I usually add fish, snails, or shrimp to balance my tank, but I’m not sure what eats this type of algae that's growing over everything. What fish or cleanup crew would help keep it in check? I've let the algae on the back glass grow to see if it like steals nutrients from it or something but to no avail. It’s a planted tank.
Thanks in advance 🙂
Posted by NaiveLengthiness9278
19 Comments
i have this problem, please tell me when you find out what to get!!
I got blackbeard algae. Fought it for months. Finally had to start over from scratch.
I tried Siamese algae eaters. I tried snails. I tried amano shrimp. I tried chemicals. That crap is impervious to everything.
sorry for the bad news. But that stuff sucks.
Nothing eats BBA. It has to be physically removed, water changes to lower water nutrients then reduce feeding/fertilizing and increase water flow.
Someone on another post said Molly’s would take care of it. Just search for blackboard algae.
Not much will, if anything. Manual removal and look into hydrogen peroxide treatment. Good luck.
A toothbrush and scrubbing will help. Nothing is going to eat that BBA – your tank excess nutrients and/or lighting spectrum are the cause.
Flourish excel helped me eradicate it in my tank. I took a pipette and squirted it directly on the algae. It started dying on contact
Florida flag fish eat BBA.
Even though many people seem to think chemicals does not work they are wrong. 2hr Aquarist makes something called ATP Fix (also ATP Fix Lite but that is a new product I have no experience with). That stuff is God’s gift to aquariums. Highly recommend it.
But you also clearly need to fix the problem that is causing the algea. Over feeding, dirty tank (clean under hardscape etc), or whatever is causing the excess nutrients. Also helps if you add floating plants or other fast growing plants.
Siamese algae eater. But I’d go with pulling as much out as possible and hitting the tank with a couple ml of hydrogen peroxide. Don’t bother saving too many of the leaves that are fuzzed over. Just keep the freshest shoots and trim the rest.
Nothing. This shit would survive nuclear war. Ime, your best option is to gently cut off and remove the effected leaves (just make sure you don’t cut off so much the plant can’t survive) while also reducing light and nutrients in the water column
Beard algae is hard to get rid of
My American flag killifish destroyed ALL my bba in one night
I never had BBA. But I have SAEs and they pretty much eat any algae that present in my tanks.
Just today, when I went to my lfs. I saw the tank that have SAE inside and saw they eating algae on java fern. And that algae is BBA.
I asked the owner if they really can eat that, apparently he never feed any pellets to the SAE he about to sell to make sure they learn how to eat algae well. He will take any plants that grow algae in his store and drop inside the tank, regardless of what type. He said these SAEs will even eat cynobacteria if theres no other algae to eat. Mine at one of my tank also eat cynobacteria and pretty much destroyed them, so I can relate. The owner also said, if the SAE start to taste pellets, it will not touch algae that much anymore. The owner started doing this because people that buy them after a month often complaining the SAE they bought dont wanna eat algae.
Blackbeard algae sucks.
My best luck has been a combo of taking plants and rocks and ornaments out, removing or cutting away obvious/egregious amount and spraying the rest with hydrogen peroxide, then returning them to the tank. This will weaken the BBA and turn it purple. Florida flag fish are your best bet to eat it, but even then, control your expectations….they don’t go to town ….they nibble and help beat it back.
It never goes away. The best you can do is help to control it.
Edited to add: Do the peroxide in conjunction with the flag fish — it’s too hard and chewy for them to do a ton on their own, so softening it with the peroxide helps the flag fish take care of it.
My amano shrimp do a good job of munching in BBA. You really should treat it with exel or hydrogen peroxide to kill it first. Otherwise the plant is too tough for most fish to nibble.
If your tank is large enough, I had luck with a Siamese Algae Eater. I had the beginnings of black beard algae growing in my tank and he took care of it within a few weeks. Keep in mind that my tank was just the beginning of an infestation so maybe that’s why.
This is a problem to avoid more than one to resolve. Spot treatments and removal are about your only bet. People with wild inconsistency claim certain fish take care of it. Sometimes they do but mostly they don’t.
Glad I saw this post, I thought I had diatoms growing on my plants but it looked similar to this but earlier stages. Thinning out the plant after seeing everyone’s posts.