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Easy Life Blue Exit: Problems?

Onoma1

Onoma1

Member
Joined
12 Aug 2018
Messages
650
Location
West Yorkshire
I have just started to dose Easy Life Blue Exit in my tank (two days in to a two week course) and noted that some of my crypts are starting to melt.

I bought them from @a1Matt ages back and they have been pretty bomb proof and the plant quality was superb. Probably my favorite plant in the tank (other than the Bucephalandra) Also noted that the Staurogyne Repens isn't looking too happy and some of the leaves have melted.

Is this a coincidence or has anyone else experienced this when dosing Easy Life Blue Exit?
 
The BGA has actually got worse. I am not sure what others think, however, my view is that it's a waste of time and effort.
 
BGA = Blue Green Algae?
Nasty smelly stuff and not that easy to diagnose contributing factors or why it appears (slightly/determinedly/ferociously or not at all) in some tanks
Also not so easy to discourage/remove

What were you doing for water changes etc during this time?
With plants melting etc, daily maintenance is recommended to limit algae etc


If you watch Jurijs mit JS video where he takes down the aquarium he set up/maintains at Kinderhospiz Bärenherz, he decided not to salvage any of the rather nice crypts due to BGA in the tank



You might ask in Comments for more BGA information (though he’s busy through the weekend)
 
Sorry Alto ...I was just sounding off in impotent rage at the temerity of the Easylife flogging a product which has had no effect at all....other than to kill off a few plants.

The thought of replacing my remaining plants fills me with horror...its just not affordable. I am a big fan ofJurijs ...he is a really talented aquascaper, I will post a comment ...lets see if he can help.

At the moment the BGA is just on a bit of the carpet so managable and I will return to daily mannual removal, blackout, increased flow (just bought a hydor nano 900) removal of most of the fish and glaring at it. I think the latter may have a limited effect, however, may make me feel better!

I have the distinct impression that once you have blue green algae it remains in your tank lurking in the background until you make a mistake and then leaps into action. I thought Easylife could have been a 'silver bullet' .
 
No apology needed - it’s a useful update

My take on any of the BGA products is that they seem to work amazingly in some tanks to not at all in other tanks - including your experience of worsening BGA

Depending on severity of algae and general plant health, you could clean everything thoroughly and rescape the tank
This doesn’t need to involve much additional budget but does involve a lot of time and effort

Unlike Jurijs I prefer to remove as much livestock initially as I can easily net (he’s right about chasing fish being extremely stressful to the point they may die of exhaustion in the following days) - they go into a food safe bin with 1/3 tank water, 2/3 tap and extra Prime (I have extra heaters and small filter at hand)

Then carefully remove plants and place in large bin with tap water and Prime just in case snails or shrimp slip in too

I like to keep the tank fairly clear so I can see what I’m doing so usually have a syphon running when lifting plants to limit water column grunge, and I’ll refill tank as I go along, adding extra Prime re all the grunge

This of course takes much longer than Jurijs method

Once all plants,livestock, hardscape are out, I refill tank so I can “deep clean” substrate - I have a Python System so easy to do in tank, if buckets it may be easier to remove substrate and rinse elsewhere
Move substrate away from glass so you can clean that biofilm (when BGA often sits)

The idea is to remove as much debris from substrate as possible and “turnover” substrate to aerate
Clean glass etc
Then drain as much water as possible
Clean glass again spraying with peroxide (or Seachem Excel etc BUT the fumes are not great so ensure excellent ventilation)
Residual peroxide or Excel are fine for livestock

Meanwhile clean/scrub hardscape thoroughly

Of you have Aquarium Soil, it’s much easier to rescape when it’s as dry as possible - I create a “ditch” zone on one side and use paper towels (or clean detergent free, scent free towels) to remove water that keeps seeping into the substrate free ditch
This is a good stage to leave it over night etc

Meanwhile (there’s a lot of these)
Sort through plants, trimming any leafs that are damaged or full of algae, just trim crypts back close to the rhizome as likely any remaining leafs will melt soon after tank reset, trim roots to 2-3cm (these will act as temporary anchor for plant and usually melt as new roots grow)
Take care when handling plants not to bruise the delicate submerse leafs - I do all of the plant trimming in a clean bin under water, then transfer prepped plant to a third bin
You can also place on trays and spray regularly, cover with cling wrap etc

Then rescape, replant tank
Wait a day (or longer - depending on fish temporary accommodations) than add back livestock

Going this dramatic will usually break the BGA lifecycle for that tank

Though if tank is newly set up you may want to stay with more conservative approaches 😉
 
alto said:
You might ask in Comments for more BGA information (though he’s busy through the weekend)
Click to expand...

He responded!

"Blackout, h2o2 and positive filter bacteria products and erythromycin are the ways to deal with cyano. Mycin works fast and easy, but it is an antibiotic and should only be used when other methods didn’t help"
 
I’ve had BGA in my tank for a year now. I don’t know why but it never takes off. It’s always growing along the soil line on the glass, or around my diffuser. But if I blast it with excel using a syringe it dies off.

