Bryopsis will not go away

[gnattylite]

Hi everyone! First time posting on R2R. I’ve had my IM 25 gallon lagoon up for a little over a year. I’ve really, really been struggling with a bryopsis outbreak the last few months.

Apart from attempting manual removal, and spot treating with hydrogen peroxide (I lowered the water enough to where the algae was exposed and applied it directly), I’ve tried fluconazole 3 separate times. With the fluconazole, it will always turn white and die within a week, but then once the treatment is done, it will come back with a vengeance a few weeks later. After the first 2 treatments, I thought it might be getting resistant, so I doubled the dose the third time. This resulted in a pretty awful dino bloom. After that cooled down, I started noticing multiple patches show up again.

I talked to a guy at my LFS, and he just suggested I just do a tank restart. I would really, really, like to avoid that if at all possible, but I’m feeling pretty discouraged. Any insight or ideas would be welcome!

 

[Kazumi]

I am about to treat with fluconazole also. How long did you leave the medication in before you did a water change? Did you turn off UV, if you have it. Take the cup off of your skimmer?

From some suggestions that I have received. Dose to the recommended amount, after a week or so the bryopsis should start to die. Start running filter socks to catch the debris. When the nutrients start to get high, do a 25% or so water change. Then re-dose to keep the fluconazole up at the therapeutic levels. After about 3 weeks, you can do another water change to get rid of the fluconazole.

 

[MC Blowfish]

Have you adjusted your light schedule as well as adjusted how much you are feeding?

 

[gnattylite]

I am about to treat with fluconazole also. How long did you leave the medication in before you did a water change? Did you turn off UV, if you have it. Take the cup off of your skimmer?

From some suggestions that I have received. Dose to the recommended amount, after a week or so the bryopsis should start to die. Start running filter socks to catch the debris. When the nutrients start to get high, do a 25% or so water change. Then re-dose to keep the fluconazole up at the therapeutic levels. After about 3 weeks, you can do another water change to get rid of the fluconazole.

I did it for the full 3 weeks, and then did a 30ish% WC after. I usually run Chemipure Blue, but I pulled that out for the treatment and put a fresh one in the day I did the WC.
Maybe I need to be waiting a couple weeks to re-introduce the Chemipure to allow the medication to stay in the tank at lower levels?

Other than that, I was just running my normal filtration (filter floss/pads) throughout the whole treatment.

I might try that method of dosing twice, that’s a great suggestion. The crazy thing is, this last time, my nutrients almost completely bottomed out. My phosphate was near undetectable by week 3. I’m assuming that’s why I got the dino bloom…

 

[gnattylite]

Have you adjusted your light schedule as well as adjusted how much you are feeding?

Would you recommend permanently reducing the light?

I haven’t reduced my feeding recently, but I have increased the amount I’m changing out my filter floss/pads. Last time I checked my nutrients were:

Nitrate: 5.4
Phosphate: 0.07