Bryopsis Cure: My Battle With Bryopsis Using Fluconazole

Susan Edwards · Aug 4, 2017

@Carlos Danger As I'm on day 12 as of an hour ago, I'll see if I can go the 14. Have a bit of cyano also on a coral. Was going to do a wc, dose for cyano, wc, then retreat if not all gone. Skimmer back on line, very dry skimming with cup in place. Phos bottomed out so been dosing. Sheesh, ya need it down and it comes down and then you gotta add... No3 ranging from 5-20. It's come down so tank going through some changes as the bryopsis goes bye-bye. I sure don't want to trade one bad case for another! I'm also stopping weaning off dosing of vibrant and nopox

Carlos Danger · Aug 4, 2017

Susan Edwards said:
@Carlos Danger As I'm on day 12 as of an hour ago, I'll see if I can go the 14. Have a bit of cyano also on a coral. Was going to do a wc, dose for cyano, wc, then retreat if not all gone. Skimmer back on line, very dry skimming with cup in place. Phos bottomed out so been dosing. Sheesh, ya need it down and it comes down and then you gotta add... No3 ranging from 5-20. It's come down so tank going through some changes as the bryopsis goes bye-bye. I sure don't want to trade one bad case for another! I'm also stopping weaning off dosing of vibrant and nopox

Very nice! Its great to hear that your being very diligent about it while testing, monitoring, and making any changes necessary. The best part about it is not seeing any unsightly bryopsis anymore. Keep up the good work.

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

Well I took the leap!! I just kept telling myself after contemplating my options. I could rip out 250 pounds of live rock and treat and start all over again. Most of it is held together with rods. Its not just that but most of its encrusted too with Monti Cap, Denae, etc. I pulled out most of my expensive fish and put them in my 90 gallon. It seemed like that in itself was a challenge. Here's a picture of my tank before.

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

Oops! Second picture is of my 120 and not my 263 gallon. It doesn't have a problem with algae. I just caught that now after I downloaded these pictures. I don't want people to think, " Whats this guy doing, he doesn't even have any Bryopsis in his tank." I also notated it on top of page 210.

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

Well if this is where people are documenting their experience then I'll keep you posted. I have a 263 gallon rimless with a 100 gallon sump and dosed 4800 mg. I accounted for rock and displacement by subtracting roughly 15-20%. As notated in earlier posts I took a syringe and applied that with the mixture beforehand on the significant patches that are throughout the tank. I'll wait 1 1/2 hours before turning on the return pump and starting the circulation throughout the tank. Thats the game plan as I sit here and observe.

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

30 minutes in and the first thing I notice is one of my serpent stars have made themselves known and looks to be slightly irritated. I only say that because he's crawled out from his rock and is now on top of some of my zoas. He's definitely moving around. ;Nailbiting
;Nailbiting I'll try and document the first hour before I go to bed and post it here before I turn on my return pump.

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

I am noticing that my pistol shrimp is firing off and snapping as I didn't even know he was still in there. Its great to know he's still in there but don't know what the snapping in succession means.

I'm not sure I'm going to keep my return off for the entire 2 hours. ;Nailbiting I think maybe I'll shoot for 1 hour. The tank got cloudy initially for about 15 minutes but has cleared up completely. Doesn't look cloudy at 50 minutes in.

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

It should be mentioned that I am running a UNLS and currently am running a FULL Zeovit system. I'm not positive but I believe one other person had suggested that they were doing so about 50 pages back, not positive on that though.

I waited approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes before turning on my return. The only things I noticed thus far is what I mentioned previously about the pistol shrimp and serpent star. I wasn't even aware that I had a pistol shrimp still. Hopefully he makes it through the chemical bomb treatment, lol!! I'll try to post every couple days and keep everyone updated. I pretty much have everything under the sun in my tank including maxima clams, linkia star fish, every invert you can think of, SPS, a couple softies, LPS, macro algae in the refugium and even a couple sea horses.

I feel bad detailing the list of livestock and feel rather guilty for doing this for experimentation purposes. Im typically not an early adopter when it comes to anything on the product lifeline. I've been waiting for the OLED tv's to come down in price for goodness sakes. At least Costco carries them now.

Susan Edwards · Aug 5, 2017

@Carlos Danger I didn't turn my returns off, just took the skimmer off line for 9 days. You can also start your own thread in this section of the forum to document your progress. That's what I did. I posted here every few days and posted in my thread daily. Not doing today. I figured I'd jump from day 11 to day 13. going to hit tank with a brush where I can reach this weekend and see how much falls off. Bet there will still be some left. Or else gha. If the cyano isn't any worse, I might jump in with the flucon round 2 and then do a chemi clean if needed. got one tiny coral covered. Mostly on one rock.

