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Hi everyone,

I'm having a blue green algae (cyanobacteria) plague in my 4ft 55Gal at the moment.
It's literally diving me insane.
Newly bought Saratoga, yet can not enjoy his beauty because of tedious blue green algae.

Parameters: 55Gal, 28degrees C, Ammonia 0ppm, Nitrite 0ppm, Nitrate 0ppm, pH: 7.2, 2x36 Watt fluro 6500K 10 hours daily timer, no plants, white gravel.

Filtration: 1x Eheim 2215 with EheimMechan, Corse Foam, EheimSubstrate, Seachem Matrix, EheimFineFoam, Seachem Phosphatesorb
1x 8 watt UV

Water change twice a week on tuesdays and saturdays 10% on tuesday 20% on saturday.

Only a 20cm long Saratoga Jardini in the tank.


Current procedures:

Turned off light completely.
Cleaned as much blue green algae by hand possibly.
Added a 1200lph power head for extra circulation
Added a air stone for extra oxygen.
Added some water from my other tank with nitrate, brought nitrate level to 10ppm from 0ppm

I do not wish to use and medication, not worth risking the nitrifying bacteria and ending up having high ammonia killing my fihs.

Please tell me if there is anything that I am doing wrong or some thing else I should do to completely rid the BGA.
And what should i do to keep it from coming back?


Thanks for help,
James

I think that cleaning the tank and then adding a lot of low light plants may help. I actually used the cheap floating plant to out compeate the tank for the nutreants that the algae wanted. Hornwort is also very good at this. Also you can lower your hours on your lighting. Other then that I really dont know what I can say other then get an algae eater like a bristlenose. But remember also that some BGA will emit lethal gasses that can kill your fish in a heart beat so you really need to keep the BGA under wraps.

Treat the tank with Erythromycin and the BGA will die and all you'll have left to do is to siphon it out. It works like magic. It won't kill any of your nitrifying bacteria.

I'm assuming that you're posting here because your tank is at least somewhat planted--if that's the case, then why do you have 0 ppms of nitrate? Might want to check that out before you go about dosing to ensure that you won't have another BGA explosion.

Where can you find Erythromycin? I've never seen it before.

James

Hi,
The medication that you are recommending is a
wide spectrum antibiotic and will damage or kill off
the bacteria colonies that manage the Nitrogen Cycle
in the aquarium and filter.

Here is just one of many sites that mention the danger
to the "good bacteria" of using any algaecide.
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/maintenance1/p/algaebluegreen.htm

The medication can be purchased at nearly any LFS or,
you can go to your physician and explain what you have in
the tank, and perhaps show him/her some literature showing
why you would want a prescription and then buy it from your
nearby pharmacy. It is far less expensive from the
pharmacy. I believe in some states you can purchase a
few capsules from the pharmacy without a prescription.

When using the medication from the pharmacy, pull apart
the capsule and dump the powder into a glass of aquarium
water and stir it up, then dump it into the tank.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

I have used Erythromycin to kill BGA while monitoring Ammonia/Nitrite levels closely for the whole duration of the treatment and never detected either and I am not the only one who have reported this. But why take my word for it? Get yourself a bottle of Prime or AmQuel on hand and detoxify Ammonia and/or Nitrite in case they do rise. I think it's something that everyone should have anyway, just in case.

As far as I know Maracin 1 is Erythromycin but you should double check that as we don't get it in Europe.

As far as I know Maracin 1 is Erythromycin but you should double check that as we don't get it in Europe

Yup, that's the right one. I treated 2 tanks in the past with Maracyn (not the II, it has to be the just Maracyn) with half the recommended dosage (as it is dosed for fish desease and not BGA) for about 4 to 5 days.

Of course, you could always try a blackout first, for maybe 5 days.

Ingo

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