Is H2O2 dosing the secret to clean rocks?

[ScottR]

I’ve been dosing H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) for months and there are many threads here about it. I started dosing when I got dinos just to help with the battle. Dinos went away and I stayed away from algal blooms. I then got some cyano in some low flow spots. I added flow but also started to slowly dose more H2O2. The end result was clean beautiful purple rocks. So I dose 5 mL (6% solution) daily by hand to my 130g. Only downside is my zoas close up for 5 minutes almost immediately but have no long term downsides.

Here are the beautiful, clean purple rocks with healthy SPS.

Curious to hear others’ experiences. And no I don’t see this as a fix to algae problems but just part of a maintenance regimen.

 

[xxkenny90xx]

These fish are already drinking all of my vodka and using up the wife's vinegar, now I have give them the peroxide too

 

[brandon429]

Wow Scott that’s a sharp sharp reef! deep purple coralline just extremely nice growth there


Does peroxide use harm filter bacteria? no, says this study

Does anyone dose ammonia and/or how would one try?

Team would anyone with a seneye dose one mil of 3% per ten gallons and lets track if nitrification is affected one iota this data is missing from all of reefing by the way. Dont begin peroxide dosing if you don’t already use it whenev but if someone has already used it and owns a seneye we...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[ScottR]

Wow Scott that’s a sharp sharp reef! deep purple coralline just extremely nice growth there

Thanks for stopping by Brandon! When I put my hand in my tank, it comes out purple ;Smuggrin

 

[brandon429]

im so glad to see all the stigma behind peroxide dosing totally gone. TMZ, a mod in the chem forum at reefcentral and a longtime daily/hourly lurker here at rtr, was an early proponent for peroxide use and he‘s very proud of all the advancements made with peroxide dosing in-tank not.




even though it burns everything, apparently organisms with metabolic systems in place to offset peroxide don’t mind, while algae tends to mind greatly. Filter bacteria couldn’t care less, that’s what wasn’t known in 2012 but turned out to be the case.

 

[brandon429]

That’s truly a massive row of top shelf zoanthids

 

[LeftyReefer]

I've been dosing H202 for a couple weeks now and am really liking the results too.

I've been dosing 6 ml of 3% solution to my 45G. Like you said, Zoa's close up for a few minutes, but nothing else seems to mind other than the algae. My SPS haven't seemed to mind at all.

I know RHF has said that peroxide can kill bio-filter bacteria, so I was a bit worried about long-term dosing, or over doing it.

I dose twice per day, both during lights out period.

 

[brandon429]

Inside a reef tank vs teased out on a glass slide, filter bacteria are housed and insulated in protective biofilm, this is affording the protection needed

The context of the dosing matters 100%


same exact scenario applies from the web/ put into google “nitrifying bacteria killed by air contact?”

biocon labs online site, states nitrifying bacteria cannot tolerate air exposure.

I then made a 33 minute video of my entire reef drained empty sitting cold in the air, refilled, one take no edits, and doing great next day.


a work thread exists to show opposite claims for any rule in reefing because context matters so much. Peroxide was 100% undoubtedly for sure *hated* by most forum managers and readers when it emerged in practice in 2010.

Even though Justin C had already posted several reviews on its utility in 09-10 blogs and readers were happy to get new ideas from him, the big online forums of the era now molasses slow absolutely worked hard to squelch all practices with it from their daily posters.


who didn’t squelch the info- reef2reef (Troylees’s thread still running, 2010, a sticky for a decade) and nano-reef.com


its amazing what free open markets have developed and where the market constituents gravitated.

for sure peroxide is a great and ok tool to use in or on reef tank substrate


lysmata shrimp are about the main risks, most else rolls fine. Though there are reports of peroxide wiping out a tank, I just read that occurring in a kalk overdose post too, and one from vibrant.

patterns are key, peroxide is known safe now for in-tank reef use.

 

[brandon429]

Jonathan as you’re reading can you pls email this link to T and Disc-1 for me

Im curious how peroxide has worked for them or trends they notice in web posts regarding adding peroxide into reefs.

 

[brandon429]

Number of people who report successful dinos winning dosing only peroxide: about fifty thousand +

Troylees thread is fifty pages long with nearly all positive outcomes and cures.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Hoe does peroxide impact macro algaes? I like the idea as a treatment to hair/dino and others but my macros are just starting to explode.

