Black Beard Algae PROBLEM

I need to eliminate the algae in my tank. I have been able to cut back
the lighting and to control the stuff on the glass. However, black
beard algae is growing on my gravel. I tried removing the affected
pieces but it comes back. BTW, I have a UV sterilizer. Can I remove
all the plants (if they died its ok) and treat the tank with an
algaecide? Then after everything dies, I could run my diatom filter
with charcoal to remove the algaecide residual. Then re-plant.

Would this work?

Thanks,

Rico

Using a gravel siphon cleaner once every few weeks stops algae growing on
the gravel in my tank, keeps it looking clean to. I also use Siamese algae
eaters to stop it growing on my plants.

"Rico" wrote in message
...
I need to eliminate the algae in my tank. I have been able to cut back
the lighting and to control the stuff on the glass. However, black
beard algae is growing on my gravel. I tried removing the affected
pieces but it comes back. BTW, I have a UV sterilizer. Can I remove
all the plants (if they died its ok) and treat the tank with an
algaecide? Then after everything dies, I could run my diatom filter
with charcoal to remove the algaecide residual. Then re-plant.

Would this work?

Thanks,

Rico

Rico wrote:
I need to eliminate the algae in my tank. I have been able to cut back
the lighting and to control the stuff on the glass. However, black
beard algae is growing on my gravel. I tried removing the affected
pieces but it comes back. BTW, I have a UV sterilizer. Can I remove
all the plants (if they died its ok) and treat the tank with an
algaecide? Then after everything dies, I could run my diatom filter
with charcoal to remove the algaecide residual. Then re-plant.

If you have a lot of plants, restore your lighting, fertilize well, and
start using CO2 or Flourish Excel. The plants should outgrow it. As
"feral boy" (???) said, siamese algae eaters will keep it under control.
http://www.aquatic-gardeners.org/cyprinid.html

Copper is the treatment of last resort for brush algae, and 5% bleach
and scrubbing will remove it from equipment. Normal algaecides don't do
a thing since it's a red alga.

--
Put the word aquaria in the subject to reply.
Did you read the FAQ? http://faq.thekrib.com

I'm not sure why, but I have never been able to completely solve the algae
problem in my aquarium. I think its due to the 2.5ppm phosphate levels in my
tap water.

Boiling water is what I use to clean driftwood and anything else I can
remove from my tank for cleaning. I haven't risked using bleach or peroxide
on my plants, and have instead changed them to fast growing stemmed, and a
few fast growing leaf type plants, which outgrow the thin layer of algae
that starts to cover slower growing plants.

I did get the phosphate level down to 1ppm when I was cleaning the gravel
once a week , so if that, or excess nitrate is what is causing the problem
cleaning could help.

"Altum" wrote in message
. net...
Rico wrote:
I need to eliminate the algae in my tank. I have been able to cut back
the lighting and to control the stuff on the glass. However, black
beard algae is growing on my gravel. I tried removing the affected
pieces but it comes back. BTW, I have a UV sterilizer. Can I remove
all the plants (if they died its ok) and treat the tank with an
algaecide? Then after everything dies, I could run my diatom filter
with charcoal to remove the algaecide residual. Then re-plant.

If you have a lot of plants, restore your lighting, fertilize well, and
start using CO2 or Flourish Excel. The plants should outgrow it. As
"feral boy" (???) said, siamese algae eaters will keep it under control.
http://www.aquatic-gardeners.org/cyprinid.html

Copper is the treatment of last resort for brush algae, and 5% bleach and
scrubbing will remove it from equipment. Normal algaecides don't do a
thing since it's a red alga.

--
Put the word aquaria in the subject to reply.
Did you read the FAQ? http://faq.thekrib.com

Feral Boy wrote:
I'm not sure why, but I have never been able to completely solve the algae
problem in my aquarium. I think its due to the 2.5ppm phosphate levels in my
tap water.

That's gotta suck. I had 2 ppm phosphate in my pond for a while but
didn't get algae. I think it was from the lily fertilizer tablets.
There was hardly any nitrate from the water hyacinth, though. I also go
light on iron ferts in outdoor setups. Have you read Tom Barr's
estimative index dosing? It's at http://www.barrreport.com. He says
you can control algae by limiting trace ammonia and iron rather than
phosphate. You limit trace ammonia with really good biofiltration.

Boiling water is what I use to clean driftwood and anything else I can
remove from my tank for cleaning. I haven't risked using bleach or peroxide
on my plants, and have instead changed them to fast growing stemmed, and a
few fast growing leaf type plants, which outgrow the thin layer of algae
that starts to cover slower growing plants.

