How to deal with Bubble Algae

[vetteguy53081]

I love vibrant. It has never failed me

 

[Leadfooted]

I fought it for at least 2 years and couldn't get it all out of my system. I recently set up a new system with the hope of no bubble algae. It can grow with nearly any light. It gets under anything you have glued together and will slowly pry it apart. Constantly waking up to a nice sized frag that has fallen into another colony and both are half dead from burns.

I believe it puts out a defensive chemical that harms the coral next to it as well as stresses everything in the tank. My Lobo and Acan frags will start dying off when a bubble parks on their plug. When I had an out of control outbreak, I lost almost all of my Pocilipora for no apparent reason. Now that it is under control, the mystery deaths have stopped. I think it was the bubbles.

If you like it and think it is pretty, you could keep it in a fish bowl near your tank. It won't need a filter.

I was not able to control any of it with any natural predator. All of them eventually started nipping at, or just eating my corals. I had two small rabbit fish that fed almost exclusively on my Jedi mind trick. I tried everything. After a year in my tank I have one Scopas tang that will go after small pieces on the rocks. He also nips at my LPS but not enough to kill them. I had a sea urchin that would also eat at it slowly but it would also frag my Digi's for me and pull my frags out of the rack.

I feel like I have brought it under control. I have used a combination of a larger refugium growing Chaeto lit 16 hours on reverse daylight. I shortened my reef light time by an hour. I manually removed all I could. I put a fish net where the filter sock goes and manually scraped the bubbles off the rocks with a dental tool. In the morning the next day I would empty all the bubbles from the net.

The rocks I could get out of the tank, I took to the sink and scraped them there to avoid more spores in the tank. When I finished scraping those rocks, I sprayed them with hydrogen peroxide and let it sit for a minute before I rinsed them off a second time and put them back in the tank.

I did this over a 2 week period in three separate sections and sessions that took a couple hours. It would always end up taking closer to 4 hours because I would accidentally knock over a rock or move one and not be able to get it back in place. Many times I found myself holding a rock that I couldn't get out of the tank. I had no place to set it down without crushing some other well established colony and I couldn't get it to fit back where I picked it up from.

Most of my favorite large colonies have been accidental fragged up from the efforts. I treated the tank with Fluconazole at the same time and that seemed to help. There is or was a good chance that It was Derbesia as much as Valonia.

It has been about a month since all that, and my corals are looking healthy and growing fast like they did before the bubble algae take over. There are still some bubbles in the display tank as well as the Chaeto tank. I will do another sweep to clear them out and possibly dose fluconazole once more.

The new tank I set up to be bubble algae free sits a few feet from the main display. I found a bubble colony in it last week. Bummer! Could have been spores from the skimmer? Who knows, I did all I could think of to not cross contaminate the two systems. I still haven't decided how to deal with it. The tank has been cycling since Feb and I don't want to restart it. I pulled the effected piece and cleaned it off. I will take the system to 0 nutrient and dose peroxide for a while and see if I can starve it out.

If I were to offer you advice, I wold recommend that you pull anything you see with bubbles on it out of your tank and scrape it off. Try to get all you can from whatever it is on. From there use a Q-tip or a spray bottle and hit the area with peroxide and let it sit for at least a minute before you rinse it off and put it back in your system. Then watch it and make sure it does not come back.

I hope that story helps you make a more informed decision about what to do with the small colony you have spotted.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Thank you for taking the time to explain. What % peroxide are you using?

 

[w2inc]

Thank you for taking the time to explain. What % peroxide are you using?

Regular grocery store peroxide 3%. I have used 2 ml per 10 gallons twice a day without seeing livestock damage. Each system is different. 1ml per 10 gallons 1 time per day is what people normally recommend but I wasn't seeing a lit of success with that.

The end of the story is that Vibrant once per week at recommended dose took care of it in a couple months. My total cost was under $30.

 

[GardenReef]

Agree with vibrant. I picked up my tank used and neglected, but running with some corals so i inherited a lot of baggage. I held out trying to manually remove and use the normal array of critters, but patience with vibrant worked. The only downside was that i lost my macro algae. But not feeling like I was losing the battle was a motivator and reminder of patience and consistency. 3 years on and everyone made it and is thriving.

 

[Brian_68]

Vibrant cut it back for me but did not eliminate it. It did though drop nitrate and phosphate to zero and the sps were not happy and lost their color.

 

[Leadfooted]

I had a massive infestation occurring (hundreds of them). I added 20 emerald crabs and I’m blown away looking at my display today. I wish I took before and after pics to show. I can barely count 10 visible bubble algae and they’ll probably be gone overnight or tomorrow. I wanted to try this method before vibrant and I’m so glad I did. I’ll leave a few in the display and return the rest of the emeralds to my LFS. I have a 90g display , took them about 2 weeks to knock it out. Thankfully no other corals are getting picked at either. Just wanted to share my experience.

 

[Pistondog]

emerald crabs and urchins, 1 of each in waterbox 10.
Wiped it out except for what the urchin cloaks himself in, like 5 bubbles.

 

[Sdot]

after studying valonia invasions a long time I can safely say Vibrant has the highest statistical cure rate for valonia of anything including sally lightfoot/mithrax crabs etc. That doesn't mean Id use vibrant for everything, but its the best treatment for valonia Ive seen

anything else I could think of to recommend also has documented cures, before and after pics, but they're sparse compared to vibrant.

+1 for vibrant.... only issue, i start losing some of my sps after dosing it.

 

[Pistondog]

+1 for vibrant.... only issue, i start losing some of my sps after dosing it.

Might be a showstopper for some of us, thanks for the input.

 

[Mrmiles]

My emerald crab ignored the bubble algae but did enjoy my goniopora frag.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Vibrant wiped my bubble out with no effect on corals. I dosed at 80% of recommended dose

 

[PTXReef]

Bubble algae is one of those nuisance algaes that can take over a tank (ask @Rakie... he knows...). It can also be one of the most frustrating to eradicate because of trying to find predators that will take it out. The one predator I know of that is usually the go-to IMO is the emerald crab...but those guys can go rogue...

Have you found bubble algae to be a pain? What solutions have you found to be best?

This is one giant bubble algae bulb. Photo by @Mr V

That must look like a Christmas present if you drop that in front of an emerald crab ;Joyful . Honestly looks kinda cool!

 

[Pistondog]

That must look like a Christmas present if you drop that in front of an emerald crab ;Joyful . Honestly looks kinda cool!

Sailors eyeballs

Valonia ventricosa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[PTXReef]

Sailors eyeballs

Valonia ventricosa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Got it. Very cool sea watermelons! ;Hilarious

 

[rushbattle]

You have to dose NaPO4, or equivalent, and NaNO3 or equivalent, if you test anything close to zeros. If not, you will kill coral. I target 0.08 and 2ppm, respectively. Others use diffferent targets, and they are smarter than me, so no idea if there is a best range, or if different corals need different ranges, etc.

 

[blasterman]

I've also had emerald crabs ignore bubble algae and feast on SPS.

Never tried vibrant. Best way to clear bubble algae is to physically remove it and stay on top of it. Combining with vibrant is a good idea.

Bubble algae grows slow enough were unlike HA or others you can beat it with elbow grease.

 

[rennjidk]

I find emeralds to be Lazy.
My best success has been the use of Vibrant

What do you recommend now?

 

[vetteguy53081]

What do you recommend now?

Take a small needle and have 3/8 tubing ready and attach to end of tubing with rubber band and pop each one and siphon at same time- You will have removed all spores and foreign material in area.
Had to do this in the past with birdsnest coral and was gone 100%.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Many many Emerald crabs for the win