Issues with BBA! where am I going wrong??

[Easternlethal]

Anubias does not really care for bright lighting so it is always going to be a challenge to keep them algae free under strong lighting.,

From the pic posted, it seems you don't have a lot of light demanding plants and the Anubias is healthy so I bet reducing light is the permanent solution.

I have similar issue because I am growing anubias and buces next to Toninas which like more light because I just like the look of them together and I'm constantly battling them.

So my regime is:
1. light under 30 par for anubias (medium levels) - or whatever minimum your plants need.
2. keep things super clean by vacuuming crud, lots of water changes, cleaning filters, removing infected leaves (very painful to do for slow growing buces because they take ages to grow back). From the pic I think your tank needs a bit more cleaning.
3. have flow as high as your fish and plants can tolerate (crude but usually effective way to deal with flow problems)
4. co2 as high as the fish can tolerate
5. if you have high fish levels (which I do too), use fish food that is low in yeast, wheat, gluten, soya (no nutritional value) and high in protein like shrimp and vitamins like spirulina. This reduces pooping.

In my book light is actually hardest to control because co2, flow etc are easy to increase and you only need to watch the fish.

But too much light and fast growing plants dominate, you're trimming all the time, co2 levels fluctuate and you get algae. Too little and plants get stringy and lose their colour. So I feel that with lighting one needs to know a lot more about how plants behave and grow with each other - which is the point of scaping I guess. Ha!

 

[Planted Bows]

Well since these shots this is what's changed.

I have added alot of fast growing stem plants and started to dose ei method.

My lights are now on 60% and on for 6hours a day. My co2 on 2 hours before lights on/off. I also have a power head creating alot of flow so there is no dead spots whatsoever which also causes a nice ripple for degassing. I have this on a timer so it comes on 2 hours before lights off so I can try help the situation of gassing the fish etc. I will be playing around with all of this to try get the right balance.

These pictures are about a month old

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[AverageWhiteBloke]

Nice one mate. If that's one of them chihros light things from what I understand they are quite bright. Turning it down and all the above you have mentioned will get things back in your favour. In my experience BBA doesn't go away on its own, chop off leaves it on just leaving new growth and spray the rest with a bit of liquid carbon and you'll get on top of it.
I only spray it in certain areas these days on water change day but until you get on top of it so would dose daily buy on infected areas rather than just drop it in the tank.

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[Easternlethal]

Well since these shots this is what's changed.

I have added alot of fast growing stem plants and started to dose ei method.

Looks about right but just a word caution about fast growers - they usually love light and respond even better so they may flourish, take over your tank and you will be tempted to crank up the light because they respond so well, but you still have bba on the anubias. Alternatively they will get stringy, lose leaves, your anubias still have bba and you feel like a failure. So my lesson is adding more plants just introduces variables and makes it harder to fix the original problem.

From a scaper's perspective, I would try placing the anubias at the baseline of the rock and push them to the foreground a bit and place the light colored plants with smaller brighter leaves in the background maybe with a slight elevation, then I would angle the light towards the back or move the fixture closer to the back. This will create more shade in the front, more light at the back and more depth to the tank (I learnt this originally from George Farmer).

Good luck tho!

 

[Planted Bows]

Nice one mate. If that's one of them chihros light things from what I understand they are quite bright. Turning it down and all the above you have mentioned will get things back in your favour. In my experience BBA doesn't go away on its own, chop off leaves it on just leaving new growth and spray the rest with a bit of liquid carbon and you'll get on top of it.
I only spray it in certain areas these days on water change day but until you get on top of it so would dose daily buy on infected areas rather than just drop it in the tank.

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Yeah it is bud, I has 7 settings on the dimmer so turned it down 3/4 times. I have cut the affected leaves off and since having the faster growers the BBA has been back as bad since.

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[Planted Bows]

Just getting that balance is a nightmare lol

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[Zeus.]

Co2 is a fine line we are walking mate. I've probably wrongly used the word optimum when I shouldn't have. Different tanks need different amounts so I just used 30ppm. Nothing to say that my tank actually needs that much, the graph could actually be saying my co2 levels were fine for my setup at lights on but a bit later it was a bit too much for my fish. Lights actually come on at five so although they're not at their highest setting I presume co2 content is adequate by then. The graph also doesn't really illustrate the PH numbers either, there is not much between the numbers on the half hour tests.

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Yes have to agree about the fine line, but I'm comfortable where I am at ATM and the Algea was reducing before I went on holiday and the carpet picking up. I have got C Helferi at the surface of the water and a carpet 50cm deep in a 500l tank, so I've not made it easy for myself either. But feel I am getting there.

 

[Chubbs]

Introduce floating plants, these will shade light reduce excess nutrients and may help prevent excessive amounts of CO2 loss at the water surface, the look pretty, some even flower.

Alternatively get a Tiger Lilly (can’t spell it’s geeky name), allow to grow to the surface and it will reward you with a stunning flower. It’s fast growing, provides shade and you can control it more so than floating plants and won’t be a nightmare when you cut your carpet and need to net the off cuts out from the surface.

I have two in my tank, one I’ve hidden in the background and allowed to grow to the surface, the other is kept in the mid ground and I cut it back keeping its growth submerged, compact and bushy.

Not suggesting this will solve you’re issues, but it might help, certainly one of the more controllable fast growing alternatives to stems.