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String algea, fungi, black beard algea, green dots ... you name it, I've had them and you'll have them too, sooner or later. Most websites will say it shows an imbalance in the tank: too much light, too much ferts, not enough surface agitation, too much co2 variation. Each algea will match with one of these imbalances, and you'll find the answer on how to deal with yours by looking them up on the web. That will allow you to draw a first diagnostic of the problem. If you let them grow (by not addressing the imbalance), your plants will suffer first by rotting (becoming brownish, unhealthy and adding nitrates in the tank as a result), you will suffer next as the tank doesn't look healthy anymore, and ultimately I guess your fish could die, if the imbalance is toxic to them somehow (too much nitrates). Algea rarely look good in the tank, though some people grow BBA on purpose, and they eventually look quite nice.
Remember you are dealing with natural cycles here. Any modification impacts the aquarium in a slow pace. There is no instant solution, and most of these steps will take at least 2 weeks before you start noticing improvement.
It helps to manually remove the algea, but most likely there will be some left after this long and tedious operation. Also the more you let your hands inside the aquarium, the more you will spread your hand's grease in it. Which is not always good. It could work at the beginning, if you manage to remove all the algea, but if the algea spawned because of some imbalance, you will need to proceed again soon. You need to address the imbalance in the tank first.
Do you feed your fishes several times a day ? try to switch to once every two days, maybe slowly at first if you were feeding 3 times a day for example, as to not shock the fish. As a generic rule, fish can endure one week without food, but that's extreme. Feeding once every two days until you solve the issue seems reasonable. This will help reduce the nitrates in the tank, improving water quality.
This one is critical. Do you have some natural light coming to the tank during the day, that maybe shed a dim but present light ? Try blocking sunlight by adding cardboard around the aquarium during the day, and see if it improves. I had some indirect sunlight from the nearby window, and adding a thick non transparent plastic sheet/cardboard on the side of the aquarium took care of the problem. When your aquarium is not lit by your lights, it should be as dark as possible. Even a dim sunlight will enable the algea to grow, but it isn't enough for your plants to actually consume anything => more algea.
If you were running lights for 8 or 10 hours, you could try maybe to reduce to 4 hours of full light/day. This will slow down the growth of both the plants and the algea, so maybe not ideal. It could help with the problem though, while you are attacking from other sides like sunlight, food and other methods.
Some websites recommend to shut down the lights entirely for one week or two. It is indeed very efficient at killing anything that grows in the tank, but it's a bit extreme. I tried it once, it helped for sure, but as soon as I resumed lightening, the problem came back (ie: I didn't address the imbalance in the tank, just shut it down altogether and hoped for the best ...). It's also stressful for the fish who need the night/day cycle.
Yes ! New healthy plants will eat a lot of nutrients from your water column, and will greatly help improve your water quality. You don't need to buy the expensive ones, just a big java fern with lots of leaves, or some anubias/bucephalendra that you don't plant (relying on their epiphyte ability to pump nutrients from the water directly). Floating plants might be a good choice as well. Prefer those with short roots if you still want to keep a good view of your aquarium. Be careful also to buy from a trusted source, as new plants could also carry with them spores/spawns of new algea. Be sure to stock up well, to fill the aquarium with as many plants as you can to start outgrowing the algea.
Some of them help, but remember that they also have their own preferences in terms of food. If you feed them pellets for example, they won't gnaw at the algea, prefering the more tasty artificial food. Hence reducing the feeding can help trigger the fish to eat algea (see above advice on Food). I had best of luck with:
Siamese Algea Eaters (be careful when you buy them, as they are easily mistaken with the Chinese Algea Eaters, which looks similar but is much more annoying and doesn't gnaw much on BBA)
Otocinclus like to stick on the glass of the tank (but the way they are captured in the wild is disgusting)
Malaysian Rabbit snails, who are very lively and like to wonder around the aquarium eating dead plant matter
Shrimps will also help, but I don't think they are a major algea guard
Bristlenose plecos are said to be quite efficient as well, but I never tried them
Remember the guy in my office bragging about his aquarium (see the intro part) ? He ended up giving some of his plants to me, as well as some of his shrimps. Well it turned out his plants carried Black Beard Algea. If you don't know this kind of algea, they are made of "hairs" tied to a spot at the bottom that has the awesome ability to developp on about just anything in the tank: glass, wood, plants, even snails shells ! Because they are made of hairs, and the base stick firmly on the surface it's attached to, they are very hard to remove by hand. I was in for a treat.
This of course happened two weeks before I left for a 3 weeks holidays. I didn't notice the BBA at first, but after one week I've noticed they started growing. Bah I just removed them by hand. Set my automatic feeder, dble checked everything and went off to holidays. When I returned, this is what my tank looked like:
The horror : all plants and decor were covered with BBA. Most of the plants were dying so I had to remove them. My dear plants !
Despite what the picture above shows, I didn't have any co2 injection when the bba conquered my tank. Everything was low tech, only some ferts from time to time and Seachem Excel once a week. But for this, I had to generate rapid growth and strong plants, so down the rabbit hole of co2 injection I went, and ended up with a DIY solution which I'm still running this day. I first tried to kill the lot of them BBA with lights blackout: since anyway most of my other plants died, I could try this. After four days, the BBA were still happily floating around, while my last java fern was starting to show unhappiness. So armed with my new CO2 injection, I bought new plants and documented myself on ferts. I opted for the Seachem suite of ferts, and still stick to them to this day. I tried to remove some of the bba from the dragon decor, but even this took me around one hour, and I didn't have the courage to do it on the drywood.
I hired 4 siamese algea eater. Yes the tank was overstocked, as they poop a lot, but I could rehome them to my office friend later, as he started to have the same problem as me with the BBA. I had to keep up on the water changes, and did so religiously every two weeks. One month later, with the addition of the diy co2 and new plants, here's how the tank looked:
It was starting to get better ! To help stop the growth of the BBA, I also reduced the light duration from ten hours to six. I was so happy to notice some of the uneaten BBA starting to brown, dying. They didn't die so easily, but after 2 more months of low lights, intense BBA grazing by the 4 Siamese Algea Eaters and overall better water quality thanks to the new plants, the BBA died off eventually. You can see on this last photo some remnants of the last BBA on the drywood:
All in all I think it took 4 months to get over the BBA. It was a hard fight, but I learned a lot (which is why I'm writing this now!). Also, I now know that my tank has BBA, so I wouldn't share water/fish/plants with other people or they may be infested as well. Once in a while I can see some BBA still popping, meaning I haven't yet fully mastered the balancing of all parameters.
Farewell, water cowboy.
Last edited on: 2021-04-02
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