# Easy Life Blue Exit: Problems?



## Onoma1 (25 Mar 2019)

I have just started to dose Easy Life Blue Exit in my tank (two days in to a two week course) and noted that some of my crypts are starting to melt. 

I bought them from @a1Matt ages back and they have been pretty bomb proof and the plant quality was superb. Probably my favorite plant in the tank (other than the Bucephalandra)  Also noted that the Staurogyne Repens isn't looking too happy and some of the leaves have melted. 

Is this a coincidence or has anyone else experienced this when dosing Easy Life Blue Exit?


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## Onoma1 (5 Apr 2019)

The BGA has actually got worse. I am not sure what others think, however, my view is that it's a waste of time and effort.


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## alto (5 Apr 2019)

BGA = Blue Green Algae?
Nasty smelly stuff and not that easy to diagnose contributing factors or why it appears (slightly/determinedly/ferociously or not at all) in some tanks
Also not so easy to discourage/remove 

What were you doing for water changes etc during this time?
With plants melting etc, daily maintenance is recommended to limit algae etc


If you watch Jurijs mit JS video where he takes down the aquarium he set up/maintains at Kinderhospiz Bärenherz, he decided not to salvage any of the rather nice crypts due to BGA in the tank 



You might ask in Comments for more BGA information (though he’s busy through the weekend)


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## Onoma1 (5 Apr 2019)

Sorry Alto ...I was just sounding off in impotent rage at the temerity of the Easylife flogging a product which has had no effect at all....other than to kill off a few plants.

The thought of replacing my remaining plants fills me with horror...its just not affordable. I am a big fan ofJurijs ...he is a really talented aquascaper, I will post a comment ...lets see if he can help.

At the moment the BGA is just on a bit of the carpet so managable and I will return to daily mannual removal, blackout, increased flow (just bought a hydor nano 900) removal of most of the fish and glaring at it. I think the latter may have a limited effect, however, may make me feel better!

 I have the distinct impression that once you have blue green algae it remains in your tank lurking in the background until you make a mistake and then leaps into action. I thought Easylife could have been a 'silver bullet' .


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## alto (6 Apr 2019)

No apology needed - it’s a useful update

My take on any of the BGA products is that they seem to work amazingly in some tanks to not at all in other tanks - including your experience of worsening BGA

Depending on severity of algae and general plant health, you could clean everything thoroughly and rescape the tank
This doesn’t need to involve much additional budget but does involve a lot of time and effort

Unlike Jurijs I prefer to remove as much livestock initially as I can easily net (he’s right about chasing fish being extremely stressful to the point they may die of exhaustion in the following days) - they go into a food safe bin with 1/3 tank water, 2/3 tap and extra Prime (I have extra heaters and small filter at hand)

Then carefully remove plants and place in large bin with tap water and Prime just in case snails or shrimp slip in too

I like to keep the tank fairly clear so I can see what I’m doing so usually have a syphon running when lifting plants to limit water column grunge, and I’ll refill tank as I go along, adding extra Prime re all the grunge

This of course takes much longer than Jurijs method 

Once all plants,livestock, hardscape are out, I refill tank so I can “deep clean” substrate - I have a Python System so easy to do in tank, if buckets it may be easier to remove substrate and rinse elsewhere
Move substrate away from glass so you can clean that biofilm (when BGA often sits)

The idea is to remove as much debris from substrate as possible and “turnover” substrate to aerate 
Clean glass etc
Then drain as much water as possible 
Clean glass again spraying with peroxide (or Seachem Excel etc BUT the fumes are not great so ensure excellent ventilation)
Residual peroxide or Excel are fine for livestock 

Meanwhile clean/scrub hardscape thoroughly 

Of you have Aquarium Soil, it’s much easier to rescape when it’s as dry as possible - I create a “ditch” zone on one side and use paper towels (or clean detergent free, scent free towels) to remove water that keeps seeping into the substrate free ditch
This is a good stage to leave it over night etc

Meanwhile (there’s a lot of these)
Sort through plants, trimming any leafs that are damaged or full of algae, just trim crypts back close to the rhizome as likely any remaining leafs will melt soon after tank reset, trim roots to 2-3cm (these will act as temporary anchor for plant and usually melt as new roots grow)
Take care when handling plants not to bruise the delicate submerse leafs - I do all of the plant trimming in a clean bin under water, then transfer prepped plant to a third bin
You can also place on trays and spray regularly, cover with cling wrap etc 

Then rescape, replant tank 
Wait a day (or longer - depending on fish temporary accommodations) than add back livestock 

Going this dramatic will usually break the BGA lifecycle for that tank 

Though if tank is newly set up you may want to stay with more conservative approaches


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## Tim Harrison (6 Apr 2019)

Not sure that chemical solutions to BGA are wholly appropriate but some folk have had success with Ultralife Blue Green Slime Stain Remover.


