BGA Explosion!

[ricoishere]

I have one particular tank that has me stumped. I've managed to keep all algae away, except the BGA .
56G Oceanic 36x18x20
36" 6 light fixture.
Compressed CO2
PPS Dosing
Very light feeding (all angelfish and ottos)
Lighting is 4 bulbs 8 hours, 6 bulb noonburst for 1 hour
Nitrates have been 0.
I've hand picked it (awful smelling stuff!), cut plants down, black outs, extra water changes, you name it. It killed one of my delicate plants (Syngonanthus Madeira), it grew so fast it weighed it down while I was away!

I started adding 1/4 Tsp KN03 2x daily for a week. Still reading 0, but will rermain with this. I'm considering going drastic and redoing whole tank, cleaning out the substrate, but that is EXTREME.
Any other thoughts?

[gconcepcion]

I never like to recommend chemicals, but if you're almost to the point where you are going to break it down and restart it fresh, you could at least try some antibiotics, (i.e. erythromycin which should take care of the BGA in no time...)
By the way, i'm a little out of touch with the internet age acronyms, i'm assuming BGA = blue green algae = cyanobacteria?


The down side is that the tank will probably have to recycle. One way to speed things up is to remove your filter media, and place it on a temporary tank to keep the bacteria happy while you are treating your BGA tank... once the BGA antibiotic treatment has ended and you've replenished with antibiotic free water, replace the filter.
Also, i'm sure most people are aware now a days that you really should only use antibiotics as a last resort as there is always potential to select for an antibiotic resistant strain which could cause problems later...

[ricoishere]

gconcepcion,
I have thought about that, and the one consideration is that the fish would be treated and not needed. I probably would not need to recycle, since I would use
1/2 dose of antibiotic. And you're correct on the acronym!

[krisw]

Rico, if your nitrates are 0ppm, that's the problem. You're not dosing enough. Nitrates should be in the 10ppm range, plus or minus 5ppm. Make sure that you're dosing your KNO3 and KH2PO4 in properly ratio'd amounts, as only dosing nitrate might throw that balance out of whack, and cause other issues. I usually dose nitrate 3-to-1 with phosphate. Of course, first, are you 100% sure that your nitrate test kit is not old? 1/2tsp KNO3 per day should definitely register something in a 56G aquarium.

BGA can be caused by too little or too much nitrates.

If you're overrun, Erythromycin will definitely reset it for you. If you're leery about antibiotics (and who wouldn't be), you can try spot treating with H202, but don't overdo that either!

[ricoishere]

Kris,
The test set is about 6 months, but I think I might do the Erythomicin route, I prefer that over algae treatments which kill inverts!

[chris_todd]

If you have KNO3, you should be able to mix a solution that you can use to calibrate/validate the accuracy of your test kit.

[ricoishere]

If you have KNO3, you should be able to mix a solution that you can use to calibrate/validate the accuracy of your test kit.

Cris,
The test kit is good. It's just frustrating to see this stff spread like this daily. Thanks. I guess I'm going the nuclear route and do the erythromycin.

[Cristy Keister]

There's no point in using antibiotics if you don't fix the problem that caused the outbreak - bga will just come back. I have fixed bga problems a few times by increasing the nitrates.

Remove as much bga as you can manually, dose nitrate and give it a few days to work. Sometimes it will go away in 24 hrs.

[gconcepcion]

There's no point in using antibiotics if you don't fix the problem that caused the outbreak - bga will just come back. I have fixed bga problems a few times by increasing the nitrates.

Remove as much bga as you can manually, dose nitrate and give it a few days to work. Sometimes it will go away in 24 hrs.

True, but if he corrects the problem & doses the erythromycin, it will make the problem much more manageable. Temporarily removing the fish would of course also be a good idea in terms of unwanted exposure to antibiotics. It sounds like Rico has been battling this problem for awhile and is at his wit's end, which is the main reason I suggested it.

[ricoishere]

Thanks for the tips, but after careful consideration, I will use erythromycin to kill BGA. It will always be a learning environment! The chemicals is a last resort, because of livestock, but I've treated fish for years with plenty success. so I will post progress in the journals section (I should do some updating there right?) And hopefully we won't have green goop blanketing this tank!