Help, algae is winning!

[Twodogsnnc]

Help! We are battling algae (or I think it’s algae). Can anyone help with an ID and recommended approach to handle? My wife and I are very frustrated.

Red Sea Reefer 425xl. Just running a reef octopus 150int skimmer, filter floss and bag of carbon. 2 mp40s on back wall and a Red Sea reef wave 25 in the side glass for flow.

• 12 fish fed 1 cube of food (frozen brine shrimp) per day
• We toothbrush it off the rocks but it returns within a week or so.
• We have added extensive clean up crew over time, but Cuc does not really touch it and most have seem to died.

Parameters:

• Salinity:1.026
• Nitrates: 0 (using both salifert and Red Sea kits)
• AK: 7.1 (using Hanna)
• CA: 450 (using Salifert)
• Phosphate: .04 (using Hanna)

We plan to start dosing soon and currently do a 15-18 gallon h2o change 5 out of 6 weeks on average. I use a five stage RODI unit and reef crystals for salt.

Help! Thanks!

 

[JGT]

Help! We are battling algae (or I think it’s algae). Can anyone help with an ID and recommended approach to handle? My wife and I are very frustrated.

Red Sea Reefer 425xl. Just running a reef octopus 150int skimmer, filter floss and bag of carbon. 2 mp40s on back wall and a Red Sea reef wave 25 in the side glass for flow.

• 12 fish fed 1 cube of food (frozen brine shrimp) per day
• We toothbrush it off the rocks but it returns within a week or so.
• We have added extensive clean up crew over time, but Cuc does not really touch it and most have seem to died.

Parameters:

• Salinity:1.026
• Nitrates: 0 (using both salifert and Red Sea kits)
• AK: 7.1 (using Hanna)
• CA: 450 (using Salifert)
• Phosphate: .04 (using Hanna)

We plan to start dosing soon and currently do a 15-18 gallon h2o change 5 out of 6 weeks on average. I use a five stage RODI unit and reef crystals for salt.

Help! Thanks!

Green hair algae. Bubbles are very common. Manually remove/siphon out, check NO3 and PO4 are in range, lessen feeding, shorten light intervals, add CUC if you don’t have and a tang or 2 depending on tank size and lawnmower blenny. Be patient. Will take time to eradicate.

 

[Twodogsnnc]

Green hair algae. Bubbles are very common. Manually remove/siphon out, check NO3 and PO4 are in range, lessen feeding, shorten light intervals, add CUC if you don’t have and a tang or 2 depending on tank size and lawnmower blenny. Be patient. Will take time to eradicate.

nitrates are at 0 and phosphate is .04. I assumed those are good?

 

[JGT]

nitrates are at 0 and phosphate is .04. I assumed those are good?

Those numbers are OK. How old is you tank? Add back CUC and a blenny, and manually remove, shorten lighting periods. Also can use hydrogen peroxide to help kill the algae.

 

[Mikedawg]

nitrates are at 0 and phosphate is .04. I assumed those are good?

These numbers don't reflect all the nitrate/phosphate "bound up" in so much algae; I suspect they are much higher and you might want to address this issue as well as the others you're considering.

Your corals don't seem to be adversely impacted and your sand looks good which leads me to ask how old is your tank and did it fully complete its cycle?

Good luck

 

[Twodogsnnc]

These numbers don't reflect all the nitrate/phosphate "bound up" in so much algae; I suspect they are much higher and you might want to address this issue as well as the others you're considering.

Your corals don't seem to be adversely impacted and your sand looks good which leads me to ask how old is your tank and did it fully complete its cycle?

Good luck

Those numbers are OK. How old is you tank? Add back CUC and a blenny, and manually remove, shorten lighting periods. Also can use hydrogen peroxide to help kill the algae.

Tank has been up and running since September 2018. Algae has really only gotten bad in the last 10-12 months. Will research hydrogen peroxide.

 

[JGT]

Tank has been up and running since September 2018. Algae has really only gotten bad in the last 10-12 months. Will research hydrogen peroxide.

1 ml per 10 gals administered via syringe to the algae.

 

[brandon429]

hey look I have a 12 gallon modeled fix of that exact set up

we've done so many peroxide jobs there's a match for everything now. pics from reefmiser, nano-reef.com:

*not by dosing the water. its by you scrubbing it again, but this time when fully cleared, straight peroxide on the cleaned off rocks as a hidden anchor burn

let sit for about 5 mins then put rocks back in. this is much less peroxide in the water, on target, where target was prior removed by our hard work.

