# Gba?? Please help not sure what this is



## Tylermn93 (7 Feb 2015)

What kind of algae is this?? It's impossible to remove and not so sure what's causing it. I have a 36x18x18 50 gallon tank running pressurized co2 3 t5 bulbs and ei dose? I killed it with spot treating h202 and came back a couple days later


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## X3NiTH (7 Feb 2015)

Looks a little too lurid green to be BBA, could possibly be a Cladophora type given the velvety texture on the hard scape.


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## Tylermn93 (8 Feb 2015)

On a different forum someone suggested to let it run it's course over the next month. If anybody's ever had this please let me know as it's pretty much impossible to remove


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## Martin in Holland (8 Feb 2015)

I have no idea what kind this is, but I would try a black out for sure, overdose excel first, do a big water change before a 4 day BO.


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## Tylermn93 (8 Feb 2015)

Yeah this is giving me anxiety the fact that I'm having such a hard time even identifying it. Tomorrow is water change day today I tried trimming it all out still some remaining in my Monte Carlo trimmed down my s repens and driftwood is completely covered. I'm gonna spot treat with h202 with filter and powerhead off then after 20 min do a 50 percent mabye more water change then double dose excel.. We will see what happens. For 2 days last week I wasn't running co2 do to cracking my up aqua inline diffuser over tightening my hose clamps and also I really reduced dosing nutrients due to buying a nitrate test kit and tested 80 plus but who knows how reliable those kits are.


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## Julian (8 Feb 2015)

Looks like cyanobacteria. 

Blackout and spot treating with excel will get rid of it, but it won't fix the cause of the problem. Take one of the T5's out and you should be fine.


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## Tylermn93 (8 Feb 2015)

I thought cyno is easy to manually removeand has a certain smell?This stuff is impossible to remove and no smell. I took my 3rd bulb out earlier so hopefully I can completely rid this nuisance out of my tank. After reading various algae guides the only thing that seemed similar was green beard algae picture wise. I'm going to stick with just the two bulbs the midday and aquaflora and cut out the 3rd noon burst bulb. Along with removing as much as possible with trimming and using a spot treatment/ mabye blackout


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## Julian (8 Feb 2015)

Cyano is a pain in the ass to remove manually... Do a blackout, it will be the most effective and won't cause any harm to your plants. Trimming and manually removing will take forever.


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## tim (8 Feb 2015)

If the algae on the plants is the same as the hardscape I would go with cladophora, very difficult to remove, http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm.


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## Chris Jackson (8 Feb 2015)

Cyano has a very distinctive smell and can be syphoned off with a hose. I think it's some kind of hair/thread algae... So reduce light, tripple check CO2 levels and distribution, rinse filter,  bi weekly water changes with EI and add some fast growing plants and focus on growing the plants rather than killing algae. You'll get there in the end


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## Tylermn93 (8 Feb 2015)

My plan is cut back on lighting (two bulbs instead of the extra noon burst) spot treat h2o2 then water change then I will dose excel and continue to monitor co2 and continue to dose nutrients. Wish I knew what caused this.


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## Julian (8 Feb 2015)

Too much light = algae.


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## Robert H. Tavera (9 Feb 2015)

Not all BA are black,  I've had some green in the past,  add excel or H2O2 directly over it,  if it turns red in a day or too it's a BA,  and you can get rid of it with excel.


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## Tylermn93 (10 Feb 2015)

So I spot treated yesterday and most of it had turned into a greyish green color and floated bits and pieces away. I trimmed down the Monte Carlo but it's still difficult to move from such a small leaf plant. Reduced lighting cleaned tank good adjusted co2 so hopefully things will fall into balance.


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