I've never bleached plants either, although I've read that it can be
done. I have bleached and scrubbed heaters, filter intakes, airline
tubing, plastic plants, ceramic decorations, and rocks to get brush
algae off. Once I took a sharp knife to my driftwood and whittled the
darned stuff off. In another tank, it only grew on the driftwood so I
left it alone. It actually looked kinda cool.

Thank heavens for Excel and SAEs. Now I hardly have any. All I have is
a couple of tiny specs of it on the leaves of a few plants. (Touch wood)

I did get the phosphate level down to 1ppm when I was cleaning the gravel
once a week , so if that, or excess nitrate is what is causing the problem
cleaning could help.

Seems like cleaning helps everything in fish tanks. :-)

--
Put the word aquaria in the subject to reply.
Did you read the FAQ? http://faq.thekrib.com

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:58:26 GMT, Altum
wrote:

Feral Boy wrote:
I'm not sure why, but I have never been able to completely solve the algae
problem in my aquarium. I think its due to the 2.5ppm phosphate levels in my
tap water.

That's gotta suck. I had 2 ppm phosphate in my pond for a while but
didn't get algae. I think it was from the lily fertilizer tablets.
There was hardly any nitrate from the water hyacinth, though. I also go
light on iron ferts in outdoor setups. Have you read Tom Barr's
estimative index dosing? It's at http://www.barrreport.com. He says
you can control algae by limiting trace ammonia and iron rather than
phosphate. You limit trace ammonia with really good biofiltration.

Boiling water is what I use to clean driftwood and anything else I can
remove from my tank for cleaning. I haven't risked using bleach or peroxide
on my plants, and have instead changed them to fast growing stemmed, and a
few fast growing leaf type plants, which outgrow the thin layer of algae
that starts to cover slower growing plants.

I've never bleached plants either, although I've read that it can be
done. I have bleached and scrubbed heaters, filter intakes, airline
tubing, plastic plants, ceramic decorations, and rocks to get brush
algae off. Once I took a sharp knife to my driftwood and whittled the
darned stuff off. In another tank, it only grew on the driftwood so I
left it alone. It actually looked kinda cool.

Thank heavens for Excel and SAEs. Now I hardly have any. All I have is
a couple of tiny specs of it on the leaves of a few plants. (Touch wood)

I did get the phosphate level down to 1ppm when I was cleaning the gravel
once a week , so if that, or excess nitrate is what is causing the problem
cleaning could help.

Seems like cleaning helps everything in fish tanks. :-)

When I noticed a new message in Agent, (this one), I was in the middle
of reading the Krib's plant fertilizer FAQs, specifically the
Sears-Conlin paper, http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/
trying to get a handle on Tom Barr's stuff and the poor man's dosing
thing. The above mentioned paper is pretty interesting, and when I
read slowly and move my lips, I am able to understand and retain some
of the information. I've been studying product labels, like Flourish
and Leaf Zone - (Flourish gives you a higher percentage of the good
stuff than Leaf Zone) - and I've been fumbling through my gardening
stuff, checking contents of things like liquid Kelp. Looking for a
commonly available product that contains potassium and nitrogen and no
phosphates . . . I know greensand is very high in potassium, but
haven't looked to see what else is in it. Some brand of stump remover
is pure potassium nitrate . . . interesting reading . . . . I've been
using Excel for a couple of weeks, and Flourish, just the straight
stuff - the beard algae has not returned after most of my plants got
heavily pruned and crew cutted and I've kept the window shade down at
all times . . . and all of my plants are producing new leaves, the
swords, vals, crypts, even the stem plants are producing new leaves
right at gravel level, where they usually stay bare for a few inches
and have to be pruned and tops replanted every now and then. I've
stepped up the (general) flourish dosing to daily, rather than the
prescribed once or twice a week, and am dosing the Excel daily as
well. I'm clumsily attempting Barr's concept of intentionally
overdosing and clearing out the excess with weekly water changes. I
don't have a lot of local resources for stuff like hydroponics - here
in Maine we grow our pot the old fashioned way, in well tended fields
and gardens, so not much call for hydroponics stuff.

