GHA Removal

[JediCruz]

Ok guys. I’m a reefer who’s had his tank up for almost a year. A year of mistakes and shortcuts. I won’t get into that but you’re more than welcome to read my build thread if you want the history. Cut to now: I have GHA everywhere. I’ve tried everything to get rid of it. Nutrient export is what I was concentrating on. I’ve finally gotten Phosphates and Nitrates down to 0 this week. I know, I know, I don’t tend to keep it this way. As a recap on what I’ve been doing for nutrient export:

Refugium running for 20 hours a day with overlap during the lights out period for the display tank
NoPox dosing at the recommended 3 ml per 25 gallons which I just reduced to 2 ml since the nitrates are now below 10ppm
Skimmer
Manual removal of GHA every 2 days and some brushing of the rocks
Replacing Socks every 3 days

What I’ve found is previously the GHA has a real good hold of the rock. My hope is that this will loosen now that nutrients are super low. But manual removal has been a pain and not the best even using the toothbrush.

My plan is to try a 3 day blackout period with the hopes that the GHA will die and running the Refugium light for 24 hours during that time

Any thoughts on this? Advise?

 

[Quietman]

Yes, keep nutrients low. If you have a lot of GHA and reading 0/0 N-P you still have nutrients. They're just being taken up by the GHA and fuge. Secondly, GHA takes up nutrients faster than macroalgae and faster than coral for that matter so it's going to require both manual and treatment for the GHA rather than relying on other means to take up nutrients to out compete. I have an ATS running great but it still can't out compete the GHA in the DT (although it has kept it from spreading).

Tangs are good - not sure if you have any. But they're not going to take waving fields of GHA down to zero. Better when it's under controls. Same with other CUC.

I have good luck with H2O2 (taking rocks out and dipping/spraying) but it only lasts a few weeks and need to do it again. It does seem less and less over the last few months. I haven't tried any harsher chemical treatments (dosing H2O2 or flucanazole) because 1) I'd need to remove ATS and 2) my manual removal, dipping is slowly removing excess GHA from DT and the remaining is becoming well managed.

So summary here...keep up with manual removal, find a treatment plan you like (I like the H2O2 outside of tank but that's just me - others swear by in tank dosing or chemicals). Add light to fuge if haven't - it may be slower on uptake but will still help. Plan on doing this for quite a long time.

Lastly you'll likely always have some GHA as the rhisomes get under the first layers of rock and are quite hard to access with treatments. So management rather than eradication might be better plan unless really drastic measures taken (complete redo with bleaching/new rock, etc).

Good luck!

 

[JediCruz]

Yes, keep nutrients low. If you have a lot of GHA and reading 0/0 N-P you still have nutrients. They're just being taken up by the GHA and fuge. Secondly, GHA takes up nutrients faster than macroalgae and faster than coral for that matter so it's going to require both manual and treatment for the GHA rather than relying on other means to take up nutrients to out compete. I have an ATS running great but it still can't out compete the GHA in the DT (although it has kept it from spreading).

Tangs are good - not sure if you have any. But they're not going to take waving fields of GHA down to zero. Better when it's under controls. Same with other CUC.

I have good luck with H2O2 (taking rocks out and dipping/spraying) but it only lasts a few weeks and need to do it again. It does seem less and less over the last few months. I haven't tried any harsher chemical treatments (dosing H2O2 or flucanazole) because 1) I'd need to remove ATS and 2) my manual removal, dipping is slowly removing excess GHA from DT and the remaining is becoming well managed.

So summary here...keep up with manual removal, find a treatment plan you like (I like the H2O2 outside of tank but that's just me - others swear by in tank dosing or chemicals). Add light to fuge if haven't - it may be slower on uptake but will still help. Plan on doing this for quite a long time.

Lastly you'll likely always have some GHA as the rhisomes get under the first layers of rock and are quite hard to access with treatments. So management rather than eradication might be better plan unless really drastic measures taken (complete redo with bleaching/new rock, etc).

Good luck!

It’s a 90 gallon so my cleanup crew consists of a Fire Fin Tomini Tang, a Purple Tang, a Lawnmower Blenny (recent addition), 6 Emerald Crabs (recent addition), 12 hermit crabs, 6 cerith snails, 2 tiger conchs, 3 remaining Trochus snails and about 6 turbo snails with one big boy about the size of my fist.

As far as the Refugium, I have a Kessil H80 that’s lighting it up with the dial set to grow and has been doing well. Not great growth, as you mentioned the GHA being the primary exporter but still exporting about once a month.

The rock work is intricate so removal from the tank will not be a possibility with destroying what was built.

Besides RedSea NoPox, I’d rather not put any other chemical in the tank. That’s why I was thinking about the blackout.

 

[DHill6]

I’ve been through this a few times. I remove rocks use H202 not hitting corals. I’ve taken everything out of tank, put in brute cans, wiped the tank down with H202 then put everything back. Definitely helped with GHA, macro of some sort, rooted maroon algae of some sort. Killed it off. I have an urchin and a lot of snails, they seem to clean after the major stuff has been killed off.

 

[JediCruz]

I’ve been through this a few times. I remove rocks use H202 not hitting corals. I’ve taken everything out of tank, put in brute cans, wiped the tank down with H202 then put everything back. Definitely helped with GHA, macro of some sort, rooted maroon algae of some sort. Killed it off. I have an urchin and a lot of snails, they seem to clean after the major stuff has been killed off.

I had an urchin but it died during the mini crash I had. But it mostly ate the coralline and not the GHA. The GHA it did eat was while it was on it way to the coralline. Actually, I’d have to blame the urchin for how GHA took hold because I had a lot more coralline prior to the urchin and the GHA was only in the areas without the coralline. Since there was less coralline after the urchin, more GHA took hold.

