Hydrogen peroxide overdose-HELP

[Klyph]

Minor emergency…. Need advice. I’ve had a recent outbreak of green hair algae. Not crazy bad, but alstarting to appear all over the 150 g tank. I went overboard with using hydrogen peroxide, spot injecting the various pockets of the GHA. Well, it’s 12%, and I ended up using close to 1/2 cup of it before I considered the amount I was using.

Cut one day later and my tank now smells. I took a look at my chaeto, and it’s falling apart. I clearly went overboard. I’ve removed my chaeto and put it in new clean saltwater, to try and save it.

I had heard that hydrogen peroxide isn’t harmful to your tank (“it just turns into water and oxygen”). but I seem to have pushed that to the limit. Is there anything I can do address this, or will it self resolve over time?

 

[Tamberav]

It can be harmful if overdosed to SPS and things like shrimp.

I am not sure what is in your tank.

It should dissipate so not much I would do at this point.

 

[elorablue]

Minor emergency…. Need advice. I’ve had a recent outbreak of green hair algae. Not crazy bad, but alstarting to appear all over the 150 g tank. I went overboard with using hydrogen peroxide, spot injecting the various pockets of the GHA. Well, it’s 12%, and I ended up using close to 1/2 cup of it before I considered the amount I was using.

Cut one day later and my tank now smells. I took a look at my chaeto, and it’s falling apart. I clearly went overboard. I’ve removed my chaeto and put it in new clean saltwater, to try and save it.

I had heard that hydrogen peroxide isn’t harmful to your tank (“it just turns into water and oxygen”). but I seem to have pushed that to the limit. Is there anything I can do address this, or will it self resolve over time?

A water change wouldn’t hurt.

 

[Wyvern]

Put a big ole' bag of carbon in there.

 

[Klyph]

Put a big ole' bag of carbon in there.

I’ve already got a carbon reactor. Should I throw a bag directly in the return chamber too?

 

[Klyph]

It can be harmful if overdosed to SPS and things like shrimp.

I am not sure what is in your tank.

It should dissipate so not much I would do at this point.

My chaeto is dieing. I just pulled it out to try and save it. His long should I wait until it dissipates? Are there any measurable parameters that are impacted by this problem ?

 

[Wyvern]

I’ve already got a carbon reactor. Should I throw a bag directly in the return chamber too?

Thats a lot of H202, I would put as much carbon in the tank as I could right now.

 

[attiland]

Minor emergency…. Need advice. I’ve had a recent outbreak of green hair algae. Not crazy bad, but alstarting to appear all over the 150 g tank. I went overboard with using hydrogen peroxide, spot injecting the various pockets of the GHA. Well, it’s 12%, and I ended up using close to 1/2 cup of it before I considered the amount I was using.

Cut one day later and my tank now smells. I took a look at my chaeto, and it’s falling apart. I clearly went overboard. I’ve removed my chaeto and put it in new clean saltwater, to try and save it.

I had heard that hydrogen peroxide isn’t harmful to your tank (“it just turns into water and oxygen”). but I seem to have pushed that to the limit. Is there anything I can do address this, or will it self resolve over time?

Good news Hydrogen peroxide is very reactive is it is already gone from your system as you read this
Bad news you killed your chaeto. Buy a new batch.

 

[brandon429]

Carbon won’t help, it went safe about four hours after dosing though it’s targets may not be ok, you need to rip clean your tank and get all the waste out so the dying mass doesn’t chemically soup your tank.


all questions about rip cleaning a large tank are covered here

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Billldg]

@vetteguy53081

 

[brandon429]

Prediction: all animals and corals stay fine except for lysmata if any. Dying plant mass souping the system may or may not slowly harm corals compared to the clean water instated by rip cleans shown above.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Best bet is to discard the chaeto, and replace at a later time. Peroxide treatment works but it is also important to determine the cause of the GHA and remove as much as possible by hand and allow cleaner crew such as Astrea snail. turbo grazer, chiton, nerite snail and even urchin to consume remainder.
If tank is at or near a window, may be one cause, excess phosphate another as well as long periods of bright white lighting .
In addition to cleaners, reduce white light intensity.
Chaeto does well with a little trace or iron and iodide in its environment.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Minor emergency…. Need advice. I’ve had a recent outbreak of green hair algae. Not crazy bad, but alstarting to appear all over the 150 g tank. I went overboard with using hydrogen peroxide, spot injecting the various pockets of the GHA. Well, it’s 12%, and I ended up using close to 1/2 cup of it before I considered the amount I was using.

