Hydrogen Peroxide still used for algae?

[starypotter]

Hi everyone,
I have some zoas with a bunch of hair algae on them, and even some with bryopsis. While I'm working on fixing the levels that got me the hair algae to begin with, some of it is just tucked in between polyps a bit too well.
I've seen hydrogen peroxide be recommended to me recently but many of the sources I find about it are nearly 10 years old and I don't see many things that are more recent which strikes me as odd. Is using hydrogen peroxide still the go-to or is there something else I could try?

 

[hotashes]

@brandon429

A.

 

[starypotter]

I should add that I plan to add Fluconazole to the tank for the bryopsis issue but I need to order it first. And all the frags do have a... film sort? of algae on the plugs as well, you could scrape it off somewhat with your fingernail but it coats the whole top of the plug. Not as concerned about that and I can't believe I forgot the pictures, I'll add in a minute.

 

[starypotter]

 

[lariat8099]

Following. I have the same issue. I have some between my zoas. Please advise

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef2reef-pest-algae-challenge-thread-hydrogen-peroxide.187042/

team just as a base read wanted to link that

but it distills to this based on those pics above in my opinion:

do consider fluconazole if its a bad tankwide invasion, or it can be used secondarily after the peroxide assessment we cover regarding rasping/and applied peroxide to former invaded areas vs just placing peroxide into the tank water, or just on the target without actually rasping/ripping that target unanchored off the base first.

I know you can't knife stab your nice zoas

tweezer it out
pull it up off the coenenchymal tissue I didn't bother spell check heh
but its true that zoanthid flesh is substrate, its written in the books. inclusions, pebbles, algae etc. In this case use the tweezers to pull it off the flesh and I would see if that alone stops growback before we test apply peroxide to that skin of the zo

Regarding hard frag plugs, scrapable areas, def hit those hard with a metal knife precision tip

debride like a dentist does some plaque

the rasp is what removes the algae off a scrapable hard surface, not the peroxide
the peroxide is applied to the clean condition, post tweezer or post rasp, that's the trick for 2018 to reduce growback

peroxide will kill both those targets for sure, but they'll growback without some amplification being built into the step

at any point fluconazole can be used, its indicated for this type of invader, but do practice some actual work modeling and testing on targets as well, develop more than one response ability is my offer


****something I feel very comfortable in saying based on my time in messages and threads is to remark on this cycle here involving real estate and algae management:

we have to strive to catch all invasions, especially anchored ones, before they take mass ground, that's number one rule.

ANY way you kill off a mass of algae, any way, leaves a huge dead open gray field like you see on discovery channel of a dying reef


what takes over dying reefs, regardless of nutrients


algae, that which you just killed after hesitation...

so, the rule is, be quick early in the invasion to debride and remove tiny spots of algae, before they take over and literally exclude corals and coralline, so that you are guiding your mass of reef rocks away from plant dominance and into pigmented animal dominance...coralline, coral, fanworms, various sponges, all the goodies. waiting too late to begin surgical scraping and rasping means there's BIG catchup time needed for that rock to rebound and become anything that looks like ideal purple live rock. be busy, early.

by hand guiding algae out while small, you protect the coralline and coral from nearby areas that are naturally algae rejecting if they're not overwhelmed.

there comes a point in any tank challenge where we must take action, and if that action catches up a bunch of space at once then be prepared to really rework those areas time and time again, as algae always pops up on the barren reef landscape.

use fluc for noncompliant reefs, agreed its ok and a fine partner in the war. use test modeling we speak of in that thread to know what works; don't subject your whole reef to testing. You can use fluc in a bucket of water + rock as a side test, we always have ways to mini model the algae fix so that we know what works for the main tank, before we run it.

our rasping is a neat two edged sword; it clears both the invader and 100% of all bio excluding life forms like coralline, so we must not wait until deep into an invasion to resort to physical force on next go round. Im just saying by staying on top of an invasion early, by any means necessary, you prevent the mass portion of your live rock real estate from being forced into a -monoculture- of plants and hardly any animals.

if you keep the plants in control, or totally gone right off the bat (never accept any uglies phase in reefing, ever) then you immediately allow bio excluders like coralline and coral to take over, turning those grounds into a heterogeneic culture of animals vastly outdominating plants, and we're not having to rasp anyones diverse animals off a section of reef. its always plants.