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## Onoma1 (7 Apr 2019)

alto said:


> You might ask in Comments for more BGA information (though he’s busy through the weekend)



He responded! 

 "Blackout, h2o2 and positive filter bacteria products and erythromycin are the ways to deal with cyano. Mycin works fast and easy, but it is an antibiotic and should only be used when other methods didn’t help"


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## Jack Reilly (7 Apr 2019)

I’ve had BGA in my tank for a year now. I don’t know why but it never takes off. It’s always growing along the soil line on the glass, or around my diffuser. But if I blast it with excel using a syringe it dies off. 

When I was dosing EI method in my last tank the BGA took over the entire tank. Every plant was covered.  I used erythromycin and it worked. I did my water changes into the yard so that I wasn’t flushing antibiotics down the toilet. 

The strange thing is this time when I got BGA the erythromycin didn’t work at all. My guess is it’s the same BGA from last time and it just hung around, and now it’s resistant to the erythromycin. Anyway for whatever reason I seem to be able to live quite happily with the BGA in this set up because it’s so slow growing its easily dealt with during maintenance. Maybe something was off balance in my last tank.


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## jaypeecee (20 Aug 2019)

Oh dear, this is not what I wanted to hear about _Blue Exit_! I have just started using it. Perhaps someone on here could comment on the active ingredient in _Blue Exit_. On the bottle, it is given as salicylic acid (69-72-1) 2mg/g. Darrel, can you help? Anyone?

JPC


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## jaypeecee (20 Aug 2019)

Here are a couple of links that may help the plant biologists. It's gobbledy-gook to me!

https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/62/10/3321/479369

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.00423/full

JPC


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## jaypeecee (21 Aug 2019)

Hi Folks,

According to the _Blue Exit_ label on the bottle, it is safe for use with plants. See attached. No problem yet with my various Echinodorus plants and one Anubias. Today, I shall add the third dose (of five) and see what happens. I also found a very pertinent scientific paper (see attached) that concluded:

"Percentage cell inhibition of Anabaena sp. in 96 hours...with Blue Exit concentration of 0.125 ml/l was 90.64%". OK, it's not 100% but it's pretty good.

I'm a beginner to all this but my understanding is that Anabaena is the species of cyanobacteria that is (most commonly?) found in freshwater aquaria.

*Any* comments greatly appreciated.

JPC


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## dw1305 (21 Aug 2019)

Hi all, 





Onoma1 said:


> erythromycin are the ways to deal with cyano. Mycin works fast and easy, but it is an antibiotic and should only be used when other methods didn’t help


Illegal to use at all in the UK.

Problems with bacterial antibiotic resistance are only going to get worse if we don't adopt a <"Scandinavian attitude to antibiotic misuse">.





jaypeecee said:


> Percentage cell inhibition of Anabaena sp. in 96 hours...with Blue Exit concentration of 0.125 ml/l was 90.64%". OK, it's not 100% but it's pretty good.


It would need to be a 100% kill to show any long term benefits, because cyanobacteria have a pretty quick generation time, it will rapidly re-establish itself.

As a side note cyanobacteria, green algae, diatoms are all pretty much universal in any fresh water, even in puddles, glacial meltwater and the water in the soil pores. 

cheers Darrel


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## jaypeecee (21 Aug 2019)

Hi Darrel,

Many thanks for your reply.

Does it really need to be a 100% kill? If the first course of treatment removes 90% of the cyanobacteria, perhaps this could be repeated at intervals to progressively reduce the numbers of these little blighters? It wouldn't take many iterations to reduce cyanobacteria to trivial levels. Having said which, perhaps they reproduce so fast that this is not a viable option. It seems to me that cyanobacteria can't be completely wiped out. After all, they've been around for 2.5 billion years! So, perhaps the objective should not be to totally eliminate them from our aquaria. Instead, it's more a case of _managing_ the population of cyanobacteria. It did occur to me that they could be eliminated from the water column by the use of UV-C sterilization - perhaps? But there are cyanobacteria in the substrate. Their population presumably reduces as the depth within the substrate increases owing to the dwindling light required for photosynthesis. And if cyanobacteria flourish within the substrate, what effect do their toxins have on the plants?

Just my two penn'orth.

