What exactly causes BBA? Part 2 - Bacterial imbalance

[Guest]

1. Control of nutrient levels: Water changes and control of the dosage of fertilizers (as done in ADA system during the first two weeks, basically).

ADA no longer recommends this. They dose the necessary nutrients such as potassium and micronutrients to improve growth and plant health during the transition period.

 

[Manuel Arias]

ADA no longer recommends this. They dose the necessary nutrients such as potassium and micronutrients to improve growth and plant health during the transition period.

But I am quite sure you have to stick to water changes during the period and reduced amount of light, otherwise you get your algae, anyway.

 

[xim]

You can grow plants under sunlight without algae. Try a glass bowl with some soil to provide nutrients and lots of plants on the window sill or outside somewhere. It won't get algae in most cases. Don't dose nutrients in the water column though. Or setup two pots, one being dosed, the other not dosed and you'll see that green dust will soon coat the sides of the dosed one, perhaps other algae. I am not saying the problem is nutrients. I am saying the problem is nutrients in the water column, as they are easily salvaged by algae which doesn't have roots in the substrate and can't otherwise survive for long unless the water column is polluted on consistent basis.
Same in natural systems I think like rivers and lakes. As long the waters are not polluted, they don't get algae outbreaks. I don't think light is a trigger. It can be an accelerator when other factors are not in check but on it's own it won't trigger anything. Light is a an energy source, not the enemy.

An old photo of my outdoor hairgrass belem propagation box.
It was so bright that the surroundings were blown out.
Plain gravel, water column ferts + DIY CO2. And yep some GDA, but overall the plants were clean.

 

[AndyMcD]

I remember reading a post by someone (I think on TPT) who said that they got perpetual BBA for a long time and nothing he did got rid of it. Until he increased light intensity. Then all of a sudden, BBA disappeared from just that one change. Two possible reasons for this outcome: 1)increased light intensity improved plant health, or 2)increased light intensity increased O2 concentrations.

Agree with 1 & 2, but also ...

3) Too much dissolved CO2 would reduce the pH below 6, switching off autotrophic bacteria. Additional light may increase the CO2 demand from the plants, effectively increasing the pH.

 

[pepedopolous]

Are all autotrophic bacteria badly affected by low pH? My aquarium water is pH7.0 at equilibrium and I target pH5.8 adding CO2. I have a few tufts of BBA on hardscape but not bad at all really...

P

 

[AndyMcD]

Are all autotrophic bacteria badly affected by low pH? My aquarium water is pH7.0 at equilibrium and I target pH5.8 adding CO2. I have a few tufts of BBA on hardscape but not bad at all really...

Possibly not. There are a number of different types of autotrophic bacteria and populations may increase (slowly) to deal with lower pH environments.

However, please see attached paper for relative activity of Nitrobacter (which seems to be quoted most frequently as the main autotrophic, nitrifying bacteria) as a function of pH.


http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ce432/blackburne-wer-2007.pdf

 

[AndyMcD]

Well... what about having too much Co2 compared with the amount of light? Can "too much Co2" being the problem?

Fablau, apologies for misunderstanding regarding your comment concerning more light (and proportionally more CO2).

Too much CO2 may cause an issue with pH drop (see previous post).

Algae and plants use CO2 as their carbon source. Therefore, you might expect more growth of algae with increasing CO2, but the opposite is frequently reported. Why would this be? My suggestion is that you look for an organism that is better able to compete if CO2 (or oxygen) reduces - heterotrophic bacteria.

 

[pepedopolous]

But in our planted freshwater aquariums, is this valid? The sheer number of hobbyists with successful aquariums and low pH during CO2 addition doesn't make sense... Unless Nitrobacter adapts in these environments or is in fact unimportant with other bacteria taking over nitrogen fixing...

P

 

[Guest]

Archaea also fix nitrogen so it isn't just bacteria.

 

[Manuel Arias]

But in our planted freshwater aquariums, is this valid? The sheer number of hobbyists with successful aquariums and low pH during CO2 addition doesn't make sense... Unless Nitrobacter adapts in these environments or is in fact unimportant with other bacteria taking over nitrogen fixing...

They are not incompatible factors, for a reason we should consider: The big numbers of the bacteria population, and one of the reasons why planted aquariums have considerable more media than the traditional fish tank. Even if the efficiency of a single bacteria is reduced significantly because of the pH stress, their numbers allow the to keep coping with the ammonia levels to become them into nitrites and after in nitrates. That is the simplest explanation that brings together both aspects of the problem and then, there is no paradox about it.

