Green Wiry Algae Taking hold: what is this stuff?

[brandon429]

One of the best tricks in tough algae handling is to not use the display as an experiment and subject all life + nontargets to the guesstimates

Take out experimental rocks, run them in cheap side bucket test setups with a cheap heater and power head assessment bucket reef, run your diluted treatments there (scale down the doses for five gallons) and match the right tool for the job to the display vs guess with the whole investment.

In the display, you’ll need to stop growths from spreading as you research preventatives that actually work. Your only option that can’t harm anything and still controls the target is to take out rocks, set on the counter, and use a sharp strong knife to roughly score out the invasion from its anchor point in between coralline plates. Work around those, they aren’t invaded

dips without knowing the matching med can kill that awesome coralline. We must preserve it, per above where coralline grows algae doesn’t. It’s a known biorejecting organism against primary plant colonization. Reef dentistry is required because that’s what rode in from totally natural rocks that have never been guided at all. It will make the reef look normal if each rock is hand detailed with a knife. Only that option scores out the hokdfasts, dips just leave them in place to grow back. Because that algae can take over an entire display, immediate surgery on the rocks to remove what you can should begin.


Every algae treatment available works better in the less mass condition

By making the rocks clean by hand vs doser, you can begin farming biorejecting material (coralline and coral) now vs next year.

I see some details in the lighting from those tanks that can drive any well matched hitchhiker. That especially means target knife rasping is immediately needed or it will gain hold.

It doesn’t kill corals unless it’s touching them. We prevent that from happening by surgical removal and it gives you time to run test buckets. Dosing fluc might work, but the 600 page fluc thread sticky in the nuisance algae forum has a thousand times it didn’t work and the tank went eutrophic. There are risks to meds without initial surgical removal.

There are no risks to setting the rock on the counter, and commanding it to look the way it needs to, until you model a way that works to stop your manual cleaning.

 

[brandon429]

I have for sure in chat message algae work observed shipped ocean rock bring in algae strong enough to take over reef tanks. Action is urgent when dealing in uncured ocean rock

When using a display tank as a quarantine/observation tank, we must act fast and with a knife at minimum. Precision score out one full test rock

Use peroxide in the places you rasped clean, one test rock.

Make one rock look compliant

Set that rock back into the invaded display and never let it regrow anything bad, keep running dentistry until it complies

Until you either plant a coral in the spot and reject algae, or grow coralline there to reject it, you’d see to it no algae is permitted to take over. That algae cannot beat a cheap steak knife. It also can’t beat favia flesh over growing the rocks from great feeding and light
Lps tissue is also biorejective to algae, I’ve never seen algae attached to the bubble of a plerogyra coral, for example. The skeleton is where algae attaches


Plant fast growing corals in the cleaned spots on a test rock that goes back into the main tank. Model at least on one rock what total resolve can accomplish. Always have that one rock as a reference in the display, to compare results to display rocks not directly handled.

 

[Z Burn's Reefing]

I agree with what is being said by others...starving it out likely won't work, but I can see pretty clearly that the day after a heavy feeding, this stuff explodes. My tank isn't as bad as some of the other pictures on here, but if I didn't change my feeding habits, it would be there soon, so it's part of my plan, at the moment.

I am only feeding fish and stopped all additional supplements/coral foods. This is keeping it at bay, but it's not going away.

I think you have to hit this stuff with multiple approaches: manual removal, water quality, strong CUC. I found a few that used Flux while doing searches, but results seemed mixed.

I sent PMs to several people that had posted about this on here in the past and asked them how they beat it. Many said it just suddenly went away, but they weren't sure how. Many said they added a bunch of hermits and that seemed to finally do the trick. Some said new algae developed and became more dominant. Some said it never went away, but hermits seemed to keep it under control.

I think the key for me is to go to work (manual removal), try not overreact to it (still feed fish), and strengthen my CUC. For what it's worth, reefcleaners.org recommends: Rock Boring Urchins, Emerald Crabs, Turbos to try and get this stuff under control. I am tempted to try emeralds, but want to wait as I haven't had great luck with those in the past not picking at corals. Most of the personal success stories on here, wrote me back that they felt like adding a bunch of hermits is what finally helped, so that is what I am currently going to try out. An algae scrubber may need to be something I add to my arsenal as well. I will report back how things go once I get my hermit population back up...its a little low at the moment, so want to triple it (order coming next week) then give it time.

 

[Z Burn's Reefing]

I have a similar algae that pops up on occasion. . . I haven't decided what causes it to take off. . . I run low nutrients and I am not sure if this pops up when they bottom out or when they spike above normal, my guess is the latter (super helpful I know haha). For me it has been a combination of manual removal and adding clean up crew. . . in my 11 gallon tank I added a pitho crab and he seems to do a good job of ripping this of the rocks and eating it.

My advice would be remove and trim (I literally used a tiny pair of scissors to trim some of the longer bits) as much as possible. Then add some blue leg hermits, emerald crabs, and pitho crabs. Do your best not to feed the crabs, directly or indirectly, and resign yourself to the fact that the crabs might snack on a coral every now and then. . .

The pitho crab route may be the ticket...I definitely think crabs are needed in this case as this stuff is strong and needs a haircut or be clipped when eating...I just don't see snails being able to do that...the pitho idea is great as that may be a little "safer" than emeralds when it comes to acans,etc.

 

[Z Burn's Reefing]

Just a little update. I added 100+ small blug leg hermits to my system roughly 3 weeks ago and then started back to feeding normally (fish multiple times per day and particulate foods for corals a few times per week). I can't say for sure it's the hermits doing the the trick, but the green wiry algae is just slowly going away. I am not sure what to think of it...I've got your classic hair algae popping up now in a few places since resuming my normal feeding routine, so maybe that is out competing the wiry stuff? If so, I am happy with that, as a 5-10 minute rock scraping each week keeps that's in check. Or maybe trying to keep nutrients too low was just favoring the wiry stuff? Or perhaps the hermits are making a dent in things during lights out; they do appear to be very busy at night? Or maybe the wiry stuff is just burning out after consuming what it was consuming...I don't really know. It is not totally gone by any means, but it is reduced quite a bit and staying in check, even though I'm feeding heavy again; I would say its completely tolerable now. I'll provide another update in a few weeks time, but hard to say if the hermits did the trick or just the tank adapting...