-- Mister Gardener

Mr. Gardener wrote:

snip
well. I'm clumsily attempting Barr's concept of intentionally
overdosing and clearing out the excess with weekly water changes. I
don't have a lot of local resources for stuff like hydroponics - here
in Maine we grow our pot the old fashioned way, in well tended fields
and gardens, so not much call for hydroponics stuff.


http://www.gregwatson.com has all the stuff for Conlin-Sears or Barr EI
fertilization. IIRC, Conlin-Sears went with limiting phosphate. EI
limits nothing (maybe iron) but calls for biofiltration that removes all
the ammonia.

--
Put the word aquaria in the subject to reply.
Did you read the FAQ? http://faq.thekrib.com

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 23:55:26 GMT, Altum
wrote:

Mr. Gardener wrote:

snip
well. I'm clumsily attempting Barr's concept of intentionally
overdosing and clearing out the excess with weekly water changes. I
don't have a lot of local resources for stuff like hydroponics - here
in Maine we grow our pot the old fashioned way, in well tended fields
and gardens, so not much call for hydroponics stuff.


http://www.gregwatson.com has all the stuff for Conlin-Sears or Barr EI
fertilization. IIRC, Conlin-Sears went with limiting phosphate. EI
limits nothing (maybe iron) but calls for biofiltration that removes all
the ammonia.

Yeah - I didn't mention that I got to Conlin-Sears from gregwatson
from Barr. gregwatson is where I felt the nudge to start putting it
all together. In other words, been there done that and will surely
return at least a few more times.

You're correct on the C-S limit phosphorus - every time they added
phosphates, they got massive algae attacks.

-- Mister Gardener

Yeah, the carnivore pellets that I have to feed to my clown loachs are high
in phosphorus. I have only got around 0.2ppm to 0.4ppm nitrate levels, so I
have sometimes wondered if the high phosphate, and low nitrate level has
stopped my plants growing well enough to use up the excess phosphate, but
they seem to grow quite quickly?. There's definelty an excess of nutrients
of some kind in there though, as the algae grows quickly over anything that
I put in there.


"Altum" wrote in message
m...
Feral Boy wrote:
I'm not sure why, but I have never been able to completely solve the
algae problem in my aquarium. I think its due to the 2.5ppm phosphate
levels in my tap water.

That's gotta suck. I had 2 ppm phosphate in my pond for a while but
didn't get algae. I think it was from the lily fertilizer tablets. There
was hardly any nitrate from the water hyacinth, though. I also go light
on iron ferts in outdoor setups. Have you read Tom Barr's estimative index
dosing? It's at http://www.barrreport.com. He says you can control algae
by limiting trace ammonia and iron rather than phosphate. You limit trace
ammonia with really good biofiltration.

Boiling water is what I use to clean driftwood and anything else I can
remove from my tank for cleaning. I haven't risked using bleach or
peroxide on my plants, and have instead changed them to fast growing
stemmed, and a few fast growing leaf type plants, which outgrow the thin
layer of algae that starts to cover slower growing plants.

I've never bleached plants either, although I've read that it can be done.
I have bleached and scrubbed heaters, filter intakes, airline tubing,
plastic plants, ceramic decorations, and rocks to get brush algae off.
Once I took a sharp knife to my driftwood and whittled the darned stuff
off. In another tank, it only grew on the driftwood so I left it alone.
It actually looked kinda cool.

Thank heavens for Excel and SAEs. Now I hardly have any. All I have is a
couple of tiny specs of it on the leaves of a few plants. (Touch wood)

I did get the phosphate level down to 1ppm when I was cleaning the gravel
once a week , so if that, or excess nitrate is what is causing the
problem cleaning could help.

Seems like cleaning helps everything in fish tanks. :-)

--
Put the word aquaria in the subject to reply.
Did you read the FAQ? http://faq.thekrib.com

"Feral Boy" wrote in message
...
I'm not sure why, but I have never been able to completely solve the algae
problem in my aquarium. I think its due to the 2.5ppm phosphate levels in
my tap water.

Boiling water is what I use to clean driftwood and anything else I can
remove from my tank for cleaning. I haven't risked using bleach or
peroxide on my plants, and have instead changed them to fast growing
stemmed, and a few fast growing leaf type plants, which outgrow the thin
layer of algae that starts to cover slower growing plants.
=======================
You would have to see before and after pictures to see the thorough cleaning
my ottos and plecos did in two tanks infested by black furry and a black
sooty algae. I also doubled the light and added Flourish Excel along with
heavier feedings of micronutrients. I've now added 2 ottos (small and
cheap) each to all the other tanks - so far so good.
--
Koi-Lo.... frugal ponding since 1995...
Aquariums since 1952
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
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