NUKE it or let it eventually kill everything?

[Xero]

Quite frankly. No. Why? Most of the time this algae exists because you've built an incomplete ecosystem, and it's doing the job of what something else should be doing. That said, nuking it just means you're starting over, killing everything. That's a little bit like working backwards in my book. Maybe there's some exceptions to the rule, but this should almost never be necessary in an established tank.

I'm all about proper algae ID and treating the problem with the right solution.

When fluconazole became a fad for treating bryopsis and derbesia, I was instead dealing with cladophora (turf algae), which I later confirmed with a microscope. There's numerous species of cladophora, as well as some other relatives like cladophoropsis. And all these things are highly resistant to fluconazole, not to say it doesn't work at all, but some species it's like trying to kill chaeto with fluco, as chaeto is yet ANOTHER relative of cladophora. That said, of all things, my solution was API Algaefix. And as much as people love to hate on API products, this is a legitimate algaecide with a warning on the label and everything. It's also known to work against dictyota and "ghost algae" which, I've never seen properly identified, but is possibly just another name for chrysophytes. And if you can't figure out what an algae is, then you need to ask around in various forums, do the research, put it under a scope, whatever it may be, and treat the problem with the correct solution.

Unfortunately, there's still some things I don't have a great answer for, like someone asked me about red turf algae. I didn't have a good answer for them other than urchins, which was working, but urchins love to be lazy and "farm" algae, leaving stuff behind for later.

That said, don't "nuke" your tank. Also, I'm very against peroxide as a general solution as well. Yes, it kills algae, it also kills your good bacteria. It kills everything. It's non-discriminate. To me, that's almost "nuking your tank" as well. Working backwards.

True story, my display tanks never have had bryopsis or caulerpa, but I've taken frags out of them, put them into my frag flat, only to have them grow it. Something must eat/control bryopsis and caulerpa in my display? Still trying to figure that one out. Of course, nothing eats the dang cladophora, but i've got an "algaefix" for that, haha!

 

[brandon429]

Peroxide doesn't do any of that we have a decade of study threads handy and the sensitive groups are only about 6 animals out of all those we keep. it literally tests to have zero impact on filtration bacteria, even in overdoses. the opposite of what one would expect is what occurs. I don't like dosing peroxide to the water, and my dentist never had me mouthwash with it either.

I like using it as a target polish after rasping on GHA or carpet algae portions of live rock, outside of the tank. that way its an exporting kill vs a detritus increasing kill. agreed if a tank is balanced, that type of access wont be needed.

But if I can reach in anyone's tank and shake a rock and clouding comes off, and sand comes off, then that tank is merely topping a bell curve or on the way up. on the way down, it'll be in the nuisance algae forum.



ReefingConcepts that's the order I like but w this twist at the end:

right when its all broken down, detail all the algae off then set back all the wet substrates and refill w new water and choose fish disease protocols etc

I like the start over, but w all existing clean surfaces.


*whats easy is stating here what works well for GHA


what isn't easy is pulling up Nuisance algae forum right now, and see which method is earning clean sustained fixed tanks. The only legit way to vet any claim in this thread is to run it on someone's GHA tank asking for help, and we track livetime results.

I too hate to have early use of any chems at all, we should strive for balance.

but if imbalance happens, don't tolerate it as we lose ground to anything, we can just make it clean again by will.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

A couple of those snails that get gigantic will clear your tank of all but bubble algae in a few days. I’d get those if it’s hair algae. My tank is currently overrun with Bubble algae. I don’t know where my emerald crabs are, but they aren’t on the algae.

 

[mindme]

If it kills the coral, then what is the point? That is not a solution at all.

I have used chemicals like those mentioned to combat tougher algae. I had some bryopsis and some bubble algae in my tank. I was easily able to treat it to kill those things without having any loss in my tank. I do not do acro's really though, but my monti's and such had no issues.

I had a particularly bad outbreak of GHA once. I had to go away on business for 10 days. I had my feeder set to go off way too often and in that 10 days it overfeed the tank extremely. Entire tank was covered in GHA. Didn't need to "nuke" the tank to get rid of it. Lots of water changes to remove nutrients and manual removal pretty much took care of the GHA. I did end up having to treat for the bryopsis later as I mentioned previously.

 

[vetteguy53081]

1. Would you take drastic measures to kill algae even if it means killing coral?

NO. there are many measures one can take, and if nuking was ever a consideration, I am in the wrong hobby defeating the purpose of collecting coral. Blackout is the easiest method in addition to many available algae eaters.