JPC


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## Onoma1 (21 Aug 2019)

dw1305 said:


> Hi all, Illegal to use at all in the UK.
> 
> Problems with bacterial antibiotic resistance are only going to get worse if we don't adopt a <"Scandinavian attitude to antibiotic misuse">.It would need to be a 100% kill to show any long term benefits, because cyanobacteria have a pretty quick generation time, it will rapidly re-establish itself.
> 
> ...




Darrell, I fully agree and would never use an antibiotic for resolving an issue with BGA! My post was the verbatim response I received.


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## jaypeecee (22 Aug 2019)

Onoma1 said:


> Darrell, I fully agree and would never use an antibiotic for resolving an issue with BGA! My post was the verbatim response I received.



Hi,

From whom did you get the response?

JPC


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## zozo (22 Aug 2019)

With a product named EasyLife offering chemicals as solution to solve issues cuased by biological imbalance, i'm always overrun with feelings of sarcasm. The product name should actualy be changed to "LazyLife Brain Exit" to be closer to the truth and it would give the buyer an honest chance to decide which route to follow.  Because there always is a rather cheaper, safer and natural alternative to adchieve the same results. It only takes a bit more intellect, work and time.

That product is a marketing lie carying a name like that and it victimizes and prevents lots of people from, researching, learning, understanding biologics and thinking any further often resulting in their aquariums or ponds going from bad to worse.

Anyway.. 


jaypeecee said:


> It did occur to me that they could be eliminated from the water column by the use of UV-C sterilization - perhaps?



Verry little bacteria live in the water column, they need a culture medium to feed off and propagate. And this is the slimy biofilm that accumulates on surfaces suchs as glas, hardscape, plants, substrate etc.. The watercolumn collects organic materials and transports it to this biofilm, there the bacteria attach stay and reproduce as long as there is a constant supply of organic food sources that the water column (invironment) provides. Than an UV light only treats the watercolumn and the organic elements in it and not the surface biofilm it ends up in and where the bacteria and algae throw the party. Thus UV does virtualy nothing to this.

In a healthy well maintained aqaurium this biofilm on hardscape will develop a very usefull layer of so called Aufwuchs. An accumulation of usefull bacteria and algae layer feeding micro-organisme that again feeds snails, shrimps and fish. It likely will also always contain a healthy population of cyanobacteria because this bacteria is omnipresent in all aqautic invironments without always causing any issues, they are an inevitable part of the biological cycle. Since you cannot get rid of them completely without killing all there is to kill.

Rather see them as a welcome indicator telling you there is something going wrong that requires attention and maintenance as already described and linked to above.

Recent field research in nature revealed that a healthy dose of humic substances in the water column inhibits cyanobacteria development. This can be adchieved with adding dried leaflitter or Alder cones etc. to the aqaurium..

http://www.seriouslyfish.com/all-the-leaves-are-brown/


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## Onoma1 (22 Aug 2019)

jaypeecee said:


> Hi,
> 
> From whom did you get the response?
> 
> JPC



Jurijs. See the begining of this thread.

To be clear he made other suggestions and I fully understand that as a pro aquascaper he may need different tools to resolve issue for clients or for show scapes. I am sure that it's use is an industry norm and most pros would respond in the same way.  I am grateful he took the time to respond and he seems a thoughtful guy. I don't want to blame or single him out in any way!

I have pointed out in another thread that I think that using antibiotic  for anything other than essential use on humans is inappropriate and potentially dangerous. Using it in aquariums isn't an option for me. I also think letting antibiotic resistant algae out into the wild via water changes  is just storing up trouble.  Given climate change and the increased prevalence of environments in which CBA flourishes in the UK I think using  antibiotics for a hobby is playing with fire.

PS I take the same view for antibiotic use in intensive farming etc.


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## dw1305 (22 Aug 2019)

Hi all,





jaypeecee said:


> Does it really need to be a 100% kill?





jaypeecee said:


> Instead, it's more a case of _managing_ the population of cyanobacteria.


Yes it has to be management. My understanding is that an antimicrobial has to have a complete kill to be effective. I work with some-one who is interested in the antimicrobial properties of plant anthocyanin extracts, mainly via disc assay, and she is only interested in the <"zone of total inhibition"> in the microbial lawn. 





Onoma1 said:


> My post was the verbatim response I received.


@Onoma1, apologies I know that from <"earlier threads">, and I didn't intend to suggest that you were personally recommending antibiotic treatment.





jaypeecee said:


> And if cyanobacteria flourish within the substrate, what effect do their toxins have on the plants?


Cyanobacteria are going to fill a full range of ecological niches, it would very much depend upon the species. A number of them are <"symbionts of higher plants">, so I don't think you can draw any conclusions about the whole order.


zozo said:


> With a product named EasyLife offering chemicals as solution to solve issues caused by biological imbalance.....


