Bba

[teowxu]

hi anyone knows how to deal with BBA? i'm rearing shrimps in tank so cannot dose excel. Now the BBA is just small clumps but i'm afraid it'll become bigger in future. Are there any natural methods like certain fish/snail/shrimp that eats BBA? or any chemical that can dose at BBA without killing the shrimp(no copper)? thanks

[barmby]

• reduce your feeding to the shrimps
• daily water change
• clean the filters
• trim/wipe/pull out the algae in the tank
• reduce lighting hours
• reduce lighting power

They are getting started. The situation can only get worse. By doing above, you slow things down, but will never eradicate algae.

It is very high standard to be able to keep exotic shrimps with plants flourishing in the background. take heart. you are not alone.

[Jalal]

I don't want to give conflicting advice, but I've found in my experience reducing water changes and removing as much of the BBA as possible helps as the reduced water changes help stabilise CO2 levels thus slowing the growth of BBA. I have used the following method in tanks with shrimp (CRS, RCS) and didn't see any deaths but I'm not sure what types of shrimp you are keeping so this may not be the best solution. I would use the excel as low doses are safer then playing with H2O2 if you have shrimp. I turn the filter off, wait for current in the tank to settle, then apply excel directly onto the affected area with a syringe, I leave it for an hour, then water change. If done regularly (1x a week with water changes) it helps slowly kill the BBA and makes it easier to remove. If you can remove the plants, you could do a excel dip.

Fish that are said to eat BBA are Siamese algea eaters, but they do get quite large and they really only seem to pay attention to the BBA if it's dead and they have no other food options available.

[Navanod]

Siamese algea eaters will eat and attack shrimps, even sub-adult sized shrimps. Best not to keep them with your CRS.
BBA is a monster that can never be truly killed so focus on growing alot of plants to compete with it instead of trying to kill it. Excel will help and the shrimps can tolerate quite a fair bit of excel but if you're keeping expensive shrimps, best to avoid overdosing excel.

My advice is to learn to tolerate a small amount of BBA in a shrimp thank, no point getting shrimps killed along with the BBA.

[teowxu]

thanks for all the advice! i'm currently keeping yamato and colour shrimps at the moment. intending to add either CRS and/or fire red/fire yellow though. I dont exactly know the real species for colour shrimp though(bought at y618, able to change colour to suit the environment but is bigger than malayan, have checked with the shop owner. He says not malayan plus able to clear algae on moss efficiently) Anybody knows the real name? alright i'll try to dose small amount of excel plus remove all the BBA infected leaves that i can find. In fact they only appear on my wood and staurogyne repens. Anyone knows how to make the staurogyne repens carpet faster? it's growing so slow. thanks!

[limz_777]

staurogyne , just trim it and replant , it doesnt carpet

[teowxu]

but i saw new stems coming out from the mother plant. kind of like banana like this. new shoot come out from the mother. so i just cut the new shoots to replant? and then even more new shoots will come out?

[barmby]

trim and plant. this will help them propagate