How to get rid of Black Beard Algae (BBA)

      When Black Beard Algae first appeared in my tank, I had no idea of the destruction it would cause. It's brutal algae!

      For many years my tank was under a window, so I never had need of a light as the plants got everything they needed from the sun. With lots of plants, the aquarium had a nice little eco system going, I never had any problems with algae as the bristle nose catfish constantly cleaned the tank for me.



      Then I moved house and in the new place there wasn't a window where I wanted to put my tank, so I bought a very awesome yet quite expensive full spectrum lcd light. Wow, vibrant colours! Much light! Very cool! I was stoked with the new light. Then things started happening.... a small black algae starting growing on the edge of the leaves. At first, I just thought the bristle nose were getting lazy, but, it turned out to be something far more ominous! 
      In just 3 weeks, it was growing on EVERYTHING! Why? What was this black filth!!! Where did it come from??? Answer, in my case, too much light!!! I ran my light on 100% because i had a lot of plants, turns out the CO2 levels went a-wall. When i looked online on how to get rid of it, the advice was CHEMICALS and FULL TANK STRIP DOWN DETOX! 
      I didn't want to do that. The algae wasn't affecting the fish, so I didn't want to put them all in buckets and do some big chem-soak of the rocks and all that stuff. So, I picked up a pair of scissors and became ruthless.
      All the cheap plants it was growing on - they went straight in the bin. I removed all my driftwood and cut off every leaf the algae was on. It wasn't fun. Some of those plants were years old and after cutting them, they looked naked. Sad times. I then removed everything else the algae was growing on. Heaters, ornaments, all straight to the bin.
      So, to look in the tank, i now saw no BBA. The next step was a 70% water change. Replace mesh in filter and swap the carbon for 'activated carbon'. After that, i did a 10% water change daily as well as replacing the carbon. The carbon was only $10 so i wasn't worried about smashing through it. I also turned the light level down to 25%. 
      I inspected the tank daily. The BBA started to form on a few leaves and snip-snip, they
came straight out. After two weeks, there was no sign of it trying to reform. And what a relief that was!!!
     So, with the BBA defeated, i repopulated the plant forests, and the tank went back to normal, happy days (^_^!!) 4 months later, still no sign of the pirate devil!

      If you want to get rid of BBA with no chemicals, try my method. But, it wasn't cheap replacing everything. So be warned! Also, you need to have keen eyes to spot ALL the BBA, even tiny black dots had red flags alarms going for me. In the end, no chems, no fish deaths.

      Good luck (^_^!!!)