 

[starypotter]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/reef2reef-pest-algae-challenge-thread-hydrogen-peroxide.187042/

team just as a base read wanted to link that

but it distills to this based on those pics above in my opinion:

do consider fluconazole if its a bad tankwide invasion, or it can be used secondarily after the peroxide assessment we cover regarding rasping/and applied peroxide to former invaded areas vs just placing peroxide into the tank water, or just on the target without actually rasping/ripping that target unanchored off the base first.

I know you can't knife stab your nice zoas

tweezer it out
pull it up off the coenenchymal tissue I didn't bother spell check heh
but its true that zoanthid flesh is substrate, its written in the books. inclusions, pebbles, algae etc. In this case use the tweezers to pull it off the flesh and I would see if that alone stops growback before we test apply peroxide to that skin of the zo

Regarding hard frag plugs, scrapable areas, def hit those hard with a metal knife precision tip

debride like a dentist does some plaque

the rasp is what removes the algae off a scrapable hard surface, not the peroxide
the peroxide is applied to the clean condition, post tweezer or post rasp, that's the trick for 2018 to reduce growback

peroxide will kill both those targets for sure, but they'll growback without some amplification being built into the step

at any point fluconazole can be used, its indicated for this type of invader, but do practice some actual work modeling and testing on targets as well, develop more than one response ability is my offer


****something I feel very comfortable in saying based on my time in messages and threads is to remark on this cycle here involving real estate and algae management:

we have to strive to catch all invasions, especially anchored ones, before they take mass ground, that's number one rule.

ANY way you kill off a mass of algae, any way, leaves a huge dead open gray field like you see on discovery channel of a dying reef


what takes over dying reefs, regardless of nutrients


algae, that which you just killed after hesitation...

so, the rule is, be quick early in the invasion to debride and remove tiny spots of algae, before they take over and literally exclude corals and coralline, so that you are guiding your mass of reef rocks away from plant dominance and into pigmented animal dominance...coralline, coral, fanworms, various sponges, all the goodies. waiting too late to begin surgical scraping and rasping means there's BIG catchup time needed for that rock to rebound and become anything that looks like ideal purple live rock. be busy, early.

by hand guiding algae out while small, you protect the coralline and coral from nearby areas that are naturally algae rejecting if they're not overwhelmed.

there comes a point in any tank challenge where we must take action, and if that action catches up a bunch of space at once then be prepared to really rework those areas time and time again, as algae always pops up on the barren reef landscape.

use fluc for noncompliant reefs, agreed its ok and a fine partner in the war. use test modeling we speak of in that thread to know what works; don't subject your whole reef to testing. You can use fluc in a bucket of water + rock as a side test, we always have ways to mini model the algae fix so that we know what works for the main tank, before we run it.

our rasping is a neat two edged sword; it clears both the invader and 100% of all bio excluding life forms like coralline, so we must not wait until deep into an invasion to resort to physical force on next go round. Im just saying by staying on top of an invasion early, by any means necessary, you prevent the mass portion of your live rock real estate from being forced into a -monoculture- of plants and hardly any animals.

if you keep the plants in control, or totally gone right off the bat (never accept any uglies phase in reefing, ever) then you immediately allow bio excluders like coralline and coral to take over, turning those grounds into a heterogeneic culture of animals vastly outdominating plants, and we're not having to rasp anyones diverse animals off a section of reef. its always plants.

Before I knew what the bryopsis was, I decided to give it a good yank with some tweezers. It pulled half my zoa 'colony' with it. I went through and plucked off the rest of the bryopsis from that new frag, or as much as I could at least and have glued it to a small crumble of rock. But that first pull was in the water, so I'm sure that some escaped and floated off which is what's really worrying to me. I plan on taking a really close look at the coral with the bryopsis problem to see where it is and what I can do.

I never really noticed it until reading this, but all of the GHA that's taking over is only one one rock, the light facing side of some base rock. The other rock was live and well established, on those rocks this takeover isn't nearly as bad. All that lovely fresh real estate you mentioned.
I'll go through and scrape all of the frag plugs I can as much as I can. Maybe even see if I could glue them to something new if it's really bad.

I've read through the first bit of that post, your first several posts there. I didn't even think of putting peroxide in the tank, I was planning to dip the offending frags. Is there a recommended dose for after I do the scraping work?

And do you have any preferred method of phosphate reduction? My nitrates are 0, but my phosphates are 5. Possibly because I just upgraded and got a bunch of new dry rock in there, or possibly because since there's only inverts in there I've been feeding them junky goldfish food. Probably all of the above.