Cut one day later and my tank now smells. I took a look at my chaeto, and it’s falling apart. I clearly went overboard. I’ve removed my chaeto and put it in new clean saltwater, to try and save it.

I had heard that hydrogen peroxide isn’t harmful to your tank (“it just turns into water and oxygen”). but I seem to have pushed that to the limit. Is there anything I can do address this, or will it self resolve over time?

The peroxide has probably already reacted with organics by now. Adding an aquarium dechlorinator can help if you add it soon enough. Sodium thiosulfate is the active ingredient - it neutralizes oxidizers.
Jay

 

[brandon429]

Jay that’s neat it’s not just chlorine but oxidizers in general that’s truly neat info. That could be quite handy if OD events are caught quickly. Nobody’s mentioned that I’ve seen in 12 straight years messing around with peroxide in reefs. A protectant was available this whole time

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Jay that’s neat it’s not just chlorine but oxidizers in general that’s truly neat info. That could be quite handy if OD events are caught quickly. Nobody’s mentioned that I’ve seen in 12 straight years messing around with peroxide in reefs. A protectant was available this whole time

I have a 25# bucket of thio sitting in the basement in case we have an accidental ozone overdose.
Jay

 

[juarec0201]

Would like to thank my fellow reefers for the invaluable info. I was battling lyngbia and in my frustration grossly overdosed 35% peroxide. I remembered this thread and quickly dumped a bottle of prime I had. Things are a little upset but all looks well besides some cloudiness. This happened last night so I think my inhabitants where spared a large brunt of it. *I don’t think I’ll ever mess with that strength inside my tank anymore.

 

[bozo]

Would like to thank my fellow reefers for the invaluable info. I was battling lyngbia and in my frustration grossly overdosed 35% peroxide. I remembered this thread and quickly dumped a bottle of prime I had. Things are a little upset but all looks well besides some cloudiness. This happened last night so I think my inhabitants where spared a large brunt of it. *I don’t think I’ll ever mess with that strength inside my tank anymore.

Sorry to revive an old thread.

Did Seachem Prime work for you?

I just did the same thing about 6 hours ago.

I added a ton of 3% h2o2 accidentally. Maybe like 300-500 mL to 50 gallon (190 liter) tank.

Corals are all ticked

I read this thread and immediately added 5 full caps of Prime.

Hope it works.

Doing water change as I'm typing this lol

 

[brandon429]

No that can’t assist the situation at all.
at four hours it was dissipated anyway.

Prime doesn’t remove ammonia, it does nothing in reefing, don’t own it/it’s been discovered to be solely a sales trick lark all this time see threads in the chem forum. Don’t own it, it’s trick fluid, does absolutely nothing.

 

[bozo]

No that can’t assist the situation at all.
at four hours it was dissipated anyway.

Thanks Brandon

I did read a lot of your posts concerning hydrogen peroxide over the years.

I also read some of Jays posts mentioning h2o2 over doses may kill bacteria and other organisms. He also mentioned a dechlorinator would neutralize h2o2 which led me to think prime would fix this

All my corals are ticked. Do you think die off is going to occur or has already occurred? Maybe a lot of the beneficial bacterial were killed.

Im concerned I nuked my entire tank. I hope another cycle doesn’t happen.

I’m currently doing a 100% water change via dual head stenner over a span of 8 hours.

Thanks

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Sorry to revive an old thread.

Did Seachem Prime work for you?

I just did the same thing about 6 hours ago.

I added a ton of 3% h2o2 accidentally. Maybe like 300-500 mL to 50 gallon (190 liter) tank.

Corals are all ticked

I read this thread and immediately added 5 full caps of Prime.

Hope it works.

Doing water change as I'm typing this lol

I've only used sodium thiosulfate to neutralize oxidants. Seachem Prime is sodium dithionite. The chemistry of this in water is too complicated for me to follow this early in the morning, but it seems to become converted to sodium thiosulfate when added to water.

The trouble is, you need to get the dose correct. Using a calculator I have, it seems that if you added 300 ml of 3% peroxide, the dose in your tank is about 50 ppm peroxide. I can't tell you how much Prime to add though.

Do you happen to have a pool or a hot tub? You might be able to use the DPD chlorine test from that to determine the amount of oxidants in the water. Just add a double dose of Prime, let it mix, then test again.

Here is a link to my article on peroxide:

Hydrogen Peroxide Bench-testing

Bench testing of the effects of hydrogen peroxide in aquariums.

www.reef2reef.com

Jay