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Clownfishy
Well-Known Member
Can you point me to the link on rasping? Do you just take the top surface of the rock off and then squirt Hydrogen Peroxide on the surface?
My Experience Battling Green Hair Algae (GHA)
- Thread starter Clownfishy
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https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...lenge-thread-hydrogen-peroxide.187042/page-21
I chat about it there but it’s hard to get consistent before / during / after of the technique as there’s always a bit of theory discussion as well but that has the general approach.
Rasping is imperfect in that it’s a hands on, roughshod way of handling reef materials (in a world ruled by water actions and nutrient actions/hands off and detritus storage)
But it has an edge over other procedures being purely target centric and never touches coral...never subjects the whole tank to changes that corals may dislike. They’re easily kept wet / squirted w saltwater as we work externally
If someone doesn’t mind the direct access part, then rasping and a test rock determines how deep to rasp, how deep is based on the penetrance/growback of the anchors for the algae at hand
The few limited times I had to do it in years past on my rocks I only had to use a kitchen knife tip to precisely dig out the offenders, rinse em off, then peroxide the cleaned areas for cellular cleanup
I had to do it a couple times in guiding but this helped me see my own invader wasn’t that strong or deeply rooted. I got a little lucky and it didn’t come back
Sometimes there are 10-20% raspers where it does grow back too fast to be scalable for the big job, at least we’ll know off a small test rock before doing the big job, it’s at least nice to have a window to view the small scale work
You sure are resolved to keep fighting the gha. Nice / rare keep trucking there are many who want to see if you can dent it
Also I have one other ace in sleeve
I never use 3% that’s just what we work with in public for safety so that people aren’t harming / blinding themselves accidentally bc regular peroxide is safe to work with (and the trade off is being weaker on target, I’ve no time to play w invaders it’s war)
I use 35% which is liquid cobra buzzsaw, what it does to a target is nothing like 3% and the user must wear glasses eyewear protection, no room for mistakes on 35% but that’s what I used post rasp, it’s killer mean stuff, your local health food store in the refrigerated section twenty bucks a quart
The level of work you are willing to consider is rare, most are on the give up phase as of now. The veracity of your target to external work, nutrient controls and no sandbed fueling things just screams for the cobra
we really need 35% here it’s indicated imo, if you get it on your skin it’ll burn it a little but nbd, I get it on my hands commonly as I still use 35 on a paper towel to wipe inside of glass when tank is drained
But there is no room for eyewear lazy one drop on the eye, blanched cornea no heal, the stuff shouldn’t be sold OTC but it is, and it’s the best algae implement I’ve ever seen for external work...3% is a group of little girls wearing soft cotton gloves selling cookies comparatively heh and 35% is a bag of liquefied hungry + rabid pit vipers which take to algae like a wounded rabbit
I chat about it there but it’s hard to get consistent before / during / after of the technique as there’s always a bit of theory discussion as well but that has the general approach.
Rasping is imperfect in that it’s a hands on, roughshod way of handling reef materials (in a world ruled by water actions and nutrient actions/hands off and detritus storage)
But it has an edge over other procedures being purely target centric and never touches coral...never subjects the whole tank to changes that corals may dislike. They’re easily kept wet / squirted w saltwater as we work externally
If someone doesn’t mind the direct access part, then rasping and a test rock determines how deep to rasp, how deep is based on the penetrance/growback of the anchors for the algae at hand
The few limited times I had to do it in years past on my rocks I only had to use a kitchen knife tip to precisely dig out the offenders, rinse em off, then peroxide the cleaned areas for cellular cleanup
I had to do it a couple times in guiding but this helped me see my own invader wasn’t that strong or deeply rooted. I got a little lucky and it didn’t come back
Sometimes there are 10-20% raspers where it does grow back too fast to be scalable for the big job, at least we’ll know off a small test rock before doing the big job, it’s at least nice to have a window to view the small scale work
You sure are resolved to keep fighting the gha. Nice / rare keep trucking there are many who want to see if you can dent it
Also I have one other ace in sleeve
I never use 3% that’s just what we work with in public for safety so that people aren’t harming / blinding themselves accidentally bc regular peroxide is safe to work with (and the trade off is being weaker on target, I’ve no time to play w invaders it’s war)
I use 35% which is liquid cobra buzzsaw, what it does to a target is nothing like 3% and the user must wear glasses eyewear protection, no room for mistakes on 35% but that’s what I used post rasp, it’s killer mean stuff, your local health food store in the refrigerated section twenty bucks a quart
The level of work you are willing to consider is rare, most are on the give up phase as of now. The veracity of your target to external work, nutrient controls and no sandbed fueling things just screams for the cobra
we really need 35% here it’s indicated imo, if you get it on your skin it’ll burn it a little but nbd, I get it on my hands commonly as I still use 35 on a paper towel to wipe inside of glass when tank is drained
But there is no room for eyewear lazy one drop on the eye, blanched cornea no heal, the stuff shouldn’t be sold OTC but it is, and it’s the best algae implement I’ve ever seen for external work...3% is a group of little girls wearing soft cotton gloves selling cookies comparatively heh and 35% is a bag of liquefied hungry + rabid pit vipers which take to algae like a wounded rabbit
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That’s only to show our reefs are rather tolerant of the stuff, that’s me squirting one mil of the stuff onto a mushroom coral inside my tank, while drained and it doesn’t kill or recycle the tank even at one gallon total volume
I refilled the tank then drained out the runoff, but that runoff still contacted my lower corals and they don’t die. You’ll be working externally and directly on target which is safer
OP
OP
Clownfishy
Well-Known Member
I thought I would revisit this old thread as for a long while, I pretty much gave up and just lived with the algae on the rocks. I continued just scraping it off every now and again and just ignored it as it just would not go away. Well, that was until I was listening to a podcast with the owner of Brightwell and he was talking about the difference between MicroBacter 7 and MicroBacter Clean. He was saying that MicroBacter Clean consists of bacteria that will eat the algae off the surface of the rock. It all sounded interesting so I thought I would give MicroBacter Clean a go although I was very sceptical. Well, I have to say, it took a few weeks of dosing but it worked. After several weeks, a lot of the algae just disappeared and several more, my rocks are totally clean with no algae anywhere. When I say totally clean, I mean it looks like they they have been scrubbed clean and just put into a new aquarium. I have never seen things look so great. For years, I could not grow coralline algae because there was no clean surface for it to take hold due to the amount of hair algae. Now, I see coralline algae popping up everywhere.
I only mention it here as I know how frustrating it is dealing with this when you have people say "just reduce your nutrients" or "do more water changes". As you will have read from the start of this thread, I tried all of that and nearly destroyed my livestock, pushing nutrients too low and inheriting dino's! It may not be a miracle cure for everyone but after years seeing hair algae on my rocks and then consistently dosing MicroBacter Clean, I can honestly say it solved my problem for good.
Hope that helps some of you.
I only mention it here as I know how frustrating it is dealing with this when you have people say "just reduce your nutrients" or "do more water changes". As you will have read from the start of this thread, I tried all of that and nearly destroyed my livestock, pushing nutrients too low and inheriting dino's! It may not be a miracle cure for everyone but after years seeing hair algae on my rocks and then consistently dosing MicroBacter Clean, I can honestly say it solved my problem for good.
Hope that helps some of you.
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Johniejumbo
Valuable Member
Good to know! I might look into that stuff. My tank is many years old and everything is very health. Including the hair algae! For a while I was very aggressive at removing it and it worked well. But life gets in the way and ain’t nobody got time for that. I noticed the red slime bacteria “algae” was just taking the place of the hair algae. So using this as I remove it may make sense.
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