When I was dosing EI method in my last tank the BGA took over the entire tank. Every plant was covered. I used erythromycin and it worked. I did my water changes into the yard so that I wasn’t flushing antibiotics down the toilet.

The strange thing is this time when I got BGA the erythromycin didn’t work at all. My guess is it’s the same BGA from last time and it just hung around, and now it’s resistant to the erythromycin. Anyway for whatever reason I seem to be able to live quite happily with the BGA in this set up because it’s so slow growing its easily dealt with during maintenance. Maybe something was off balance in my last tank.
 
Oh dear, this is not what I wanted to hear about Blue Exit! I have just started using it. Perhaps someone on here could comment on the active ingredient in Blue Exit. On the bottle, it is given as salicylic acid (69-72-1) 2mg/g. Darrel, can you help? Anyone?

JPC
 
Hi Folks,

According to the Blue Exit label on the bottle, it is safe for use with plants. See attached. No problem yet with my various Echinodorus plants and one Anubias. Today, I shall add the third dose (of five) and see what happens. I also found a very pertinent scientific paper (see attached) that concluded:

"Percentage cell inhibition of Anabaena sp. in 96 hours...with Blue Exit concentration of 0.125 ml/l was 90.64%". OK, it's not 100% but it's pretty good.

I'm a beginner to all this but my understanding is that Anabaena is the species of cyanobacteria that is (most commonly?) found in freshwater aquaria.

Any comments greatly appreciated.

JPC
 

Attachments

Hi all,
Onoma1 said:
erythromycin are the ways to deal with cyano. Mycin works fast and easy, but it is an antibiotic and should only be used when other methods didn’t help
Click to expand...
Illegal to use at all in the UK.

Problems with bacterial antibiotic resistance are only going to get worse if we don't adopt a <"Scandinavian attitude to antibiotic misuse">.
jaypeecee said:
Percentage cell inhibition of Anabaena sp. in 96 hours...with Blue Exit concentration of 0.125 ml/l was 90.64%". OK, it's not 100% but it's pretty good.
Click to expand...
It would need to be a 100% kill to show any long term benefits, because cyanobacteria have a pretty quick generation time, it will rapidly re-establish itself.

As a side note cyanobacteria, green algae, diatoms are all pretty much universal in any fresh water, even in puddles, glacial meltwater and the water in the soil pores.

cheers Darrel
 
Hi Darrel,

Many thanks for your reply.

Does it really need to be a 100% kill? If the first course of treatment removes 90% of the cyanobacteria, perhaps this could be repeated at intervals to progressively reduce the numbers of these little blighters? It wouldn't take many iterations to reduce cyanobacteria to trivial levels. Having said which, perhaps they reproduce so fast that this is not a viable option. It seems to me that cyanobacteria can't be completely wiped out. After all, they've been around for 2.5 billion years! So, perhaps the objective should not be to totally eliminate them from our aquaria. Instead, it's more a case of managing the population of cyanobacteria. It did occur to me that they could be eliminated from the water column by the use of UV-C sterilization - perhaps? But there are cyanobacteria in the substrate. Their population presumably reduces as the depth within the substrate increases owing to the dwindling light required for photosynthesis. And if cyanobacteria flourish within the substrate, what effect do their toxins have on the plants?

Just my two penn'orth.

JPC
 
dw1305 said:
Hi all, Illegal to use at all in the UK.

Problems with bacterial antibiotic resistance are only going to get worse if we don't adopt a <"Scandinavian attitude to antibiotic misuse">.It would need to be a 100% kill to show any long term benefits, because cyanobacteria have a pretty quick generation time, it will rapidly re-establish itself.

As a side note cyanobacteria, green algae, diatoms are all pretty much universal in any fresh water, even in puddles, glacial meltwater and the water in the soil pores.

cheers Darrel
Click to expand...


Darrell, I fully agree and would never use an antibiotic for resolving an issue with BGA! My post was the verbatim response I received.
 
With a product named EasyLife offering chemicals as solution to solve issues cuased by biological imbalance, i'm always overrun with feelings of sarcasm. The product name should actualy be changed to "LazyLife Brain Exit" to be closer to the truth and it would give the buyer an honest chance to decide which route to follow. 🙄 Because there always is a rather cheaper, safer and natural alternative to adchieve the same results. It only takes a bit more intellect, work and time.

That product is a marketing lie carying a name like that and it victimizes and prevents lots of people from, researching, learning, understanding biologics and thinking any further often resulting in their aquariums or ponds going from bad to worse.

Anyway.. 🙂
jaypeecee said:
It did occur to me that they could be eliminated from the water column by the use of UV-C sterilization - perhaps?
Click to expand...

Verry little bacteria live in the water column, they need a culture medium to feed off and propagate. And this is the slimy biofilm that accumulates on surfaces suchs as glas, hardscape, plants, substrate etc.. The watercolumn collects organic materials and transports it to this biofilm, there the bacteria attach stay and reproduce as long as there is a constant supply of organic food sources that the water column (invironment) provides. Than an UV light only treats the watercolumn and the organic elements in it and not the surface biofilm it ends up in and where the bacteria and algae throw the party. Thus UV does virtualy nothing to this.