Algae and plants use CO2 as their carbon source. Therefore, you might expect more growth of algae with increasing CO2, but the opposite is frequently reported

With good reasons. Otherwise the world would be dominated by bacteria and multicellular organisms never would have been thriving in the Earth! 😉 The advantage of plants is how competent are using the resources. Bacteria, unicelullar and simple organismes usually have a faster response to stimulus in the environment they live. This means that their populations grow much faster when is possible. However, microorganisms/simple organism face more difficulties when there is a lack of nutrients/food available, and the populations tend to die also quick once there are no resources. By adding CO2, we are feeding also the algae, yes, but we are also allowing the plants to have an intake of the nutrients that the algae are using. As the consume of nutrients grow by the plants, there is less available for the algae, so their populations are forced to be reduced. That is why some methods like ADA is using play by limiting growing by a given factor, so once is depleted, algae cannot thrive. Note that algae are composed by a single type of cell in all their body and they lack totally of the complex structures of the vascular plants we usually employ. That complexity ensures survival when the conditions are harder.

 

[BruceF]

I think algae prefer a higher ph 7-9 or something. So a low ph is going to inhibit growth of algae to some extent. I'd love to find someone doing a study of alga and ph.

 

[AndyMcD]

But in our planted freshwater aquariums, is this valid? The sheer number of hobbyists with successful aquariums and low pH during CO2 addition doesn't make sense... Unless Nitrobacter adapts in these environments or is in fact unimportant with other bacteria taking over nitrogen fixing...

LowER pH during CO2 addition, but many have added limestone (Seiryu or Ryouh for example) or may begin with hard water.

Large numbers of people in the hobby suffer from BBA.

Ammonia has frequently been mentioned as a potential cause of BBA. Ammonia is required in the production of the compounds BBA needs to reproduce. Environmental changes inhibiting nitrifying bacteria functioning would explain an increase in ammonia.

 

[Yo-han]

I agree with a lot of observations from everyone, bus can anyone induce BBA by simple adding ammonia? I can't... I add ammoniumnitraat and urea daily. Never noticed any difference. Feeding more -> BBA. But is this due to ammonia, I don't believe it. Many commercial ferts got ammonia in it. Would they risk people getting BBA?

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[AndyMcD]

can anyone induce BBA by simple adding ammonia?

Ammonia frequently gets mentioned as a potential cause of BBA. Concentrations of ammonia would probably need to exceed a certain level to become an issue.

If you have a healthy population of autotrophic they will convert to nitrates.

The following diagram shows the metabolic, beginning with ammonia and urea (as part of the urea cycle) which leads to the production of spermidine and polyamines (e.g. Spermine) which BBA requires to reproduce.

Also, vitamin B12 is another contributing compound. Not just ammonia required to stimulate BBA growth.

 

[BruceF]

Results: The microalgae Chlorella vulgaris and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii exclusively utilize ammonium when both ammonium and nitrate are provided during growth on excess CO2. The resulting proton imbalance from preferential ammonium utilization causes the pH to drop too low to sustain further growth when ammonium was only 9% of the total nitrogen (0.027 gN-NH4 + /L). However, providing smaller amounts of ammonium sequentially in the presence of nitrate maintained the pH of a Chlorella vulgaris culture for improved growth on 0.3 gN/L to 5 gDW/L under 5% CO2 gas-phase supplementation. Bioreactor pH dynamics are shown to be predictable based on simple nitrogen assimilation as long as there is sufficient CO2 availability.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6750-13-39.pdf

 

[sciencefiction]

I agree with a lot of observations from everyone, bus can anyone induce BBA by simple adding ammonia? I can't... I add ammoniumnitraat and urea daily. Never noticed any difference. Feeding more -> BBA. But is this due to ammonia, I don't believe it. Many commercial ferts got ammonia in it. Would they risk people getting BBA?

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To answer your question in practical terms, I managed to trigger BBA recently enough. I've got a tank where I throw fry every so often. A few months back I kept a bunch in it that I fed daily with lots of frozen foods. I was spoiling the fry literally. This went on for about 2 months. I did daily water changes but the tank was getting dirtier and dirtier looking. At that stage it had some minor diatoms. I removed the fish out to a bigger tank, left a couple of fish only. But the tank was getting worse algae wise. The tank exploded in algae outbreaks. I had diatoms, cyano bacteria and BBA all in one. BBA was the last one appearing on the scene. It was very bad. Like a delayed reaction to all the organic build up over the previous two months. My crypt leaves were coated in 3 types of algae literally. It seems the cyano loved to eat on the diatoms that had previously covered the leaves and BBA was covering the edges at the same time.

To cut the long story short, it destroyed my plants but the algae outbreak ran its peak and then totally stalled. Right now it's back to normal, clean plants(they finally started regrowing) and clean glass. It has a new crew of fish but they are adults so they don't get fed that often.