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

Susan Edwards said:
@Carlos Danger I didn't turn my returns off, just took the skimmer off line for 9 days. You can also start your own thread in this section of the forum to document your progress. That's what I did. I posted here every few days and posted in my thread daily. Not doing today. I figured I'd jump from day 11 to day 13. going to hit tank with a brush where I can reach this weekend and see how much falls off. Bet there will still be some left. Or else gha. If the cyano isn't any worse, I might jump in with the flucon round 2 and then do a chemi clean if needed. got one tiny coral covered. Mostly on one rock.

Thanks for the heads up Susan. I started one now. If anything significant happens, I'll post it here. Hang in there. It sounds like your in the home stretch. Good luck!

mcarroll · Aug 5, 2017

Carlos Danger said:
I started one now.

Link!

Carlos Danger · Aug 5, 2017

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bryopsis-fluconazole-carlos-dangers-journey-to-paradise.318506/
I don't want to clog up the main thread so I'll post most of it here.
Thanks

Susan Edwards · Aug 6, 2017

Question: Today is day 14 for me. Will upload pics later. I still have some stubborn tuffs so will have to redose. But I have cyano, some is the typical red, but I'm thinking some of the stuff on the sand bed is also cyano, just brownish. Can I just dose chemi clean today, and do a water change in 48 hours and leave the flucon in? It's not like I can put carbon in to take the flucon out as I can't run carbon with the chemiclean either.

My p0 4 today was .02 and that's with dosing phos. Nitrates still at 20-40. 40 today. Even with no fish, I have coral I try to feed. And no fish to eat what drifts into the water column.

If I have to i'll wc change tomorrow, dose chemi, wc after and redose. If I can do chemi right away, it gives my tank another couple days of the flucon already in it.

Susan Edwards · Aug 6, 2017

Okay, official day 14. I'm amazed at the results. Most of it is gone. There are a few spots left here and there so I'm going to retreat and also dose the display refugium. What I have now is all this brown stringy stuff on sand bed. I'm thinking cyano, as I do have some cyano reddish in color on one rock. So I'm going to do a round of chemi clean.

Still waiting to see what folk say about whether I can start that tonight before a water change--let the flucon, whatever is left, be as I won't be adding any carbon--and then just do a water change after the chemi clean and re-treat as I don't want the algae, whatever is left to get a foot in the door again.

P04 now bottoms out unless I dose. Nitrates still high as I still feed tank with sun corals. will see where they fall after a water change.

Here are pics of day 14. If I get rid of the icky stringy stuff will be happy. The bottom 2 are of areas still infested. The paly rock is mostly clear and I can actually see my palys. The colony really got wiped out by the bryopsis. The other pic is the bottom right side.

Before I do dose 2 I'll brush as much off all areas as I can.

Carlos Danger · Aug 7, 2017

Update!! Its day 2 officially. I was thinking ok everything looks good until I checked the refugium. I've had a Lynkia starfish for 2 years and when I took a flashlight to look this is what i found. He's pretty good sized and as notated from day 1 the starfish definitely seemed irritated.
R.I.P big blue.
I also noticed some of this xinia looks to be affected as well. Im not a big fan of it anyways so I guess chalk it up to collateral damage. I'll keep noting any other examples as they come up, hopefully not anymore from this point forward.

FWIW if anyone wants to know about any other issues that arise I will be documenting it in my thread. I have everything you can think of in that system. I think the pictures are too graphic so I didn't attach it here.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/bryopsis-fluconazole-carlos-dangers-journey-to-paradise.318506/

I just think anyone who places starfish in their heart of hearts should seriously place their little starfish friends in another tank. I wonder as well if this affects the tiny little astria starfish in a similar manner. I should be so lucky. Its always the things "pests" you want gone that always stick around no matter what you put in your tank!

I'm not sure if other people have had lynkias so it would be interesting to see if they did, how did they fair during the treatment. It gets me thinking, I haven't seen my serpents since I dosed the tank?

So what do you think, coincidence or not? If it were me I'd remove them prior to treatment.

Susan Edwards · Aug 7, 2017

so sorry! Hope it wasn't the drugs but just happenstance...

mskohl · Aug 7, 2017

My first R2R post!

I'm in the middle of the raised magnesium via Tech M treatment and am not seeing much change. I've pulled snails for QT as I see them od'd on the sandbed. I think at this point, I may let my mag drop naturally and move on to the Fluconazole treatment.
Anyone know when Tech M stopped working? Did they change their product? I'm disappointed since I've purchased 7 gallons of that overpriced epson salts.... (I'm not salty or anything :-D)

I'm concerned that I'm quite terrible at estimating my rock displacement. I have a 300g tank, no idea how much weight or volume of rock, but hoping that my sump/fuge makes up for that. I've been dosing based on 300g of water volume and according to the reef chem calc, it's not too far off.

Susan Edwards · Aug 7, 2017

@mskohl From research I've done, yes, they changed their product and I've read raising mg no longer works. As for estimating, see if you can figure out how many lbs you purchased and estimate how much of it you used. Same with sand. My 66 gal estimates takes off approx 6lbs of rock and sand on the online calculator. This is the one I use http://reef.diesyst.com/volcalc/volcalc.html