Algae - BBA+GSA - How To Remove/reduce/prevent

Of all the snails I have or have had in the past, nerites have never eaten dead fish. Shrimps, yes; apple snails, yes; ramshorn snails, yes. Nerites, no.

Green spot algae - I find a piece of stiff plastic with a nice straight edge does the trick. Old credits cards are best but those labels that come with plants at the garden centre are almost as good if you can stop them bending.


Which Seachem Flourish do you mean? There is a whole range of them. Seachem Flourish without anything else after is a plant fertiliser; Flourish Excel is the liquid carbon; and then there are Flourishes which contain single trace elements. Flourish Excel is the one that is supposed to kill BBA when overdosed but I am not happy with overdosing glutaraldehyde in my tanks. It can also be squirted directly on to the affected leaves while they are out of the water, which seems to me to be the better way to use it.

Cod, it's because of my shrimps and nerites that I don't like using glutaralgdehyde. I know how easy it is to kill nerites in particular. The pest snails would survive anything 

Sue, I have a nerite, RCS and Amano shrimp in the tank. They all appear happy and healthy. My RCS are breeding well and the others show no signs of I'll health. I do understand your reservations though.

The liquid carbon does wonders for plant growth and in tanks of 150l or less proves to be a very economical carbon source.

Just dosing at prescribed levels should reduce BBA in the tank and from personal experience I have seen no negative impact on livestock.

That is a bit on the soft side and the snail could suffer shell erosion. If you find that happening, you could try putting a cuttlefish bone in the tank. Once upon a time I had something called liquid calcium but it is so long ago I have no idea where I got from. it was made specifically for snails and came in a tiny bottle, not those big bottles on Ebay made for marine tanks. I have an idea it was from a long gone snail website where I got my first nerites......

In theory, there could be a pathogen or parasite in the shop water on the snail's shell. But it is an extremely small risk. You could quarantine the snail for a week - that would allow time for anything nasty to die off through lack of a fish host.




I have remembered!!! I know this isn't much use to you now, but just to prove I've not gone completely senile and can still manage to remember things, this is what I had
http://web.archive.org/web/20070616183752/http://www.snailshop.ashopcommerce.co.uk:80/p/306367/snailstrong-liquid-calcium-.html
I can't find anything similar around nowadays though 

Seachem Flourish contains just 0.14% calcium so it might not be enough for the snails. I got my bottle out of the freezer to check*.


But your plants would benefit from some fertliser. Your very soft water contains very few minerals so the plants quickly use up the few there are.
If they are planted in the substrate, root tabs would be the best way to go, but avoid the API ones as they have a reputation for disintegrating and messing up the water. But with plants that are attached to decor, they need liquid fertliser and Seachem Flourish contains almost all the trace elements plants need. It doesn't contain the macro elements nitrate, potassium and phosphate (the same NPK that gardeners talk about) as nitrate is made by the fish and the other two are in fish food.
With most fertilisers, the dose rate is for tanks stuffed full of plants, so reduce the amount you use according to how many plants you have. For example, I add half the recommended dose once every two weeks.



*
One tip I have picked up - liquid fertilisers go off after they are opened, and if you don't use much the bottle lasts ages. So the best thing to do is freeze it. I gave the bottle a good shake then poured it into a few small containers, then put all but the one I'm using in the freezer (including a bit in the bottom of the bottle it came in). The current pot is in the fridge.

Thanks, Sue - very helpful, with some very useful tips as well.

Dominika - thanks. I do have floating plants now, although they haven't done much at all for the BBA or GSA, and are possibly a cause for my lower plants failing to thrive through insufficient lighting. My nerite snail has done a great job of making the tank glass pristine but he hasn't ventured onto the sand or onto the decor or plants yet; I may have to get a smaller, horned nerite snail so that s/he can get to work on the BBA on the plant leaves!

This website doesn't appear to have been updated for a while. However, I used to find it the most helpful website for diagnosing and solving algae (and plant) problems.

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm

Another way to reduce co2 fluctuations, if you don't add extra (CO2), is to reduce the surface disturbance from your filter output. I think I dropped mine an inch or so below the water surface. And put an additional circulation pump at the other end of the tank. Because when I had an issue with BBA, it was where I'd pour new water into the tank, which was the furthest point from the filter. I thought I was helping improve water turnover there, but actually just creating extremes - perfect for algae!