Fluconazole vs GHA

[Atrumblood]

Greetings all,

I recently tried using Reef Flux to help me win the battle against the algae outbreak I've been in the middle of for months now.

Back Story: I started my reefing adventures back in November 2020. It has been quite the learning experience and I had thought I had beaten the ugly phase after finding a miracle product called GFO. It was a false victory though. The GFO had killed off all the algae in my 30 gallon tank, but another would take its place. Tube sponges. Tube sponges apparently love phosphate deficient water and proceeded to cover every bit of rock surface area.

My coral started to show the negative health effects of an ultra low phosphate environment and so I stopped using GFO. All of my coral started to look sickly and I even lost one due to my mistakes.

Fast forward a few months and I began to see little tufts of algae popping up in various places of my rock work. I also noticed that the sponges were beginning to thin out. After a few more weeks I had a full blown outbreak of GHA and bryopsis.

I hadn't quite linked in my head that the sponges dying back and the algae outbreak were related.

I tried in desperation to reduce the amount I feed my tank. I could tell my tank inhabitants were not thrilled with this by how ferociously they ate the little I did give them.

Every few days I would pull out as much algae as I could, and did 30% water changes weekly. Despite my efforts, the algae kept getting worse.

It was then that my brain sparked and made the connection between the algae and sponges. The sponges had infiltrated every tiny pore in the rockwork and now that it was dying back, it was feeding the algae. I had essentially created 30 lbs of rock nutrient batteries and no amount of reduced feeding was going to help me until those batteries ran out of juice.

I didn't have a lot of choices in dealing with the outbreak other than to ride it out and I let it go for a few more months before I decided I needed to bring out the big guns.

I went out and purchased some ReefFlux having read about how effective it was against bryopsis. Some were even saying it killed off their GHA.

Following the directions I added 7 capsules to my 50 gallon (over all volume) setup. Within 1 week all of the bryopsis died and the GHA looked like it was starting to die back. I left my skimmer off for 3 days per the instructions. The bryopsis continued to die and eventually disappeared after 1 week, but the GHA seemed to stop dying back after I had turned the skimmer back on.

Fast forward to the end of the 4th week and a 30% water change later, I was left with about half of the GHA I started with. I wasn't out of the woods yet, the GHA has again started to grow out of control.

That's how we get to today.

I purchased another round of ReefFlux only this time I want to see what happens if I leave my skimmer cup off for a longer period. My theory is that fluconazole is very easily removed via skimming and that it will be more effective against GHA with a longer period of not skimming.

I have added the 7 capsules following a water change and removed my skimmer cup. Here we go.


Here are the before pictures to give a starting point.






I'll update as I see changes

Please let me know if anyone has any questions.

Thanks.

 

[Fish Think Pink]

Greetings all,

I recently tried using Reef Flux to help me win the battle against the algae outbreak I've been in the middle of for months now.

Back Story: I started my reefing adventures back in November 2020. It has been quite the learning experience and I had thought I had beaten the ugly phase after finding a miracle product called GFO. It was a false victory though. The GFO had killed off all the algae in my 30 gallon tank, but another would take its place. Tube sponges. Tube sponges apparently love phosphate deficient water and proceeded to cover every bit of rock surface area.

My coral started to show the negative health effects of an ultra low phosphate environment and so I stopped using GFO. All of my coral started to look sickly and I even lost one due to my mistakes.

Fast forward a few months and I began to see little tufts of algae popping up in various places of my rock work. I also noticed that the sponges were beginning to thin out. After a few more weeks I had a full blown outbreak of GHA and bryopsis.

I hadn't quite linked in my head that the sponges dying back and the algae outbreak were related.

I tried in desperation to reduce the amount I feed my tank. I could tell my tank inhabitants were not thrilled with this by how ferociously they ate the little I did give them.

Every few days I would pull out as much algae as I could, and did 30% water changes weekly. Despite my efforts, the algae kept getting worse.

