BBA transfer?

[angelah]

A quick question here.
When I move I was planning to get a media squeeze from my son's well established 3.5 foot tank as this would help the rate at which 'friendly' bacteria would begin to establish in the two filters of my 4 footer.
A good idea, but he has BBA in the tank, quite a lot of it, so I am wondering if that might transfer over in the mulm?

Anybody have any experience of such a thing or have heard about it please?

I don't really want to start with BBA when it wasn't there is the first place, do I... lol.

Angela

 

[chrisfraser05]

looks like I'm jumping into all your threads today!

I doubt that BBA can spread through filter media but I planted a handfull of stems from my old tank into my new one, thought I'd got the ones without BBA on them... It's spread like wildfire

Personally I wouldn't risk it just incase.

 

[ceg4048]

BBA spores and all other algae spores eventually are in every tank in every country in the world. There is no way to avoid this other than to keep your tank in a computer chip clean room. It is therefore not relevant. Algae are not a viruses. They do not "infect" They are simply plants and their seed are just like pollen which travel on any vehicle by land or by sea, by wind or wave - or bottom of your shoe. So it doesn't matter if you transfer material from one tank to another. Even if you are careful, the airborne spores invade your home or come into the tank attached to fish or even other plants or wood. There is no practical way to avoid this. But this is not the problem and it's nothing to worry about in and of itself. So really BBA IS there in the first place. We are simply unaware of it's presence until we foul things up.

What causes the algal spores to bloom and to proliferate is poor health of the tank system due to excessive lighting, poor maintenance practices and poor general husbandry. When plant health in the tank deteriorate and when certain conditions are met the algae bloom in exactly the same way as fungal spores. For example, we have fungal spores in our home, but if the home is kept clean, warm and dry the fungal spores do not bloom. If conditions become cool and damp fungal spores will bloom into fungus on the walls, carpet or ceiling.

Therefore, if conditions in the tank are maintained such that they are friendly to plants and hostile to algae these spores will not bloom. BBA in particular will be sensitive to deteriorated plant health associated with excessive lighting and low or fluctuating CO2 levels. If these factors are controlled then it doesn't matter how many spores are transferred. They simply will not bloom.

These are fundamental principles which folks to this day still have yet to grasp. Algal blooms should always be linked to plant health. Therefore you are free to add anything you want to the tank without irrational fear. But potential problems begin just by adding water and light.

Cheers,

 

[Angus]

nice reply CEG exactly what i was thinking about the algal spores, but i just didnt know how to put it into words, there are lines of thinking now aswell that fungi are present in the living tissues of trees and shrubs for the life of the plant and only become active when the tree or shrub is vulnerable to a fungal attack. sounds exactly the same as algae in a planted tank.

 

[angelah]

Hi ceg,
And thanks for that quite long and thoughtful reply. Must have taken you ages!
So I will go ahead with the squeeze now I understand more about how algae operates.
That will help my tank cycle anyway and it will be heavily planted straight away and hopefully be run on a low-tech system.
But I shall watch it like a hawk, some people say I look like one lol.... so it should be too difficult.

Cheers peeps,

Angela