I have a nice piece of driftwood that I love. However, it constantly grows bba like crazy. I can take it out and bleach it, and within a week, you wouldn't even know I had done anything with it. Any tips on 1. killing bba for good and 2. curing driftwood so it doesn't grow bba? It's not in bright light, in fact I now have it as far from the light as I can get it. Also I don't have bba issues in this tank now, it's only this driftwood that seems to grow it at this point.

My wood is clean even under high light with HQI MH's.
Some tanks have shrimp, others have none.

I do have good CO2 and rubber nose plecos.
There's nothing you can do to prevent algae from growing on wood in some curing routine.

It needs to be in tank.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Is it possible that the plecos are responsible for the algae free drift wood? My wood also attracts BBA, even though my drop checker stays yellow all day, I have very good water circulation, no big plant mass obstructions, and the light intensity is pretty low now. But, I have never had plecos. If Plecos are an answer I will certainly look into getting a couple.

The only place I've ever really had BBA is on the plastic parts of my filter system sitting in my tank. If I cleaned these parts more often than every 6 months, I probably wouldn't even get that.

I have only "mopani" type driftwood in my tanks. That stuff can sit out in the full light for months and has never had an inkling of algae. I have no plecos, so if I had to guess: My nerite snails spend quite a bit of time on my driftwood -- they may be doing the job for me. This is in both CO2 (high light) and non-CO2 (low light) tanks. I personally only need about 1 nerite per 10G or so, which is fairly light stocking. They will also keep your glass sparkling clear. I have a 10G non-CO2 that gets direct sun at times during the day. My glass was turning nice and green at one point, pretty much everywhere ... put a few nerites in there, and it was gone in a few days and stayed gone.

I also have Otos, which I believe get many algaes before you even see them -- they seem to get the algaes at the invisible "scum" stage. I haven't seen the Otos spend much time on the driftwood, however. I'm not sure, but these things (mine, at least) may be nocturnal -- they are staying healthy, but I almost never see them doing anything but hanging there.

Rubber nose plecos seem very good cleaners to me and can handle more abuse than shrimp, Otto cats etc.

They will not rid a BBA issue already there, but might help to prevent new BBa from attaching.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Tom,

I've always wanted to get one pleco for each of my tanks. Problem is, I have this vision of some 12" monster in my little tanks. What's a good (not-so-expensive, say under $20) species for smaller (20G to 29G) tanks? If there were a little 2" dwarf pleco, all of my tanks would have one already.