It was then that my brain sparked and made the connection between the algae and sponges. The sponges had infiltrated every tiny pore in the rockwork and now that it was dying back, it was feeding the algae. I had essentially created 30 lbs of rock nutrient batteries and no amount of reduced feeding was going to help me until those batteries ran out of juice.

I didn't have a lot of choices in dealing with the outbreak other than to ride it out and I let it go for a few more months before I decided I needed to bring out the big guns.

I went out and purchased some ReefFlux having read about how effective it was against bryopsis. Some were even saying it killed off their GHA.

Following the directions I added 7 capsules to my 50 gallon (over all volume) setup. Within 1 week all of the bryopsis died and the GHA looked like it was starting to die back. I left my skimmer off for 3 days per the instructions. The bryopsis continued to die and eventually disappeared after 1 week, but the GHA seemed to stop dying back after I had turned the skimmer back on.

Fast forward to the end of the 4th week and a 30% water change later, I was left with about half of the GHA I started with. I wasn't out of the woods yet, the GHA has again started to grow out of control.

That's how we get to today.

I purchased another round of ReefFlux only this time I want to see what happens if I leave my skimmer cup off for a longer period. My theory is that fluconazole is very easily removed via skimming and that it will be more effective against GHA with a longer period of not skimming.

I have added the 7 capsules following a water change and removed my skimmer cup. Here we go.


Here are the before pictures to give a starting point.






I'll update as I see changes

Please let me know if anyone has any questions.

Thanks.

Good luck to you. Reef Flux did not do anything for our GHA, but likely there are different types and I'm glad it worked some on your GHA. I'll cross my fingers for you.

Tried Vibrant, GFO, and more and while they worked, they weren't the 'forever going forward' plan we needed. I'd still recommend them because they did work and likely would work again and/or for others.

Algae needs food from 3 sources: white light, nitrates and phosphates. Starving fish is NOT an option.
What is working for us is dual reactor chambers:
- biopellets with BioDigest dosed 2x month (nitrate control)
- Brightwell NoPO4 cubes (phosphate control)

We also:
- shades drawn all windows on southern facing outside view
- weekly (or more frequent) scrubbing and algae removal
- planted refugium (caulerpa) on 24x7 (LED 5K spectrum 60w equivalent bulb - $3.50)
- minor dosing of Red Sea NOPOX (because of reactor chambers, used to dose a lot more of this)

Not everything works for everyone, but this is what is working for us and our situation.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Flux is hit and miss with Bryopsis but rarely any effect on GHA.
Generally with GHA you likely have too much light (often indirect with a tank at or near a window along with white light intensity.
Second is likelihood of elevated Phosphates either from your water source or over feeding.
GHA is one of the more common problem algaes'. It is easy to recognize as it starts to look like a few short and fine little hairs light green to dark green in color. As it spreads, the hairs form a thick carpet and will grow longer. It will grow like a tuff of grass. This can be a really fast growing algae. Most fish and inverts will not eat hair algae once it starts to grow in length. It will commonly grow on your rocks.
Best recurse is to pull as much as you can by hand and have some cleaners do the rest while reducing white light intensity. You can also add 1ml of hydrogen Peroxide 3% at night which will weaken their root system.
Snails:
Turbo grazer
astrea
cerith
Trochus
Ninja Star

10 blue leg carribean hermits - The tiny ones

Pencil urchin

Sea hare would do well on this but will starve one algae is gone - My LFS usually takes them back

 

[Lavey29]

I'm about 90% over my GHA now with no chemicals added. Just beefed up the cleaner crew with urchins and turbos and raised my magnesium to 1500.

You can win the battle without contaminating your tank with chemicals which often open the door to other problems.

 

[Atrumblood]

I appreciate the advice so far.

Let me take a moment to clarify why I am doing this as maybe my story telling method of pushing information may not be the most appropriate one for this audience.

