I'm sorry but another bba question

[osullivanmichael2]

I hardly know where to start,

I have read so much on this forum and all over the Internet and still can't get on top of my bba outbreak!

My tank is approx 500l with sump and fairly heavily planted, I'm using easy life Ferts in the recommended quantities, and co2 till my my drop checker goes light green, and it's near the front corner near the bottom. I have 4 t5 54 watt light bulbs and two 47 watt t5 bulbs, these were running 7.5 hrs a day and are now on 6 hrs to see if it helped. It didn't,

Anyway the tank has been running for the last 7 years but only the last 6 months as a high tech planted tank. Before this it was a tanganyikan tropheus tank.

I did quite well for the first few months with only a minor gba outbreak that a 3 day blackout fixed. Life was good for another while till a month ago.

My only problem was that my red plants were a beautiful shade of GREEN. To remedy this I replaced two of my older bulbs with new daylite bulbs and fitted reflectors and started adding a half dose of easy life feero, this helped with my red plants and they did turn red but this was followed fairly rapidly by a massive bba outbreak on mainly hardscape but it is slowly progressing to some of my plants, any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Michael

 

[rebel]

If you don't have co2, then you will need to ease off on lighting. To get rid of current BBA, you can use glut/excel or add some sae to eat it.

 

[osullivanmichael2]

Thanks rebel,

I have full pressured co2 running. It starts 3 hours before lights on and off an hour before lights off.
I am directly dosing easycarbo directly onto some of my plants to try to keep them free and only just about keeping up with these from the new or returning growth of bba.

I have 6 ottos and 7 styphodon gobies with the fattest bellies doing an admirable job but not keeping up at all.

Thanks again
Michael

 

[foxfish]

How does your sump work, overflow, trickle tower etc?
Do you have a PH pen?
How do you inject the C02?
Do you have a picture?

 

[osullivanmichael2]

Ok will try to upload photos not great at this stuff !

My overflow

Sump box

Sump

Co2 system

Diffuser

Algae

Full aquarium shot

I don't have a ph pen, just beyond my budget at the moment but maybe can stretch to one at the start of next month if it may help

Thanks again for all the help, I'm at my wits end and I have tried everything in my limited knowledge to get rid of it to no avail

Michael

 

[Nelson]

I'm probably wrong ,but looks more like BGA to me.

 

[osullivanmichael2]

This is a good photo on one leaf, think it's bba but a newcomer to planted aquarium so open to correction, at least bga can be managed with blackout!
The green colour in the other photos is where I have treated with easycarbo and it dying.
Open to any suggestions though!

 

[Nelson]

Yeah,I'm probably wrong .

 

[foxfish]

Lovely tank though!
PH pen about £15, I feel that testing your PH will give you some surprises as I suspect you don't have enough C02 reaching the bottom.
Sumps are terribly good at degasing the water, you could try to get the return below water level in the sump, some folk seal the sump with cling film as well (I don't).
I would guess there is not much flow going through the sump due to the 16mm UP restricting flow, you can change this by placing the UP in front of the sump pump & using bigger return pipe work.
Anyway I would cut away all the infected leaves, up the water changes, test the PH before light on & at light off, get a better flow going in the tank & cross your fingers
I wont go into details here but check out threads relating to flow & where best to place your power heads....

 

[osullivanmichael2]

Thanks foxfish,

But I would appreciate it if you would go a little into detail with my powerhead placement I think I'm just confusing myself with contradictory posts and articles all over the place !

As for a £15 ph pen, are they all about as good as each other ? Or could you suggest one maybe.

Thanks again
Sorry for the repeat questions on covered topics. I'm just finding it hard make good workable decisions that are correct !

 

[osullivanmichael2]

Photo of outflow and powerheads

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Algae

Lovely tank though!

Really strange it has grown that well. In a strange way I quite like it, it looks like "Gorilla fake fur".

cheers Darrel

 

[EnderUK]

I'll take Easy life Nitro as an example
Weekly:
10 ml per 500 litres increases NO3 concentration by 2,0 ppm and K concentration by 1,3 ppm. Phosphate free.

This is a low tech dosage, I would be adding 150ml a week to get 30ppm of NO3 for a 500litre high tech tank (Sounds expensive). At a minimum I would be dosing all the combination of the easy life products at least 3 times a week making sure Ferro and the Fosfo were alternative days. I would then quickly switch to the EI salts as you'd get a years supply for the price of a month of pre mixed stuff and much less complicated.

Forget about chasing red plants by increasing light, they were will come if you get the CO2 right. I would reduce the amount of light down to two 47 watt t5 bulbs until you get it under control. Then maybe up to the 4 t5s. 6 t5 would be if you wanted to back to the algae farm.