That would be it for me, <"magic bullets"> can never work in the long term.

I like simple, robust systems of tank management.  Where you don't have any single points of failure and you have a lot of <"negative feed-back loops">.  It may not be a very exciting approach, but it gives you a lot more wriggle room when you can't spend a lot of time, or money, on the tanks.

cheers Darrel


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## jaypeecee (23 Aug 2019)

zozo said:


> Verry little bacteria live in the water column, they need a culture medium to feed off and propagate. And this is the slimy biofilm that accumulates on surfaces suchs as glas, hardscape, plants, substrate etc.. The watercolumn collects organic materials and transports it to this biofilm, there the bacteria attach stay and reproduce as long as there is a constant supply of organic food sources that the water column (invironment) provides. Than an UV light only treats the watercolumn and the organic elements in it and not the surface biofilm it ends up in and where the bacteria and algae throw the party. Thus UV does virtualy nothing to this.
> 
> In a healthy well maintained aqaurium this biofilm on hardscape will develop a very usefull layer of so called Aufwuchs. An accumulation of usefull bacteria and algae layer feeding micro-organisme that again feeds snails, shrimps and fish. It likely will also always contain a healthy population of cyanobacteria because this bacteria is omnipresent in all aqautic invironments without always causing any issues, they are an inevitable part of the biological cycle. Since you cannot get rid of them completely without killing all there is to kill.
> 
> ...



Hi zozo,

Thanks for your reply.

You are right, of course - few bacteria live in the water column. I'd obviously had a long day or something and my brain wasn't in gear.

I take your point that we should "see them as a welcome indicator telling you there is something going wrong that requires attention and maintenance".

You did me a favour by reminding me that humics can inhibit growth of cyanobacteria. And I tracked down the following paper:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369703X05000550

JPC


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## Edvet (23 Aug 2019)

For an experiment i used submerged (sunken) peatblocks to see wether i could grow some plants on them.
In this case the humics didn't stop BGA


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## zozo (23 Aug 2019)

HS supresses the growth it doesn't stop it..  Ofcourse we have a winner if the source that feeds it excels the supressor. 

https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.e...8ff64549917f499f08d18653c6b6a23448da9a7f448f1


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## jaypeecee (23 Aug 2019)

zozo said:


> HS supresses the growth it doesn't stop it..  Ofcourse we have a winner if the source that feeds it excels the supressor.
> 
> https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/44742777/Dissolved_humic_substances_-_Ecological_20160414-31705-nv9cfv.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline; filename=Dissolved_humic_substances_-_ecological.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A/20190823/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20190823T143810Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=02f3feba8b37a8a5f098ff64549917f499f08d18653c6b6a23448da9a7f448f1



Hi zozo,

Unfortunately, there appears to be a problem with the link that you included. It just takes me to a page of XML code.

JPC


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## zozo (23 Aug 2019)

jaypeecee said:


> Hi zozo,
> 
> Unfortunately, there appears to be a problem with the link that you included. It just takes me to a page of XML code.
> 
> JPC



Its a PDF link, works for me..Install or update Acrobat PDF reader. 

But here is an HTML link try this.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2427.2006.01571.x


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## jaypeecee (24 Aug 2019)

zozo said:


> Its a PDF link, works for me..Install or update Acrobat PDF reader.
> 
> But here is an HTML link try this.
> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2427.2006.01571.x



OK, the HTML link works fine. FYI, I have Acrobat Reader DC version 19.012.20040 installed on my PC and this version is up-to-date.

Thank you.

JPC


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## jaypeecee (1 Oct 2019)

Hi Folks,

Just thought I'd provide an update on _Blue Exit_. It did appear to kill off some of the BGA. But, you guessed it, now it's back. And it has spread to the water surface, attaching itself to an oily film that had developed there. I have just started another course of treatment. Now, here's a question for the experts - what species of BGA (cyanobacteria) are present in freshwater aquaria? I've come across the following but cannot find a definite resource that names these bacteria. Here are a few:

Microcystis aeruginosa
Oscillatoria Sp.
Anabaena circinalis

I've also contacted the makers of _Blue Exit_ (Easy-Life) in the hope that I can find out which cyanobacteria are targeted by this product.

JPC


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## jaypeecee (3 Oct 2019)

jaypeecee said:


> I've also contacted the makers of _Blue Exit_ (Easy-Life) in the hope that I can find out which cyanobacteria are targeted by this product.



Hi Folks,

This is the reply that I received from Easy-Life:

"Actually all cyano that can arise in freshwater tanks, can be removed with Blue Exit. Certainly this ‘most common’ cyano Microcystis aeruginosa".

JPC


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