I am performing an experiment. My goal is not to find a shortcut to my problem, my goal is to evaluate how effective fluconazole is against GHA and hopefully to also learn whether keeping my skimmer off for a longer period will increase fluconazoles effectiveness.

I know that some of you are absolutely against using chemicals in your aquariums and that's fine. I am taking these risks on my own tank so that others maybe won't need to.

At the very least I want to be able to publish my findings here to help fill in the gaps of knowledge in this hobby.

I am confident that fluconazole poses no immediate harm to my tank inhabitants based on my personal experiences and from the few experiences I've read on these forums.

For those who are following along, I will be posting more photos today/tonight to show the progress so far.

Thanks for reading,
Atrumblood

 

[djf91]

I see people recommend to reduce lighting intensity and white light in particular, but what about in the ocean? Is there no white light? Is the dimmer switch on the sun cracked down?

 

[damsels are not mean]

I see people recommend to reduce lighting intensity and white light in particular, but what about in the ocean? Is there no white light? Is the dimmer switch on the sun cracked down?

The ocean isn't next to a window, so there's no extra light

 

[djf91]

The ocean isn't next to a window, so there's no extra light

Lol exactly

 

[cww81]

I can confirm that reef flux worked on my gha, I left the skimmer off for my whole treatment and nearly everything is gone. What’s left is brittle and blows off easily!

 

[shandoee]

Fluc is not working for me atm. I’m using the treatment for bryopsis, which I can confidently say works exceptionally well. Hair algae… not so much. I literally went in and plucked a softball size worth of GHA last night.

 

[djf91]

I am going through same things right now and I would narrow it down to an unnatural scenario such as phosphate leaching from rock or a lack of microbiome. There’s nothing I can do about my rock leaching phosphate (I’m not going to remove 500 lbs. of rock and acid wash), just wait it out. What I am trying is upping my clean up crew 5 fold as well as introducing some live rock/mud/sand from the pacific.

 

[Atrumblood]

I am going through same things right now and I would narrow it down to an unnatural scenario such as phosphate leaching from rock or a lack of microbiome. There’s nothing I can do about my rock leaching phosphate (I’m not going to remove 500 lbs. of rock and acid wash), just wait it out. What I am trying is upping my clean up crew 5 fold as well as introducing some live rock/mud/sand from the pacific.

You'll have to let us know how you fare. My CUC includes the following critters.

1 turbo snail, ~5 cerith, 4 nasarrius, 2 trochus, 1 tuxedo urchin, 5 dwarf hermit crabs, and about a million tiny baby turbo snails. Oh and one emerald crab.

 

[Atrumblood]

Sorry for the delay in posting, I took the pictures last night but forgot to write up the post.

So here is day 2.

As you can see, not much has happened yet. It was about a full week after adding the fluconazole before I saw any dieback of the GHA last time.

It does appear that the algae have lightened up a shade, but that is about it. Hopefully, by this weekend we will see some obvious progress.

I will update again in another 48 hours.
As usual, please let me know if anyone has questions.

Thanks,

 

[spidey]

Wow, thanks for doing this experiment. I was thinking of doing the exact same thing!

 

[Atrumblood]

Here we are on day 4.



The camera doesn't pick it up well but I can see that the tips of the algae are starting to turn white.
There are also some tufts of algae that are starting to break away from the rock as you can see in this next picture.



Things seem to be progressing as fast as last time. I'll update again on Saturday. Stay tuned

 

[Atrumblood]

All right, here we are on day 6.

Today we can see some pretty obvious changes to the algae. All of it has become pretty frail and seems to disintegrate a bit when I blast it with a feeding baster.

My skimmer cup is still off, UV is still on. Ive been checking nitrates and phosphates because of the die back and I am happy to say that my carbon dosing has been keeping up nicely.

All of my tank inhabitants seem completely unphased by the fluconazole.

My next update will be Monday, so stay tuned.

Thanks,

 

[Atrumblood]

Day 8

It's getting there. Algae is disappearing all over.
I spoke too soon on my carbon dosing though. I tested last night and my phos shot up to 0.12 ppm. I am still a bit off from doing a water change so I am running gfo for 6 hours a day to get that back down.

