I had a fight against BBA in my 2ft tank recently, and
I know some of you guys might suffer the same thing. Hence,
I would like to share my own experience in fighting BBA with you. It would take
about 5 weeks for this treatment to complete.
- First step is to remove/cut-off the BBA affected parts. You can try to do trimming first to see if the plants can bounce back. If still got affected by BBA, then you can remove the plants totally. You can re-plant some good portions/stems after carefully inspect to ensure to sign of BBA. I removed the whole bunch of Japonica Blyxa from my tank and choose the healthiest ones free of BBA to re-plants and it worked
- Cleaning all of the lily pipes, tubes, surface skimmer…etc. I used to rub some salt on them for disinfection, following by cleaning thoroughly under tap water.
- Canister filter to be cleaned thoroughly as well. The white filtration pad to be replaced with the new one, bio-media filter media to be rinsed with tank water, pump impellers to be clean to maximize the filter performance.
- To cut down the intensity of lighting that you got (if possible) or reduce the lighting time. I dim the light by 2 steps (Chihiros A series) and cut down the lighting time from 8 to 7 hours a day. This is very important to minimize the chance for BBA to dominate your tank again.
- For the first week after the above cleaning steps, do water change from 2-3 times a week, every time 50%.
- For the next 4 weeks, water change once a week as normal, every time 50%. I used AlgExit from EasyLife after each water change (5ml for my 2ft tank, 64 litters).
- During this treatment time, just observe if you see any BBA, just remove it by cleaning the equipment or remove the affected leaves/plants.
I also bought 1-2 S.A.E. fish for BBA treatment, they really
did their job very well. They keep the BBA and also other algaes in check. Very
hardworking anti-algae crew.
After 5 weeks treatment, BBA was under control in my
tank.
I find that BBA in my tank spread during the time CO2 was running out, at the same time there was cetrain changes in lighting set up. So just make sure that
the CO2 is always suffice and lighting don’t change drastically in
intensity/duration. In this battle, less light and more CO2 would be better.
For fertilizer, I just dose in everything as normal: Seachem Potassium, Iron,
Flourish, Excel, Nitrate, Phosphate and Trace.
The above was written base on my observation in my tank. All the best and hope you can beat the BBA successfully!
