Dealing with algae

[Areseebee]

My 180g tank was taken over by bryopsis for a while. I treated with fluconazole which made the bryopsis grey and deadish. I don't have a huge clean up crew (6 big astrea snails, roughly 20 trochus snails, 3 emerald crabs and probably 100 little stomatella snails that are breeding as we speak) as I was trying to avoid overbuying and starving them. It seems like anywhere there was (and still kind of is) bryopsis, this stuff grows (or forms)... is this just detritus gathering on the bryopsis stalks? Is there something more I can do about this? Will anything eat it? Currently I just take a brush with stiff bristles and kind of rake it each night and then try to net as much of it as possible.

 

[Oscar47f]

i would definitely look into hermit crabs, especially scarlet hermits but only a few so you don't starve them. as for the algae trying to starve it out with low phosphates and nitrates while you manually pull it out is what i would do. You can also try and dose hydrogen peroxide but do the research and make sure your dosages are on point because an overdose will kill more than just algae...

 

[ElHemi]

Im in the same boat. Just received my clean up crew , hope it helps

 

[Rick.45cal]

Lettuce nudibranchs.

 

[prsnlty]

Lettuce nudibranchs.

+1 and some Mexican turbo snails. I have a 180g. You don't have nearly enough cuc for that size tank unless you have no rock. Trochus snails are great also... you need 1 snail per gallon on an average tank.

 

[ahiggins]

holy moly thats a lot of algae

 

[prsnlty]

You actually seem to have dinos rearing its ugly head mixed in with the algae. And are you sure that's bryopsis? Looks a lot like hair algae to me . Fluconazol tends to take two doses to remove hair algae, you also have to have a good clean up crew to help it remove the Dead. Are you using RO/DI water in your system and are you doing proper water changes?

 

[Areseebee]

It is junk that settles on the hair algae skeleton basically (or stalks or whatever). I can basically just knock it off and into the water column with a brush and scoop it out with a net. What is left is just "twigs" of dead bryopsis that are still rooted in the rock. The other interesting thing is that it is very non-uniform, many rocks are completely clean but the ones that had bryopsis on them previously now have whatever this is. I do have one particular rock that grows hair algae... but this stuff is different.

 

[Areseebee]

Just an update, I've made great headway on this on any rocks I can remove by bathing in h2o2. Is there a way to effectively spot treat in tanks using h2o2?