 

[brandon429]

don't do your whole tank yet.

pull one test rock out, work it over like a dentist would a bad tooth for plaque. totally picked clean, no peroxide yet, all hard work and rinsing off in saltwater till they're clean like below.


then peroxide for 5 mins

rinse off in sw, put back that one rock. chart it against the rest as you decide. it will hold its clear much much longer. in the cleaned vs invaded phase try different grazers who might prevent it or try UV light you'd be surprised how that helps with GHA even though its anchored.


it has a transitory phase too which UV helps suppress.

that above is careful external tank surgery its not dosing the water,

corals didnt do anything bad, we work around them. they get some air time while we dentist around them, but that's harmless. no peroxide on corals.


even if the job is too big to use surgical detailing, still do one rock.


one rock in your tank gets the kid gloves removed, the rest can be experimented with to save work. make one rock comply since you do have total control over that much real estate, see if you can control it at all on the mini model.

then one day if legits dont pan out you have a proven model already/fall back on. for nano reefs we dont hesitate one minute, its full rip clean / blasted sand clean all new water and rocks detailed. bam.

 

[brandon429]

peroxide isn't for every tank


sometimes fluconazole helps cut the big jobs like this agreed

but surgery has its merits. one merit, here's seventy pages of dosing water + surgery, can inspect. second benefit, total cleaning removes sandbed detritus which is algae fuel. by manually cleaning rocks again but with the cheat, you are keeping channels and pores open so rocks can expel waste and rid themselves of phosphates etc/degrading waste.

plants are plugging it currently. theres benefit to doing the hard work and nailing the job all at once, but wow that's a lot of rocks.

Peroxide saves my Tank! With pics to Prove It!

www.nano-reef.com

if you dose meds to kill that algae, in tank, the lost mass takes your detritus stores and quadruples them. in that much dilution it will be ok, a while. then after a while, compound cyano time. I dont have a better or more efficient means, but what we have is a ton of reefs that worked the job and posted nice update pics.

 

[brandon429]

that thread was the first time I'd seen peroxide applied to tanks. Credabel wrote about it as a dip in 2010 but that was the first peroxide work thread I'd ever seen for whole reefs. I thought the stuff would zap sterilize everything in its path

its more tame than that.


right when my reefbowl which is now 16 was having GHA problems.


and after direct application (i drained my water down vs remove rocks, still in air scraping and contact)


gha stopped and my reefing changed forever its the best cheat I have ever beheld in reefing and pico reefers hold a lot of cheats.

 

[FishGeist]

Add Turbo Snails, don't add peroxide to your tank, F-F-S.

 

[alimac122]

have you tried a dolabella sea hare before???
Im all about biological cleaning over chemical. My dolabella is completely annihilating my GHA

 

[Twodogsnnc]

hey look I have a 12 gallon modeled fix of that exact set up

we've done so many peroxide jobs there's a match for everything now. pics from reefmiser, nano-reef.com:

*not by dosing the water. its by you scrubbing it again, but this time when fully cleared, straight peroxide on the cleaned off rocks as a hidden anchor burn

let sit for about 5 mins then put rocks back in. this is much less peroxide in the water, on target, where target was prior removed by our hard work.

don't do your whole tank yet.

pull one test rock out, work it over like a dentist would a bad tooth for plaque. totally picked clean, no peroxide yet, all hard work and rinsing off in saltwater till they're clean like below.


then peroxide for 5 mins

rinse off in sw, put back that one rock. chart it against the rest as you decide. it will hold its clear much much longer. in the cleaned vs invaded phase try different grazers who might prevent it or try UV light you'd be surprised how that helps with GHA even though its anchored.


it has a transitory phase too which UV helps suppress.

that above is careful external tank surgery its not dosing the water,

corals didnt do anything bad, we work around them. they get some air time while we dentist around them, but that's harmless. no peroxide on corals.


even if the job is too big to use surgical detailing, still do one rock.


one rock in your tank gets the kid gloves removed, the rest can be experimented with to save work. make one rock comply since you do have total control over that much real estate, see if you can control it at all on the mini model.

then one day if legits dont pan out you have a proven model already/fall back on. for nano reefs we dont hesitate one minute, its full rip clean / blasted sand clean all new water and rocks detailed. bam.

that thread was the first time I'd seen peroxide applied to tanks. Credabel wrote about it as a dip in 2010 but that was the first peroxide work thread I'd ever seen for whole reefs. I thought the stuff would zap sterilize everything in its path

its more tame than that.


right when my reefbowl which is now 16 was having GHA problems.


and after direct application (i drained my water down vs remove rocks, still in air scraping and contact)


gha stopped and my reefing changed forever its the best cheat I have ever beheld in reefing and pico reefers hold a lot of cheats.

