Loaches Online Forum

I'd like to move a planted driftwood piece to another tank but it is coming out of a tank that has recently had black brush algae. There is none on the driftwood that I can see but to be safe I was wondering if I could sterilize it with a dip of potassium permanganate. (I am hesitant to use bleach on it.) Does anyone know if that will kill BBA?

I don't know about that, but you could try using hydrogen peroxide to kill the black brush algae. Just put the wood in a clean bucket and pour the peroxide over it and let it sit for a bit. Keep basting the wood while its in the bucket so that it stays wet with the hydrogen peroxide. If there is any black brush algae on the wood, also it will turn it purple.

Yup, H2O2 will kill it, and a quick rinse is all it needs to go into the next tank. A trace amount of H2O2 is not a problem in aquariums.

Well I've recently spoke to one of takashi amano's reps and they have developed a similar technique. i just tried it in my tank a couple days ago and all good.
so what you do is get some 3% hydrogen peroxide and a one mil eye dropper and spot treat the algae directly in the aquarium. once the black brush is in your aquarium it use to be impossible to get rid of.
They recommended not exceeding 3ml of hydrogen peroxide per gallon. I played it safe and did not exceed 1ml per gallon. I only needed to use about 5ml total because i wanted to test this out.
all is good. Some important things to remember is, turn the filters off and do a 20% water change 30mins after the treatment. also important to not just dump it in the tank but rather to spot treat with the eye dropper.
after the water change it's fine to turn the filter/filters back on. the reason for this is to not blow the peroxide away while treating. you will know it's working because you will see the algae fizzing. the reason it is safe is because once the peroxide goes in to the water it creates a chemical reaction and turnes into oxygen. this is another reason why it is crucial to spot treat, so that it touches the algae before the chemical conversion. I have a fully planted community 70gal aquarium and all inhabitants are fine and the black brush algae is turning colours and dying. the shrimp are eating it away now.

Be careful with hydrogen peroxide. Some plants seem to hate the stuff. I used it on some swords and they sorta just died and melted away. The algae died too but it was pretty worthless. I use that algaecide by AP. I'm actually testing throwing the plants in a bucket of water out in the sun with it to see if I can save them without putting a bunch of that stuff in my tank. I don't want all my algae dead - just the black brush algae. I found soaking wood in the algaecide helps or letting it sit outside in the sun for a while. I've heard boiling it works (no good for plants though). If you do use the algaecide in the tank, watch your fish! Scaleless fish don't always react well to those.

If all else fails, water change, water change, water change and improving your fertilizers and keeping them on a regular schedule with a reduction of light gets it under control so it's not unbearable.

Nice post. I like it. Thanks for sharing these information. Keep it up.

I increased water changes,reduced light hours, scrape and siphon. BBA is not "impossible" to get rid of.