 

[brandon429]

We used it to melt caulerpa racemosa hundreds of times at the ratio of 1 mil per ten gallons. Sometimes they don’t respond, nothing happens but usually most macros will melt in two days.

*anyone reading can consider sub testing

paint bucket

five gallons heater airstone and marker line for topoff reset.

add rock and test target

dose the bucket with .5 to 1 mil representing a medium to stronger dosing run, and see how the bucket alone fares. Upscale to main tank if target succumbs in bucket. Known sensitives are lysmsta, anemones though I’ve never seen one die they just get mad, Xenia, hermodice fireworms.


ive found no fish and no corals to be patterned sensitive and in about five hundred tank overdose threads only one had a true hard cycle loss of filtration system for a while (because they had cloudy, smelly water and dead animals, we weren’t being misled by api that day either) and it was a poster at reefcentral whos automated doser released one gallon of 35% peroxide into his tank all at once, two hours later it looked like the Mars wasteland and was gray for days.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

Got it, peroxide is a no go for NR!

 

[brandon429]

nobody has worked with it in non photosynthetic setups that I know of. perhaps in those setups its not needed anyway

 

[Dkmoo]

Wait. H2O2 does or does not impact microfauna? Here i dont just mean nitrifying bacteria, i mean all the bacteria that make up the bottom layer of the microfauna food chain

I've always known that it works against algae control but the resulting cleanness is one of "forced equilibrium", where itd work as long as you keep it up but algae will return if you stop bc of the sterilizing affect it has on the microfauna and the natural balance. So I've always viewed it in the same category as other bottle treatments or GFOs where its an effective algae control via artificial equilibrium at the expense of permanent tank dependency.

If new research/knowledge suggest that it doesn't impact the naturally established microfauna then I might give it shot as a temporary treatment the next time my tank goes out of balance and has excess algae.

 

[brandon429]

here's the detail on that

consider from threads reefs that ran peroxide. are they better, or worse overall, dead floating scums or slicks on top from dieoff, shell castings, I promise its not bad when diluted.

now applied to a patch of gha, I myself have fizzed a micro brittle star and a dead pod, but getting the patch out benefitted me better.

that's no excuse am making for killing some things potentially, but overall its not amounting to notable loss and the presence of such items aren't preventing the need for peroxide.

 

[Subsea]

Wait. H2O2 does or does not impact microfauna? Here i dont just mean nitrifying bacteria, i mean all the bacteria that make up the bottom layer of the microfauna food chain

I've always known that it works against algae control but the resulting cleanness is one of "forced equilibrium", where itd work as long as you keep it up but algae will return if you stop bc of the sterilizing affect it has on the microfauna and the natural balance. So I've always viewed it in the same category as other bottle treatments or GFOs where its an effective algae control via artificial equilibrium at the expense of permanent tank dependency.

If new research/knowledge suggest that it doesn't impact the naturally established microfauna then I might give it shot as a temporary treatment the next time my tank goes out of balance and has excess algae.

Just like in a garden. If you remove weeds and leave an unoccupied space, usually something ugly will fill the space.

I don’t want my system squeaky clean. Nitrification bacteria are strong like bull, no doubt they can handle peroxide, not so much with micro fauna & fana.

In my systems, micro fauna are first priority for long term success. I will use peroxide on a toothbrush for cleaning nuisance algae or peroxide in a needle to remove pest Aptasia, but when it comes to oxidizer in reef tank bulk water, I prefer oxygen saturated water. It’s my thought to allow passive O2 oxidation as opposed to strong oxidizer like H202.

 

[Krully]

@brandon429 You mention Lysmata shrimps, I have a skunk cleaner, is H2O2 a no no when you have one of those? I wouldn't want to kill it but I'd take the help with unwanted algae...

 

[RMS18]

I use my tang, foxface and snails to get clean rocks. Rocks have no visible algae, just Coraline and corals.

 

[brandon429]

in my opinion lysmata have some type of metabolic deficit or issue with peroxide and they have the highest loss rate Ive ever seen from any reef organism, guessing about 90% of the time they die from literally any contact.

and then the outliers, bulletproof ones who get fizzed lol they're rare. we should relocate them for sure before dosing trials.