2. Have you ever had to "NUKE" your tank to save it?

No. I pulled as much as I could by hand and performed a blackout with peroxide and bacteria while adding appropriate CUC to finish the task.

 

[DeniseAndy]

I have been dealing with it recently. Been hard on me because I have not had this issue in over 8 years. When I restarted my tank after a move, it has been a battle. Makes no sense as the rock came literally from my tank that was just waiting in buckets.
I think it came down to a loss of all my fish, going fallow, and not getting out in front. Although, I did tear it back twice and replaced all rocks and scrubbed, etc. Just been hard.
I would not risk my corals per say to do this though. I remove them and put in a qt to scrub rocks if needed. Although, in pouring peroxide on my rocks once in frustration, I lost 4 fish (2 azure damsels and 2 tuxedo damsels). Apparently, I did not notice them sitting in the rocks I doused and they had burned their gills. Very heartbreaking. I was super upset with myself.
Now I am just pulling out daily, working on a better algae system as my UAS is too young to be working.
When I had a briopsis outbreak on vacation like 8 years ago, I worked for months to get it all cleaned up and the tank was clear of algae until I moved.

EDIT: I replaced the rocks with rocks from my sump, not dry rock.

 

[ReefGeezer]

You’re never going to quickly eradicate algae using vibrant and gfo without killing your corals in the process. These products work by starving algae of nitrates and phosphates. You know what also needs nitrates and phosphates? Coral. It may be tedious, but your best bet is manual removal, even if you have to do it over and over again for months on end. Eventually and with enough diligence, you’ll beat algae. It CANNOT thrive of you’re constantly physically removing it.

I can't hardly reach in the tank to flip over a wayward snail without breaking a coral. Trying to get algae out quickly by manual removal would be like nuking the tank one broken coral at a time!

 

[lapin]

Never worried about it, like cyano. If its gona grow then its gona grow.

 

[Conrad Noto]

NUKE may be a strong term but it's what I'm calling it.

Have you ever battled algae so much and so long that nothing and I mean nothing has worked besides an all out onslaught that may hurt or even kill coral? Let me refer to this as "nuking" your tank. By that I mean using whatever means necessary to eliminate the algae.

In my case I think I have recently done that and have lost most of my acropora. The relentless hair algae had already smothered several acros and it was either pull out all the stops or let the algae KILL EVERYTHING! For me I'm finally beating the hair algae and it's white and almost gone from most places. The frag tank is almost 90% clear now and the main display about 75% clear.

What did I do? I made a cocktail of Reef Flux, Vibrant and GFO and hit it hard. I still have a few acro colonies that look to be doing fine and my other corals show no signs of distress so nuking may be a strong term but let's think about it. If you try every natural means necessary to remove algae, to no avail, do you continue to just let your tank turn into a swamp and kill everything or do you take extreme measures to save what you can? Let's talk about that today!

1. Would you take drastic measures to kill algae even if it means killing coral?

2. Have you ever had to "NUKE" your tank to save it?

Not for algae or diatoms. Not for Ich, yes for velvet. Happy to say in 35 years no major algae, a few diatom blooms on new set ups. I always run ozone/ UV.

 

[revhtree]

Very good solution about fragging and starting over.

If I had that serious of a problem, I would just address it naturally, or I would frag my tank, break down, and start over.
Fish disease on the other hand, I might frag and nuke my tank to get rid of fish disease

 

[Xero]

Peroxide doesn't do any of that we have a decade of study threads handy and the sensitive groups are only about 6 animals out of all those we keep. it literally tests to have zero impact on filtration bacteria, even in overdoses. the opposite of what one would expect is what occurs. I don't like dosing peroxide to the water, and my dentist never had me mouthwash with it either.

I like using it as a target polish after rasping on GHA or carpet algae portions of live rock, outside of the tank. that way its an exporting kill vs a detritus increasing kill. agreed if a tank is balanced, that type of access wont be needed.

Sooo...you do and you don't agree? Haha. I don't think peroxide is going to crash your cycle, but I just think it's sort of a blanket solution people give out, much like how fluconazole has become this "knee-jerk" reaction. And I know people who swear against it and run some of the cleanest tanks you've ever seen. I've just come to believe it's rarely, if ever, necessary. That's just my opinion though....

