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Morgan,

BBA, which can be green, will grow as you described, in small tufts that are hard to remove from a solid structure.

What helps to get rid of it is Flourish Excel, but not permanently as it will come back if conditions for it are right.

Do you usually clean your glass when doing tank maintenance?

From my experience and the words of others, it appears that BBA is caused by high water flow. Is it the worst for you in areas where the filter splashes the water onto the glass, or a narrower area between plants/scape and glass? That would make sense to me.

Hope this helps,

Ingo

PS: Remember, guessing someones true issues is harder than seeing a picture of it. No shame in that, actually there is guts in it.

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Thanks ingo, The water that is hiting the glass is right in the front - it doesn't have anything blocking it so it must be the high flow.

What is the cost in your area of the smallest container of excel? So to help prevent it in the future, should I turn both my filters on low?

And I guess I will post a picture after all:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m99/MoFish_11525/6-8.jpg
the algea is the stuff at the very top. From this angle, it doesn't look like beard algea but from the top angle (which is the one that doesn't focus) it looks a lot like it.


~Morgan~

Morgan,

I forgot what your filters are, if you ever told me (us), sorry about that.

I assume both are HOBs, right? With HOBs you would like to have a turn-around of somewhere between 7 to 10 times the tank volume total. The worse your tank conditions are (in a sense of large fish load or lots of decaying matter) the higher you want that turn around.

Given that your tank has a low fish load, and all plants look healthy (although I of course think you need way more plants to help the tank settle), I think you could go on the low end of that turn around.

Excel is not cheap, so you may get away with just cleaning that area of the glass with an algae pad during all water changes. Excel for sure would help, but I always buy the 2 liter bottle from Big Als.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club