I think when you add ammonia, it's easily consumed by the plants directly. But when you add organics, that are first due a conversion process by all sorts of bacteria and organisms that start multiplying to cope with the load, affecting water chemistry in the process, oxygen levels, etc...., the picture becomes more messy, i.e algae

 

[AndyMcD]

I think when you add ammonia, it's easily consumed by the plants directly. But when you add organics, that are first due a conversion process by all sorts of bacteria and organisms that start multiplying to cope with the load, affecting water chemistry in the process, oxygen levels, etc...., the picture becomes more messy, i.e algae

Thanks Sciencefiction. This makes sense to me.

To me this highlights a fundamental difference between algae (some types) and plants.

The algae are able to benefit indirectly from additional organics being added to the aquarium (the frozen food). There is a delayed reaction while the initial form of the organics is converted to something different which the algae can use to its advantage. Ammonia with other organic compounds are likely to be involved.

Stop the source of organics and eventually this intermediate process will stop and this additional nutrient supply will end and the algae will fail.

The plants in the mean time have suffered. If the plants and algae were competing for exactly the same nutrients, wouldn't the plants have benefited too from this increase in nutrients? I can't find a reference to back this up, but haven't studies been done to show that algae have very low nutrient requirements. Some of these nutrient requirements are the same as plants (e.g. CO2 and phosphates) and some are not (e.g. Vitamin B12).

I even suspect BBA and Cyanobacteria would compete with each other for some of these non-plant benefitting nutrients.

This is why I don't buy into the argument that plants and algae are competing for exactly the same nutrients, that the plants will out compete and starve the algae. Sciencefiction's example shows that algae flourish in a different type of environment. Algae are dependant on a different set of nutrients.

I do agree that keeping your plants healthy helps to prevent algae outbreaks. I think the nitrifying bacteria and healthy plants thrive in a similar environment.

 

[AndyMcD]

Results: The microalgae Chlorella vulgaris and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii exclusively utilize ammonium when both ammonium and nitrate are provided during growth on excess CO2.

To me this says that two species of algae prefer to use ammonium ions (NH4+ -> NH3 + H+) rather than Nitrate, if there is an excess of CO2.

However, if the algae use too much of the Ammonia NH3, too many H+ ions are released, meaning the the pH will drop.

If the pH drops too low, growth of the algae stops.

I wonder if some of these H+ ions can re-combine with OH- ions on the surface of the bicarbonate photosynthesising, brightly lit anubias leaves, allowing the algae to keep preferentially using ammonium?

I read somewhere that Nitrogen is important in protein production, that algae have a higher proportion of protein than plants. An important protein to BBA like algae are phycobiliproteins, which perform a similar function to chlorophyll, but absorb at different wavelengths.

 

[BruceF]

More and more people are doing research into algae as a potential carbon sink and or a potential fuel and such. I keep hoping we can learn from this work. Still, I can find almost nothing about work being done on BBA.

 

[sciencefiction]

Further to Yo-Han's comment about adding ammonia. I want to mention that I used to cycle my tanks fishlessly years ago by adding ammonia, many times. I had plants at the same time and added ammonia to 2-3ppm at a time for 2-3-4 weeks to cycle a tank. I've never had an algae outbreak while doing so with light on 7-8hrs a day as normal. To be honest I never even knew at the time about ammonia causing algae outbreaks until I read it on forums, particularly here.

However, I am pretty certain that there's a correlation between diatoms, ammonia and organics the least. I've had it so many times when: I overfeed or add more fish to an established tank or stir the substrate or don't have enough filtration for the bioload to start with. Hence I am obsessed with filtration, even in a planted tank. The more filtration and oxygen I have, the better my fish( I don't care that much about plants)

There maybe something else behind my logic that I can't see as ammonia from a bottle doesn't create an algae bloom. Perhaps because I had plants at the same time. So I get where Yo-hun is coming from. But big bioload does lead to algae and does lead to BBA in particular from all algae types. I've never had any other problems with algae bar BBA, diatoms and only a few times cyano bacteria. I've had the occasional green spot and green dust, that's about it. And as I mentioned, it's always been related to overstocking, big bioload when I had algae in a tank so whoever tries to tell me it's not that causing it, I can't believe them. It becomes pretty obvious when you run multiple tanks and only the overfed/overstocked tank gets algae, whatever the type.

In the previous BBA thread I explained about my overstocked tank being the only one with BBA consistently for years. I reduced the bioload while trying to solve the issue and the BBA was almost completely gone. It was disappearing right in front of my eyes when I moved out 20 fish from the tank(platies) I took pictures of it to prove it. But the tank cracked so I couldn't continue the experiment and I was also adding more micro nutrients so I can't be certain.
It is worth saying that the ex BBA covered anubias which had recovered just about when the tank cracked, went to one of my other tanks and is yet to grow BBA on it. So it all depends on the conditions.