I had this disturbing looking brush algae on my Anubias nana which has been
thriving quite nicely (a surprise since it's been known as a slow growing
plant). I have introduced some algae-eating shrimps and SAE. The
introduction of 3 Ottos have proved to work wonderfully as they had done a
bang up job on my tank glass surfaces in less than 3 days! But nobody
touches the brush algae. The shrimps are useless sideshows and the SAE is
polishing algae-less glass surfaces. Now my Anubias looks like a creature
from a kinky David Cronenberg film. I have physically removed some of "the
infected" leaves but there are still some on others. LFS guy told me it is
triggered by sudden intro of CO2 and too much light for too long. Is
3-watt/gallon for 12 hours too much & enough to start a brush invasion?

Any other ideas folks?
Thanks.

alex crouvier wrote:

I had this disturbing looking brush algae on my Anubias nana which has been
thriving quite nicely (a surprise since it's been known as a slow growing
plant). I have introduced some algae-eating shrimps and SAE. The
introduction of 3 Ottos have proved to work wonderfully as they had done a
bang up job on my tank glass surfaces in less than 3 days! But nobody
touches the brush algae. The shrimps are useless sideshows and the SAE is
polishing algae-less glass surfaces.

I have one particular Anubias leaf, the stem of which used to have beautiful,
uniform growth of black brush algae from the base all the way up to the leaf.
It actually looked pretty cool. Unfortunately, all the other black brush algae
(BBA) in the tank looked like crap. I finally got rid of most of it when I
started rigorously monitoring my nutrients, in particular Nitrates.

I will be posting a detailed article soon. In my specific case, raising average
Nitrates from below 5ppm to closer to 10 ppm has caused the long-thriving black
brush algae invasion to withdraw. In my tank, this requires dosing 0.5ppm
Nitrates per day.

That one stem of anubias I mentioned has lost approximately 70% of its formerly
luxurious algae coat, and now looks pathetically threadbare. Many ther patches
of BBA are completely gone. I'm postponing posting the detailed article until
that one Anubias stem is clean, if for no other reason than the photos will
tell the story so well!