BLUE/GREEN ALGAE

[Graeme Holden]

not your common bright green, this is dark blue green in colour and extremely fast growng, grown on surfaces and completely envelopes what it is growing on, Wok told me a remedy but being a thicko I forgot to write it down, any advise out there on remedies ???????

2ft tank with large Jewels in it. Jewels are very happy in it I might add, couldn't care less about algae, just somewhere else to hide and fight etc

[Wok]

A small amount of Erythromycin should clean it up just nicely Graeme

[Graeme Holden]

thanks pal, your blood needs bottling, get from the chemist or a pet shop ????

[Aqua]

The Skeptical Aquarist has a great article on cyanobacteria, as does The Krib.

Hope this helps!

*edit*

Just a quick warning RE using erythromycin, taken from the Skeptical Aquarist:

Still, people are getting to be too hasty in resorting to erythromycin before they've exhausted other possibilities. "The home aquarium is an ecosystem; it does not react well to toxins and antibiotics," Diana Walstad would remind you. At the recommended dosage of 200mg/10 gallons, erythromycin won't affect your plants (or any other eukaryote organism). Still, Erythromycin is not selective about which bacteria it kills. "Broad spectrum" is the polite way to describe it. You don't ever want to run erythromycin unnecessarily through your biological filter, even though I'm told that nitrifying bacteria are all gram-negative types. Before you use it, I recommend you remove any biowheel that you may be running and disconnect the sponge filter. Put the biowheel and the sponge into a separate container of aquarium water for safe-keeping for a couple of days. Yes, lack of ammonia will reduce the nitrifying bacteria, but the colonies will rapidly rebound. And if you have an undergravel filter, merely disconnect the airstones.

Be prepared for the massive cyanobacterial die-off. Dying cyanobacteria can release toxins that will stress your fish and all the other organisms in the tank and could be deadly. Cyanobacterial toxins affect the neural system and damage the liver. Liver damage will not be evident perhaps, until a victim suffers symptoms of "dropsy" long afterwards. Rinse out the filter media each day. Manually collect as much of the cyanobacterial sheets as you can in a brine-shrimp net. After 48 hours, do a 40% water change and repeat the erythromycin dosage. On the fourth day, siphon again carefully and do another 40% water change.

Be prepared too for a possible ammonia spike that you might see after nuking cyanobacteria with erythromycin. The pulse of ammonia in your water might be a result of nitrifying bacteria getting knocked back. It might also be the result of ammonia released into the system as fragments of dead cyanobacterial sheets are decomposed by other aerobic bacteria. Any pulse of ammonia is liable to bring on a small pulse of nitrite in its wake. Life can be hell.

Sorry about the long post

[Caryl]

Erythromycin can only be obtained from a doctor as it is a prescription medication. I used it as a last resort in my tank and it worked well. I had an AquaClear running but a very low stocking level.

I removed as much of the dying cyano as possible during treatment and then did a large water change. Never did any tests so have no idea what it did to ammonia etc levels but lost no inhabitants during the treatment.

[Graeme Holden]

ok thinking, tks

[Rob]

You could also just get the little green algae destroyer tablets (active ingredient is simazine) I used them to get rid of the blue-green algae from my tank recently.

[HummingBird]

I hope I don't ever get this stuff - I'm allergic to Erythromycin :-?

[Graeme Holden]

any brand name Rob ????

[Rob]

can't recall off hand what the brand name was, I think there is only the one available. Making sure the active ingredient is simazine is the important thing. I found that it worked well, though I didn't have a heavy outbreak, but it wasn't an overnight thing, it didn't seem to make much difference against the other types of algae I had though.

[Brendan]

u can buy pure simazine from any agri shop. its sold as a pre-emergent herbicide. we use it at work. never knew could use it in a tank though.

[Rob]

You'd have to make sure you got the concentration right - I wouldn't want to overdose a tank with it.

[Joze]

I have just got back from a trip away for a week, what was a little that I thought to myself I would deal with when I came home was a soupy oily mess when I walked in the door. I will be scrounging for plants as everything is going to be boiled and sterilised out of that tank. I have managed to save some and have discovered that a dilute solution of janola totally destroys riccia.

[Shilo]

u can buy pure simazine from any agri shop. its sold as a pre-emergent herbicide.

Herbicide? BGA is a cynobacteria not an algae like most sorts we have to deal with. But if it works - it works. Just be very careful if you have plants in the tank.

If you have BGA thats out of control then its for a reason. Check out whats out of whack before resorting to chemicals and drugs. Nitrates, Nitrites, Ammonia, Phosphates, light levels etc - check them. If something is measuring wrong then correct it and remove any BGA that you can see manually. Chances are this maybe all you need to do before it disappears. If it persists and you can't find anything wrong with the water parameters then hit the Bl_ _ _y stuff with all you can!

But if you treat BGA with antibiotics or chemicals there is a good chance that it will be back within a couple of weeks unless the cause is fixed. BGA is a symptom, not a cause - treat the cause!

[Ira]

Sometimes though, there isn't really a cause. I had a tank that was overrun with cyano. Did huge water changes, everything I could think of and it seemed to make no difference. One dose with erythromycin and it never came back.

[MicB]

See my post on "Furran-2"

My val is coming back

The Tank is looking good now.

It does kill gram pos and neg so will hurt your filter bact.!

Cheers

[Caryl]

Like Ira my one dose worked after nothing else did. My cyano was introduced with some plants and once once treated has not come back (so far, several months later).