I have a deep sand bed where the rocks are anchored below the bed so taking the rocks out are not an option.

 

[JediCruz]

Bump

 

[Sleeping Giant]

If you're scrubbing the rocks, you need something to capture it when it comes off like a sock of some sort, then you can remove the sock, clean and replace. This will help get rid of some of the GHA

 

[James_O]

I did was is described as a “rip clean”, in which one takes all the rocks coming out of the tank, and sprays them off with the garden hose.

While you are doing this can I recommend to get an old toothbrush to get all that algae off. This method really helped my tank.

This is the before (notice all the algae on the rocks - there’s a TON on the back side that you can’t see)

And this after:

—-

No more algae!

Took a lot of work, but it was well worth it in the end.

 

[JediCruz]

Yeah, seems like everyone is doing the remove rock, clean, reinstall method. Not feasible for me. Especially with the coral encrusting they rock work (finally) so I’d rather not stress them with that. I’m going to try the 3 day black out method. I wanted to see if anyone has done those and get advice on feeding the livestock during this time as well as the NoPox dosing. Guess I just try it and see.

 

[Pistondog]

Yeah, seems like everyone is doing the remove rock, clean, reinstall method. Not feasible for me. Especially with the coral encrusting they rock work (finally) so I’d rather not stress them with that. I’m going to try the 3 day black out method. I wanted to see if anyone has done those and get advice on feeding the livestock during this time as well as the NoPox dosing. Guess I just try it and see.

You might try h2o2 dosing. I do this via an oxidaytor. After a week, the gha is disintegrating and falls off when cleaning.

 

[JediCruz]

You might try h2o2 dosing. I do this via an oxidaytor. After a week, the gha is disintegrating and falls off when cleaning.

Being as I don’t want to add something else to the tank after the crash, I’d rather try a safer method via blackout.

 

[Quiverfull]

Do you have an update? Wondering if you beat your GHA problem and how you did it. Happy Holidays.

 

[Duncan62]

Ok guys. I’m a reefer who’s had his tank up for almost a year. A year of mistakes and shortcuts. I won’t get into that but you’re more than welcome to read my build thread if you want the history. Cut to now: I have GHA everywhere. I’ve tried everything to get rid of it. Nutrient export is what I was concentrating on. I’ve finally gotten Phosphates and Nitrates down to 0 this week. I know, I know, I don’t tend to keep it this way. As a recap on what I’ve been doing for nutrient export:

Refugium running for 20 hours a day with overlap during the lights out period for the display tank
NoPox dosing at the recommended 3 ml per 25 gallons which I just reduced to 2 ml since the nitrates are now below 10ppm
Skimmer
Manual removal of GHA every 2 days and some brushing of the rocks
Replacing Socks every 3 days

What I’ve found is previously the GHA has a real good hold of the rock. My hope is that this will loosen now that nutrients are super low. But manual removal has been a pain and not the best even using the toothbrush.

My plan is to try a 3 day blackout period with the hopes that the GHA will die and running the Refugium light for 24 hours during that time

Any thoughts on this? Advise?

0 is to low. Dinos love that.

 

[Duncan62]

It’s a 90 gallon so my cleanup crew consists of a Fire Fin Tomini Tang, a Purple Tang, a Lawnmower Blenny (recent addition), 6 Emerald Crabs (recent addition), 12 hermit crabs, 6 cerith snails, 2 tiger conchs, 3 remaining Trochus snails and about 6 turbo snails with one big boy about the size of my fist.

As far as the Refugium, I have a Kessil H80 that’s lighting it up with the dial set to grow and has been doing well. Not great growth, as you mentioned the GHA being the primary exporter but still exporting about once a month.

The rock work is intricate so removal from the tank will not be a possibility with destroying what was built.

Besides RedSea NoPox, I’d rather not put any other chemical in the tank. That’s why I was thinking about the blackout.

Urchins love GHA.

 

[JediCruz]

Urchins love GHA.

Urchins love coralline algae more. If coralline is available, they’ll eat that first. At least in my experience. When they do that, then that’s more places for algae to grow

 

[JediCruz]

Do you have an update? Wondering if you beat your GHA problem and how you did it. Happy Holidays.

So it’s still a work in progress. I pull out GHA every couple of weeks but it’s in the places that were too short for me to grab. It’s way better than when I started. When I pull out from areas that had it, there’s not a chance for it to grow back since my cleanup crew clean it up. I just have to wait for the places that have it grows long enough for me pull out. I may do another blackout again but I’ll wait some time before I do it again.

 

[jeffchapok]

Boil some tank water, turn off all circulation in the tank and squirt the boiling water at the base of the GHA with a turkey baster. I promise you within a day everywhere you did so will be back to bare rock.

And if you have any herbivores in your tank, they will go absolutely nuts over it.

 

[JediCruz]

Boil some tank water, turn off all circulation in the tank and squirt the boiling water at the base of the GHA with a turkey baster. I promise you within a day everywhere you did so will be back to bare rock.

And if you have any herbivores in your tank, they will go absolutely nuts over it.

Interesting. I may try that.

 

[JediCruz]

0 is to low. Dinos love that.

Yeah, I stopped carbon dosing and starting feeding more, dose RedSea Reef Energy Plus AB + daily and I feed the coral twice a week but the only thing that has gone up slightly is phosphates. I may ramp up the coral feeding.

 

[Duncan62]

Yeah, I stopped carbon dosing and starting feeding more, dose RedSea Reef Energy Plus AB + daily and I feed the coral twice a week but the only thing that has gone up slightly is phosphates. I may ramp up the coral feeding.

Agreed. Don't be afraid of feeding. Ad one broadcast feeding maybe. Good luck.