There's a lot of reason to believe that chemiclean is likely just sodium percarbonate and a flocculant, especially after the "antibiotics" were removed from it. And there's numerous studies you can find on the subject. Needless to say, percarbonate is nothing but peroxide and soda ash once it hits water. And people don't usually crash their cycle with chemiclean, but, occasionally it's problematic. I'd sooner look in to boosting the good bacteria in the tank, as opposed to strictly focusing on killing off the "bad" you don't like. Leading back to the notion that an incomplete ecosystem is to blame for many of these problems.....

 

[Crustaceon]

I can't hardly reach in the tank to flip over a wayward snail without breaking a coral. Trying to get algae out quickly by manual removal would be like nuking the tank one broken coral at a time!

It sounds to me like a great opportunity to frag everything your want to keep, place it in a temporary and do a massive algae “purge” in this display.

 

[ThRoewer]

I have mostly real live rock (the good stuff from the ocean you can't get anymore) with lots of interesting tubeworms and other critters and would never kill all those just to get rid of some algae or other nuisance critters that will come back sooner or later anyway.
Algae are part of the reef environment - otherwise, there would be no herbivores on the reefs.

Nutrients have nothing to do with them either. I had the most horrible algae outbreak with GHA and especially a red net-like algae covering everything. And I have 3 refugia with Chaetomorpha, Graciella, Caulerpa, and other macroalgae. The volume of those refugia equals or exceeds that of the main tank and is in part on a reverse light schedule. That should be more than enough to gobble up all excess nutrients.

My clean-up solution was manual removal of the long GHA and then putting 4 large long-spine urchins, about 30 Trochus snails, and about 50 red hermits to work. Especially the urchins decimated the algae wherever they could reach them. The snails and hermits do their part in keeping the algae down.
I still need to add some reef-safe herbivore fish to combat longer strands and places the urchins can't reach. I'm thinking of a pair of baby Foxface rabbitfish who are equipped to reach into crevices that are inaccessible to the urchins and snails. I also still need to find a reef-safe blenny (one that doesn't prefer eating corals as my Ecsenius bicolor did).

 

[ReefGeezer]

It sounds to me like a great opportunity to frag everything your want to keep, place it in a temporary and do a massive algae “purge” in this display.

I don't have massive algae that needs to be purged. I have a little here and there. It comes and goes. It's on the rise a little right now, but it isn't threatening anything or unsightly. Even if the algae were getting out of hand, I would never...ever... consider breaking colonies just to have an opportunity to physically remove it just so it could return in 6 months. It might take longer to get algae under control, but for me there are options beyond tearing up a reef.

 

[Mikeltee]

Seriously? How is this any different than flushing a problem fish that no one wants and is killing all the other inhabitants? Yep.... about got banned for stating that as a last alternative for that one. Animals are animals.

 

[Thespammailaccount]

Get some established live rock. Problem solved

 

[fishbulb]

I just did this a couple months ago, and I couldn't be more happy that I did. After about 5 years of farming bubble algae, I just felt like I was going to quit the hobby. I've been keeping fish for about 34 years and reefs for about 20. But this tank just sucked all of the life and enjoyment out of the hobby. I spent hundreds if not close to a thousand dollars over those 6 years on emerald crab after emerald crab and every other possible solution. The weird thing is that the SPS never took a hit. I was throwing out pounds of corals every few months but I wouldn't dare sell it. I lost all of my beautiful rainbow acans very quickly as those just got overrun by the the bubble algae.

I just fragged the corals that I wanted to keep and put them on a coral rack. I then just threw out 100% of the live rock and replaced it with all new dry rock and glued my frags back down. I then seeded it with fresh emerald crabs without any bubble algae having a chance to overwhelm them. The tank has now been beautiful for 3 or so months and we couldn't be happier. I see no sign of algae getting a new foot hold so this was just such a blessing. So glad I did it. I would have dismantled the tank within months and switched over to discus I think without finally just throwing in the towel and starting with fresh rocks. The big thing that I learned is to be careful how much aquascape you mortar down. It was VERY hard to remove the HUGE overhand. But glad I did!

FB

 

[Claire Austin]

Chemical warfare!!! Got tired of GHA choking all my gorgonians. Massive clean up crew. Brushed them with a baby toothbrush. Tried peroxide, but they closed up for a week. Even my seahorses were wearing flowing green wigs like troll dolls! So I walloped the tank with fluconazole, picked/brushed out what I could, then hit it again 2 weeks later. Done.

 

[Dennisd]

NO!!! Safe the corals. Isn't this what reefing is all about?

 

[Dennisd]

Get Mexican turbos or seahares. If that doesn't work get chemicals. This is a combination of science and a lot of trial and error. Never give up on your tank. God Bless America and Reefing of course!