In a healthy well maintained aqaurium this biofilm on hardscape will develop a very usefull layer of so called Aufwuchs. An accumulation of usefull bacteria and algae layer feeding micro-organisme that again feeds snails, shrimps and fish. It likely will also always contain a healthy population of cyanobacteria because this bacteria is omnipresent in all aqautic invironments without always causing any issues, they are an inevitable part of the biological cycle. Since you cannot get rid of them completely without killing all there is to kill.

Rather see them as a welcome indicator telling you there is something going wrong that requires attention and maintenance as already described and linked to above.

Recent field research in nature revealed that a healthy dose of humic substances in the water column inhibits cyanobacteria development. This can be adchieved with adding dried leaflitter or Alder cones etc. to the aqaurium..

http://www.seriouslyfish.com/all-the-leaves-are-brown/
 
jaypeecee said:
Hi,

From whom did you get the response?

JPC
Click to expand...

Jurijs. See the begining of this thread.

To be clear he made other suggestions and I fully understand that as a pro aquascaper he may need different tools to resolve issue for clients or for show scapes. I am sure that it's use is an industry norm and most pros would respond in the same way. I am grateful he took the time to respond and he seems a thoughtful guy. I don't want to blame or single him out in any way!

I have pointed out in another thread that I think that using antibiotic for anything other than essential use on humans is inappropriate and potentially dangerous. Using it in aquariums isn't an option for me. I also think letting antibiotic resistant algae out into the wild via water changes is just storing up trouble. Given climate change and the increased prevalence of environments in which CBA flourishes in the UK I think using antibiotics for a hobby is playing with fire.

PS I take the same view for antibiotic use in intensive farming etc.
 
Hi all,
jaypeecee said:
Does it really need to be a 100% kill?
Click to expand...
jaypeecee said:
Instead, it's more a case of managing the population of cyanobacteria.
Click to expand...
Yes it has to be management. My understanding is that an antimicrobial has to have a complete kill to be effective. I work with some-one who is interested in the antimicrobial properties of plant anthocyanin extracts, mainly via disc assay, and she is only interested in the <"zone of total inhibition"> in the microbial lawn.
Onoma1 said:
My post was the verbatim response I received.
Click to expand...
@Onoma1, apologies I know that from <"earlier threads">, and I didn't intend to suggest that you were personally recommending antibiotic treatment.
jaypeecee said:
And if cyanobacteria flourish within the substrate, what effect do their toxins have on the plants?
Click to expand...
Cyanobacteria are going to fill a full range of ecological niches, it would very much depend upon the species. A number of them are <"symbionts of higher plants">, so I don't think you can draw any conclusions about the whole order.
zozo said:
With a product named EasyLife offering chemicals as solution to solve issues caused by biological imbalance.....
Click to expand...
That would be it for me, <"magic bullets"> can never work in the long term.

I like simple, robust systems of tank management. Where you don't have any single points of failure and you have a lot of <"negative feed-back loops">. It may not be a very exciting approach, but it gives you a lot more wriggle room when you can't spend a lot of time, or money, on the tanks.

cheers Darrel

 
zozo said:
Verry little bacteria live in the water column, they need a culture medium to feed off and propagate. And this is the slimy biofilm that accumulates on surfaces suchs as glas, hardscape, plants, substrate etc.. The watercolumn collects organic materials and transports it to this biofilm, there the bacteria attach stay and reproduce as long as there is a constant supply of organic food sources that the water column (invironment) provides. Than an UV light only treats the watercolumn and the organic elements in it and not the surface biofilm it ends up in and where the bacteria and algae throw the party. Thus UV does virtualy nothing to this.

In a healthy well maintained aqaurium this biofilm on hardscape will develop a very usefull layer of so called Aufwuchs. An accumulation of usefull bacteria and algae layer feeding micro-organisme that again feeds snails, shrimps and fish. It likely will also always contain a healthy population of cyanobacteria because this bacteria is omnipresent in all aqautic invironments without always causing any issues, they are an inevitable part of the biological cycle. Since you cannot get rid of them completely without killing all there is to kill.

Rather see them as a welcome indicator telling you there is something going wrong that requires attention and maintenance as already described and linked to above.

Recent field research in nature revealed that a healthy dose of humic substances in the water column inhibits cyanobacteria development. This can be adchieved with adding dried leaflitter or Alder cones etc. to the aqaurium..

http://www.seriouslyfish.com/all-the-leaves-are-brown/
Click to expand...

Hi zozo,

Thanks for your reply.

You are right, of course - few bacteria live in the water column. I'd obviously had a long day or something and my brain wasn't in gear.

I take your point that we should "see them as a welcome indicator telling you there is something going wrong that requires attention and maintenance".

You did me a favour by reminding me that humics can inhibit growth of cyanobacteria. And I tracked down the following paper:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369703X05000550

JPC
 
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