My nitrates are fine however. They are sitting just above 5 ppm.

So far so good, guys!
Just a bit longer.

Next update will be Wednesday.

 

[Dburr1014]

Can we have some more info on live stock in your tank?
My apologies if I missed it.

I am having trouble with some hair algae myself after my Dino outbreak. Sea hair didn't touch it, infact when I put it on the algae, it ran the other way. I ran gfo and my po4 doesn't go below 0.08. Currently, I'm also running chemipure elite. I added some more cuc, snails and 2 urchins.
I just put some mollies in on Sunday but the clowns didn't take too kindly to them. So yesterday they were in the bottom corner of the display. I don't think they will work if afraid to come out and eat it.

I hate the idea of chemicals. But this seems to work nice and slow, how I like to do things.

I have a clam and shrimp. I certainly don't want to lose them.

 

[Atrumblood]

Can we have some more info on live stock in your tank?
My apologies if I missed it.

I am having trouble with some hair algae myself after my Dino outbreak. Sea hair didn't touch it, infact when I put it on the algae, it ran the other way. I ran gfo and my po4 doesn't go below 0.08. Currently, I'm also running chemipure elite. I added some more cuc, snails and 2 urchins.
I just put some mollies in on Sunday but the clowns didn't take too kindly to them. So yesterday they were in the bottom corner of the display. I don't think they will work if afraid to come out and eat it.

I hate the idea of chemicals. But this seems to work nice and slow, how I like to do things.

I have a clam and shrimp. I certainly don't want to lose them.

My setup is a 30-gallon display with a 20-gallon sump.
I have a Classic 110SSS 5" Internal Space Saving Protein Skimmer
My sump contains marco rocks and high surface area cubes for biological filtration.

My livestock
Fish:
2 x Saddleback Clownfish (black with white stripes)
1 x Sailfin Blenny
1 x Yellowtail Damsel

Inverts:
1 x Tuxedo Urchin
1 x Turbo Snail
4 x Nasarrius Snails
5 x Cerith Snails
2 x Trochus Snails
1 x Emerald Crab
5 x Dwarf Hermit Crabs
100-200 x Baby Turbo Snails (around 1-3 mm shell sizes)

Hitchhikers:
2 x Stomatella Snails
Unknown number of Limpets (various sizes between 5-10 mm)

Coral:
1 x GSP (Large colony on a rock island about 8 x 6 inches)
1 x Kryptonite Candy Cane
1 x Demon Eye Favia
1 x Teal Eye Favites
1 x Urban Zombie Favia
1 x Circuit Board Platygyra
1 x Illuminati Zoa colony
1 x Orange BamBam Zoa colony
1 x Fools Gold Chalice
1 x Space Invaders Chalice
1 x Fireworks Clove Polyps
1 x Blue-Eyed Girl Zoa Colony
1 x Seasons Greetings Monti
1 x Red Cap Monti
1 x Pink Tenius Acro
1 x Green Stag Acro
1 x Banana Table Acro
1 x Garf Bonsai Acro
1 x ORA Green Birds Nest


That should be it. I don't think I have forgotten anything.

Let me know if you have more questions.
Thanks,

 

[Atrumblood]

Day 10

Looks like we are nearly there. Only a few stubborn spots left. I figure if at the end of the 4 weeks those spots are not algae free, I will scrub them before doing a large water change.

As we approach our second weeks end I am inclined to say that leaving the skimmer cup off for longer has made a difference in how quickly the aglae is disappearing. Though this is just one experiment with no controls, it is hard to say for sure how truly more effective it is.

That being said, I am happy with the results so far.

I am thinking about turning my skimmer back on at the end of the 2nd week. Mostly because of how fast my phos shot up to 0.12 ppm amd my nitrates we're relatively low in comparison.

Dunno. What are your thoughts, people?

Next update is friday.