mass and check the pH.
Try to maintain it within a range of ~6.0-7.4 so that you do not kill/reduce the beneficial bacteria.
Reseed the filter with whatever products you have to speed up the process.
I would also add a temporary activated carbon pack into the filter for two weeks to absorb the smell/released toxins.

I find most BGA problems come in when the plant mass is too low or too high[white sand setups and really old clogged substrate], sometimes with the filter being clogged, inadequate flow/oxygen and the nitrogen supplied is not enough. There may be other causes but IME if you address these issues that are related to successful plant growth and healthy ecosystem, you may eliminate it quickly.

There are products like Phyton Git mentioned in here http://www.aquajournal.net/qanda/vol_001.html that may help you do some 'less damaging' treatment as opposed to using antibiotics like erythromycin. I've tried it and it works as well but resist the temptation to overdose!

Hope this helps.

[jtss2001]

you may try zebra snail, very hardworking, can find in C328, That

[StanChung]

Does it lay eggs all over the place? Didn't like Nerite snails because they laid eggs on the rocks that were hard to scrape off.

[blue33]

You can siphon most of the BGA out as much as possible, increase your CO2 as Stan said. Usually poor filter system and poor water circulation lead to algae grow and etc...

[Shadow]

Does it lay eggs all over the place? Didn't like Nerite snails because they laid eggs on the rocks that were hard to scrape off.

will it lay egg if you only have one?

[z_z]

Nerite snails eat BGA?

They don't lay eggs if there is only one in the tank.

[k3nlim]

Their eggs can't hatch in freshwater condition, they require brackish water to breed.