How do apply peroxide? Should I prepare a bucket with peroxide / RODI and put the rock in it for 5 minutes. Or do you spray it one the rock? Do you use straight peroxide or diluted? Thanks!

 

[Twodogsnnc]

have you tried a dolabella sea hare before???
Im all about biological cleaning over chemical. My dolabella is completely annihilating my GHA

No cuc I have tried have eaten it. Any risks with a sea hare?

 

[brandon429]

For the test rock the peroxide goes on when the rock has been made totally free of algae like an ideal rock, it goes on in the clean condition to burn invisible holdfasts, not to remove the main mass.
it’s best not to use a brush as that smashes bits into the rock

my fav way is a knife tip from a steak knife and pick scrape it be rinsing off in old tank water. choose between methods that remove all the algae, then spray on peroxide leave for a couple mins in the air.

this action does not remove the cycling from the rock, though it would seem to. It removes the target and the rock still has oxidation ability, peroxide isn’t all that powerful as a two minute final application.


Regardless of how much work that may be lol, it’s the test rock. Youre causing a guaranteed fix on at least one rock, to compare to the others and see if another method works as well. If you are serious about addressing the cause, then cleaning the sandbed if applicable is usually the best approach, they’re packed in detritus 98% of the time. Other adjusts like less white light / blue heavy work as preventative, along with snails etc but all that goes in the clean condition, we don’t add it to a reef hoping it removes existing algae we’ve permitted

one rock gets disallowed, and must comply.

 

[X-37B]

No cuc I have tried have eaten it. Any risks with a sea hare?

Yea they die when all the algae is gone.
If you go the seahare route remove it after all algae is gone.
Then add 50+ astrea snails.
The astrea's will keep the algae in check but algae must be gone or very short.
I used the sea hare without the snails and it came back.
I then used fluconazole and added the snails.
Tanks never sees algae now.

 

[Dan_P]

Add Turbo Snails, don't add peroxide to your tank, F-F-S.

Totally agree. They are voracious algae eaters. I have 15 in. 75 gal tank. Too many. I need to feed them everyday but they are growing large. Oh yeah, no algae. The rocks are bare.

Downsides:

When they eat they poop and with a lot of algae, they poop a lot. Normal, but off putting for some

They are strong. Things not anchored down can get displaced.

It is reported that they cannot right themselves if they fall. In my system this is a rare occurrence

They will eat all the algae growing in the aquarium and you will need to feed them. They eat a surprising amount of food and grow quickly when fed properly. I devised small glass plates that hold pieces of dried sheets of algae that I place on the sand at night as feeder stations. 15 go through a 12x12 sheet of dried algae every two days. Feeding at this rate, they extended their shells about half an inch in a half year.

 

[Hermie]

That's what my tank lookedl ike a few weeks ago. I went the manual removal route w/ shears and it's been a painstaking process.

I've done fluconazole multiple times before but in the end, I get cyano/dinos and I dont want that.

Once the hair algae is cut down low enough the urchin will eat it. So I just suggest getting urchins.

 

[codycolina707]

Help! We are battling algae (or I think it’s algae). Can anyone help with an ID and recommended approach to handle? My wife and I are very frustrated.

Red Sea Reefer 425xl. Just running a reef octopus 150int skimmer, filter floss and bag of carbon. 2 mp40s on back wall and a Red Sea reef wave 25 in the side glass for flow.

• 12 fish fed 1 cube of food (frozen brine shrimp) per day
• We toothbrush it off the rocks but it returns within a week or so.
• We have added extensive clean up crew over time, but Cuc does not really touch it and most have seem to died.

Parameters:

• Salinity:1.026
• Nitrates: 0 (using both salifert and Red Sea kits)
• AK: 7.1 (using Hanna)
• CA: 450 (using Salifert)
• Phosphate: .04 (using Hanna)

We plan to start dosing soon and currently do a 15-18 gallon h2o change 5 out of 6 weeks on average. I use a five stage RODI unit and reef crystals for salt.

Help! Thanks!

i've tried the seahare route which they do eat it like crazy but for some reason one lived for about 1 week and died second one made it few days and died so ive been using brightwell razor for like 8 days or so along with cleaning rocks with water changes also beefed up cuc noticing a huge difference