 

[Fishy_mcfish]

I still use peroxide on my zoas, let them soak for about 5 minutes then scrub gently with a toothbrush, then rinse really well in a container of saltwater before putting them back in the tank

 

[John3]

I only dip for 2 mins and make sure to use tank water and not fresh, it makes a difference. A 2 min dip will kill all that algae, no scrubbing necessary.

 

[smoothmove]

I just did this to mine last week and the results were amazing. Wish I knew this years ago.

 

[hotashes]

I just did this to mine last week and the results were amazing. Wish I knew this years ago.

What % h2o2 was used? What procedure did you do?

Good feedback

A.

 

[smoothmove]

I did 3% over the counter from Walmart. I used a cheap sprayer and sprayed it completely. Waited 2-3 minutes and then rinsed it off with a bucket of tank water. Then put the rock and corals back into the tank. Discard the used bucket of water. Took a day for the corals to open up again. If you are worried, you can dilute the H2O2 with 1/2 water. I know it worked great for my zoas and the bryopsis is gone. Didn't seen to hurt the Coraline algae and the rock didn't bleach out.

 

[hotashes]

I would just advise when you're rinsing the h2o2 off the rocks in old tank water, use a baster to blast any detritus from within the porous rock and swoosh the rock around also before placing back into display tank. Happy days [emoji1360]

A.

 

[smoothmove]

I dunked it several times. I also used a filter sponge to brush off the rock to make sure it was clean.

The residual H2O2 shouldn't and did't hurt anything.

 

[John3]

I wouldn’t worry too much about residual H202 on the frag getting into your tank. When I had Dinos I dosed 5ml of 3% H2O2 into my 29g on a daily basis for a month. The only thing it bothered were the dinos and some gha that was around. All my corals and fish were fine.

 

[starypotter]

I'll be trying this today thanks for the input @John3 @smoothmove @Fishy_mcfish and @hotashes. My last peroxide dip did nothing for my bryopsis problem, I plucked out all that I could and dipped it but the bryopsis is now back unfortunately. It must be growing out of the zoa flesh itself since I put the zoa on a new plug and it's still coming back. I just got my order of Fluconazole as well so I plan to dose that either today or tomorrow after I check all of my numbers.

 

[mcarroll]

Just for reference, Algae Cure!! Spot Treating Algae With Peroxide

This is how I'd do peroxide if I was gonna.

This way, you're able to put the peroxide into the exact space you want it in, with minimal disturbance to the tank or corals. You can amp the treatment way up, as-needed....either increase the treatment time or increase the concentration of the peroxide you use...or increase both concentration and treatment time.

How are your numbers now, BTW?

 

[starypotter]

Just for reference, Algae Cure!! Spot Treating Algae With Peroxide

This is how I'd do peroxide if I was gonna.

This way, you're able to put the peroxide into the exact space you want it in, with minimal disturbance to the tank or corals. You can amp the treatment way up, as-needed....either increase the treatment time or increase the concentration of the peroxide you use...or increase both concentration and treatment time.

How are your numbers now, BTW?

Nitrates are still 0.
My phosphate is now down to .25 from 5.0.
Calcium- 320- just dosed some purple up
ALK- 6.5- I need to find a product to use to raise that. I'll probably order some of the BRS stuff and put it in my ATO.


I added a bag of phosguard to the sump, not sure if that did much since it was used previously in the tank this was an upgrade from and was starting to yellow, I imagine it did most of the work. I also started dosing very very watered down ammonia. I have no fish in the system to produce anything for nitrates, and it was recommended I dose nitrates to help lower the phosphates. With no fish to add their little bits to the system naturally I decided to improvise without buying one of the nitrate products. I got a tiny splash of ammonia in a cup, used one of those calculators online to figure out about how much to get to 2ppm, filled the cup the rest of the way with tank water, it was about a tiny puddle of ammonia and the rest of a regular 8oz glass with water, and over a couple days just squirt a pipette of it into the entry chamber of the sump every once in a while.

Corals are all still showing exceptional growth, only problem is that the algae still is as well. I'm actually growing a ton of ulva all over the display tank in addition to cyano, GHA, and bryopsis. GHA is all over the sump, mangroves are growing roots like there's no tomorrow, my pencil cap macro has sprouted yet another head. GSP is already filling in from where I fragged it just the other day. Even my single mini polyp zoa from when the bryopsis ripped my frag in half is starting to get a bit bigger. I cut back to only feeding some bits of frozen fish once in a while for my carnivore shrimp and big hermit.

 

[saltyhog]

@mcarroll will H2O2 have any impact on inverts like shrimp or my pom pom crab?