BBA on my HC Baby Tears

[Chubbs]

hello,

I trimmed back my HC Baby tears carpet the other day during a water change, and it’s been growing really well, slowly but well. Today however, there are now areas of BBA growing on it, as far as I can see it’s only my carpet that’s affected. I thought of leaving it for my SAE and shrimp to eat, but they don’t seem that interested in it.

I use preasurised CO2 on a timer and my tank temperature is around 27c, with a lot of surface agitation from the filter outlet. Now my thinking is that it’s the CO2 causing this, but I’m not sure where I’ve gone wrong.
For the last 6 months, my bubble counter has been useless because my CO2 has been so high, it’s just a continuous stream of bubbles that you just couldn’t count them. But plant growth has been good. This means that my CO2 isn’t being circulated properly? (Or at least my current setup isn’t optimised) I have my filter outlet pushing the bubbles down and across the carpet but I think because of my temperature and the surface agitation, the CO2 escapes so quickly.

Do I tone down the CO2, reduce the temp and reduce the surface agitation. Or do I go out and buy a circulation pump to place above the diffuser? Or is it something else?

I don’t know what my water parameters are, I haven’t tested it for ages and ages.

I dose 40ml Trace and 20ml Macro throughout alternate days via an auto pump.

Tank is 240ltrs with LED lights at 85% for 10 hours and a blue only period for another hour.

CO2 comes on about 4 hours before the lights and off 2 hours before they go off.


Thanks for your help.

 

[Edvet]

Try these first

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm
http://aquariumalgae.blogspot.nl/

 

[ceg4048]

Tank is 240ltrs with LED lights at 85% for 10 hours and a blue only period for another hour.

This is the root cause of your issues.

BBA is cause by poor implementation of CO2.

Do I tone down the CO2, reduce the temp and reduce the surface agitation.

High temperatures and high agitation are not good for CO2 retention. You';ll find that reducing this reduces your need for high injection rates. It's OK to have high agitation at night, but not during the day, because it defeats the purpose of injecting CO2. You only need a small to medium amount of surface agitation to break up any surface film and to enhance gas exchange at the surface.

CO2 comes on about 4 hours before the lights and off 2 hours before they go off.

It should never require 4 hours to saturate the water with sufficient CO2. One hour or two at most, prior to lights on should suffice.

Without more information and photos, it's very difficult to troubleshoot because there is a variety of mistakes the we make in our CO2 technique.

We don't know and can't see how you are distributing the flow from the filter.
We do not know the filtration specification.
We cannot see your diffuser method.

A 240L tank is large and large tanks have difficulty distributing flow. The larger the tank the more effort is required to obtain good and even CO2 distribution.
At this size, in tank diffusers are really a waste of money and of CO2.

It is also necessary to see data regarding the ph profile as a function of time in order to understand how the gas is behaving.

Can you take pH readings from gas on to lights out every hour or so and post the results? That would give us a reasonable clue.
Can you show us photos or sketches off your filter outlet arrangement and CO2 diffusion methods?

Cheers,

 

[Chubbs]

Already had the first link book marked, hence how i thought it was BBA the issue is that they all state fluctuating Co2 but my co2 has been the same for months and this has only just appeared after I trimmed it. Just seems odd.

PH is around 6.5/7 unfortunately I don’t have the capacity to take it every hour. My filter is an FX4 and the out flow is in the corner with the heads pointing down towards the opposit wall to generate a cycle.

I’ll reduce my surface agitation, unfortunately an in-line diffuser isn’t an option as my filter pipes are 22/25mm and I’m not confident enough with my DIY to be able to make one.

 

[Chubbs]

Thanks for the support, it was too much surface agitation. After reducing this, my plants quickly started to pearl and I’ve since been able to also tweak the location my Co2, to further optimise this.

The BBA must have been because from trimming those lower leaves weren’t getting much CO2.

 

[ceg4048]

Good to see improvements.
The single pH value does not tell us much. If at some point you are able to perform the measurements, it will show you how effective your CO2 method is.

Cheers,