BBA first day after dry start. What should I do?

[Zedan]

TL;DR How to respond to BBA when plants are still adapting from a dry start?

I flooded my 12L Tree Hill aquascape yesterday. Setup DIY Co2 with about 1.5bps to ease the plants into submerged life. Turned my photoperiod down to 4 hours. Woke up this morning to BBA all over my DHG!

So I tested my water, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate were almost off the charts! I used a bucket of old tank water to flood the tank, it must have matured in the bucket!

So I spot treated the tank with liquid carbon and then did a 50% water change. The Co2 is on a solenoid but it fluctuates like crazy! Slows down to almost nothing and then I have to readjust the needle valve.

Oddly, the BBA isn't affecting the Ludwigia which receives more light.

What should I do? The plants need good conditions to recover from the dry start so I don't know if I should stop Co2 or not. A blackout will hit the BBA but the plants will suffer, same goes for hydrogen peroxide right?
I am thinking of getting an SAE for a couple of weeks just to clear the algae and give the plants a chance. I'm going away in 10 days so the tank MUST be somewhat stable!

 

[Zeus.]

Sounds almost unbelievable to get BBA that quick! Have you got a photo?

How long was your DSM? Substrate should of cycled to some extent!

 

[Zedan]

Sounds almost unbelievable to get BBA that quick! Have you got a photo?

How long was your DSM? Substrate should of cycled to some extent!

I was shocked too! It doesn't show well in photos. But each blade of DHG has a thread of bba, with some of them accruing small patches of the stuff.

DSM was nearly 3 months, and I'm running a mature external filter. I think it was just the dirty water and perhaps the soil/root tabs etc.

I hit the BBA with liquid carbon and did a 90% water change, vacuuming some of the bba off the DHG, after the lights and CO2 went off last night. That seems to have helped a lot. The DIY CO2 will probably only last another day or two so I'm still running it for now. But it's so inconsistent, I'm constantly having to adjust the needle valve. Should I unplug it and just rely on liquid carbon?

 

[Zeus.]

The DIY CO2 will probably only last another day or two so I'm still running it for now. But it's so inconsistent,

So the plants levels of CO2 are constantly changing so its production of Rubisco will be all over the place!

we know that when the plant senses that high concentrations of CO2 is available, it responds by reducing the production of expensive Rubisco. When it senses a lower CO2 concentration it must increase Rubisco production, however because this protein is so complicated and heavy, the increased production requires 2-3 weeks in order to change the density in the leaf to match the new gas concentration level. So it is much easier to reduce production than it is to increase production. When increasing gas injection therefore, it hardly takes any time to see an improvement in health. When lowering the concentration, the plant will suffer because it must now ramp up Rubisco production to account for the loss of CO2 availability.

so either do CO2 injection 'well' or dont do it at all would be my advice

 

[alto]

Having run yeast generated CO2 for years, I disagree that “no CO2” is beneficial over less consistent CO2 ... even in high tech CO2 aquaria, I suspect that CO2 levels vary throughout the photoperiod

I’ve not seen the technical data tracking Rubisco production/retrieval but most large complex molecule adaptation is a process of weeks not hours, so while daily fluctuations in CO2 levels might not be optimal, I don’t see it being a major stressor either

 

[Zeus.]

Having run yeast generated CO2 for years, I disagree that “no CO2” is beneficial over less consistent CO2 ...

With your skill m8 I sure it worked well as your a seasoned veteran . I have never used DIY CO2 so in one way I shouldn't comment OFC - CO2 injected tanks have issues and the main cause is poor CO2 implementation and non injected CO2 tanks dont have such CO2 issues