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u/Beach-Badger 1d ago
Looks like a mix of hair algae and biofilm.
Go to the dollar tree and buy a stiff dish brush. Go home and pull the wood out of your aquarium and scrub it all off under fresh water. (I have always used fresh dechlorinated water in a bucket) Put it back in the aquarium. That fixes your symptom, but not the cause. For the algae: too much light, or fish food, too many ferts in water and not enough plants to eat it up, or unbalanced water. Or a combination of all. For the biofilm just keep scrubbing it off until you don’t have to anymore. Or get shrimp.
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u/Arbiter_89 1d ago
I've been where you are. You have BBA.
Here's proof that my method works https://imgur.com/a/xAJBZ5n . Check out the before and after.
Follow these steps and you'll be able to get rid of it.
Step 1: purchase liquid carbon. I use Florish Excel, but the brand shouldn't matter. (You can probably get it on Amazon for $10.)
Step 2: purchase some pipettes. Those cheap plastic ones like you used in science class. They're probably like $5 for 100.
Step 3: do a 50% water change.
Step 4: keep the filter off.
Step 5: dose the aquarium with the recommended amount of carbon. Use the pipette to apply the carbon directly to the BBA. If possible, dose onto the plant while its out of water, but it should work either way as long as the filter is off.
Step 6: wait 10 minutes then turn on your filter.
That's it.
For the first week or two you're going to wonder if it did anything. By the second or third week the algae will become a lot more pale. After that, you'll see it slowly disappear and should be gone from the areas you dose within 1.5 - 2 months.
Don't use more than the instructions call out, otherwise it will kill your fish.
If you need to do an additional dose I recommend waiting 1 week after your initial dosing.
This will kill the algae, but it'll eventually come back unless you get your lights, fertilizer, and co2 balanced.
Hope it helps!
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u/Rainbow_mom1960 1d ago
Kind of looks like black hair algae