Hi, below is a link to a picture of my algae that may well be common but im still in my first year of keeping fish so I don't know. Can anyone tell me what exactely is it & how to get rid of it. I spent $40 on new plants from my LFS & watched them thrive. Then the stuff that looked like dirt on my plants that was on there when it was in the store grew, took the picture into the store, they told me it was hair grass, sold me some "TLC" $31 for two weeks treatment, applied it & no change. i reduced light etc & still no change. I got sick of failing to get rid of it so tore out all plants, spent another $40 on plants & now its grown on the stones in the bottom of the tank & now back on the plants. So i've spent over $100 and am back to square one by algae the store gave me in the first place. Any great ideas?

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g183/ ... ccf8c4.jpg

its BBA [black beard algae] Pond Care AlgaeFix works every time but i only use it as an last resort as its quit toxic and will kill any plants that are like weeds.

http://www.pondpetsusa.com/water_treatm ... aeFix.html

other methods are barley straw extract and flourish excel but both of these takes a while to fix the problem.

great thanks alot fisboi

In my experience double dosing with Flourish Excel takes less than a week to kill it off, just make sure you do a water change ASAP after it dies because it'll add a whole lot of ammonia to your tank (lost 40 baby GBA's that way :-? )

what fish are in the tank? some fish wont tolerate double doses at all and often flourish will kill it off with a normal dose over time im told. i was advised it is pretty dangerous to double dose even though so many people do it, i know quite a few people that have lost fish due to this. antwan had some sort of algae and he DD with excel and it killed some fish, then used another product (??? ant?) and it killed the algae and fish were fine

I had that algae not long ago after going away for a week and the light timers didnt trip....

I took all the plants out and removed all the algae that I could from the leaves. I dropped the light right down and did regular water changes... I got rid of most of it that way and then the remaining algae seemed to dissapear after about 2 weeks!!! Someone on hear I think mentioned not to resort to chemical usage. I was lucky that I didnt need to.

Hi, there are 4 angels approx 2 1/2", 10 neons, 5 glowlights, 4 serpae neons, bn catfish, 2 skunk loaches & a clown loach. I pulled the plants out but was impossible to pull the alage off, it was a tar like substance so I pruned the plants & it still came back.

The easiest way is to get some small flying fox

They will eat it all up within a few days

Just try and get small ones as the larger they get the lazier they get

Flourish excel will work but its isnt always great for your fish

Brad

I have been using flourish excel and my guppies definately don't like it

Hi all

I have sourced Flourish excell through my LFS who had to locate a supplier & order in. have been using it for a week now, at the dose rates recomended & the BBA has started to "whiten" & die off. I got rid of as much as i could manually first so there is not too much to get rid of. the fish do not seem to be having any adverse effects so at this stage great advise thanks & great product. is also interesting that this product is a growth booster for plants that has a side effect of getting rid of algae.

Smidey

I think I know the petstore you got it from they have black beard alge in all there tanks.

If you want some real good fish advice go into the petstore in the cbd and ask to talk to richard hes a real knowledgeable guy.

Hi seth, nice to see another northlander. your right, they did have it in the plant tank for sure. When I bought the plants it had what I thought was dirt on some of the leaves. Being kinda new at this i didnt take too much notice then the fastest thing growing in my tank was the algae. lesson learnt now, it does come from the supplier like that though. I have found the CBD store not as helpful as the maunu rd store although I do buy fish from both to try to mix the sources so if they breed they aren't so closely related.

hi, i recently had an outbreak of this algae, my local pet store advised to use half a pond contioning block per 200l, it did the trick but be warned it also killed off some of my other plants and not long after a few of my neons died, whether the neons was a result of the treatment i am yet to establish but with the small sacrifice i am now rid of the dreaded stuff, i have also purchased a small flying fox in case of a reoccurance.if anyone else has tried this method let me know. cheers