"simeseninjafish" wrote in message news:wbrqc.94$2z5.76@newsfe1-win...
Hi, can anyone tell me why I've got problems with blue green slime algae and
black hair algae?. the blue green algae's got so bad that after only three
days it has recovered eight square inch's of the gravel in my tank and has
grown back in every place and more on my plants!. I no that I have not been
over feeding or over stocked the tank with fish. the nitrite and ammonia
levels are at zero. the nitrate never gets higher than 5 mg/l and the
phosphate is around 0.25 mg/l. I guess that the
ph number is high and also the gh level because of the local water coming
from reservoirs on chalk/lime hills near my home, but I have not tested for
those. the tank is out of direct
sunlight and has the standard juwel lighting and reflectors that come with
there tanks. I've been thinking about replacing a few of the plants with the
fastest growing ones that I can find, but I think that unless there is a
treatment for sale in the UK "were antibiotics are not available" that will
kill it off completely it will just
start to cover the new plants, and I will be forced to remove all of them.

oh, and I change 25% of the water in my tank once a week, and I also clean
the gravel once a week with a power gravel cleaner. and my tapwater reads
zero for nitrite ammonia and nitrate and 0.25 mg/l of phosphate. thank you

Hardness above 3 GH(general)/KH(alkalinity) is good for plants, very
low PO4 and NO3 is generally not good, and test kits get pretty tough
to trust at these low levels for a few reasons.
doing regular weekly water changes will help a great deal in removing
the organics and these include NO3/PO4 bound forms also that your test
kits typically measure.
Plants cannot use these forms directly. The can use the forms like
from dosing KNO3, Fleet enemas/KH2PO4 etc.
These salts disassociate in water and form the NO3,PO4,K in inorganic
and plant available form.

As far as treating, BGA, the blyue green alage, is very easy to treat
and kill, WITHOUT antibiotics, search Tom Barr, Blackout and BGA/Cyano
bacteria on the Aquatic plants digest. Or here, I'm sure I've said it
a few times on most every board.
Takes 3 days and is 100% effective and cost= free.
Not sure why anyone would ever argue with "FREE".
The Tropical Fish Center Board has more UK based help which you might
more to your liking and I've posted this stuff there.
Also you can find the KNO3 and other products locally in the UK that
will ship to you.This will greatly improve the plant health and reduce
the algae.

For BBA, the brush algae, it's almost always associated with poor CO2
levels in planted tanks, you want 20-30ppm of CO2, not just part of
the day, the entire day.

Regards,
Tom Barr