Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide
- Thread starter brandon429
- Start date
- Tagged users None
corey01
Active Member
ok so it sounds like I should just avoid using it. it was only 4 dollars so its not a huge loss.
just for laughs I might take a few milliliters and put it in a gallon of Rodi and test for phosphates.
I was simply hoping it could be used is all, I picked up 2 bottles of 3% for 74 cents while I was out so im stocked either way.
just for laughs I might take a few milliliters and put it in a gallon of Rodi and test for phosphates.
I was simply hoping it could be used is all, I picked up 2 bottles of 3% for 74 cents while I was out so im stocked either way.
OP
OP
This is what I claim to be the best current anti bryopsis method we have among options, if rock access is possible (depends on how bad we want to win)
http://reef2reef.com/threads/5-new-...ed-using-a-rasp-and-a-test-rock.257862/page-2
***look at ReeferFox's workup of the rare invader called chrysophytes> very well doc'd
http://reef2reef.com/threads/chrysophytes-help-me-cure-it.263759/
http://reef2reef.com/threads/5-new-...ed-using-a-rasp-and-a-test-rock.257862/page-2
***look at ReeferFox's workup of the rare invader called chrysophytes> very well doc'd
http://reef2reef.com/threads/chrysophytes-help-me-cure-it.263759/
Last edited:
mlb7225
Active Member
@thetedinator , here is the thread I was telling you about.
I've been soaking individual rocks now for the past 1.5 months or so. So far this is the only method that has worked to eliminate my caulerpa. I soak the rock in a 1:1 mix of salt water and H2O2 for 24 hours. Next I scrub the rock to remove loose pieces of caulerpa that are still attached to the rock. Then I soak the rock in new salt water in an orange HD bucket with the lid for 3 days. I run a powerhead to keep the water flowing while it is soaking. Last, the rock is placed in my sump for approximately 1 week before putting it back in the DT. This is the only method that has worked for me. I still have 4 pieces of rock to go. Hopefully by the end of September I will be caulerpa free.
OP
OP
http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/376171-bryopsis-or-gha/page-2#entry5390496
Look at Holy Carps use of 35% here, hardly anyone uses that stuff ( I do, 3% weak)
Look at Holy Carps use of 35% here, hardly anyone uses that stuff ( I do, 3% weak)
OP
OP
https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/380442-hydrogen-peroxide-and-dinoflagellates/
h202 is still handy in the fight against invasive dinos. large dino threads on the subject show many dosers having to try hard to win, no single doser is really cornering the market on water additives to fight dinos...peroxide is a fair attempt to make. its main benefit is knowing which corals and animals are tolerant to the trial run ahead of time.
h202 is still handy in the fight against invasive dinos. large dino threads on the subject show many dosers having to try hard to win, no single doser is really cornering the market on water additives to fight dinos...peroxide is a fair attempt to make. its main benefit is knowing which corals and animals are tolerant to the trial run ahead of time.
Last edited:
Ok... here we go. Pics below. I had a major issue controlling nitrates in my tank... I was using an external filter for carbon and I think it'd turned into a nitrate factory.
I already had both cheato and caulerpa in my fuge but nitrates stuck around 25ppm.
I removed the filter completely and started vodka dosing... over a period of about 6 weeks, nitrate had reduced to undetectable but phosphate stuck at about 1.2ppm. I upped the vodka dose and po4 reduced to zero.
So far so good? Not so much... whilst po4 was high but nitrate was low I started to get cyano. I also noticed a small patch of bryopsis.
The cyano grew and grew... I figured it was using carbon as it's energy source as I'd also started to see nitrates creeping back up to about 5ppm.
As a result, I stopped carbon dosing... the cyano stayed, bryopsis took over and gha got a handhold too.
The pics are from today... I've just started peroxide today. I've removed the worst of the bryopsis manually and then dipped the rocks... but for the cyano and gha I have started dosing the whole tank at 30ml of 3%.
Am I doing the right thing? I really want to get rid of all algae and cyano so that I can start carbon dosing again to bring down nitrates. My assumption is that my 5ppm no3 is a false reading due to excessive algae growth.
The tank is 300 us gallons, filtration via skimmer and fuge with filter sock. The fuge has a dsb. Currently no corals affected by either algae or cyano, but it's only a matter of time.
Any more advice?
Thanks
I already had both cheato and caulerpa in my fuge but nitrates stuck around 25ppm.
I removed the filter completely and started vodka dosing... over a period of about 6 weeks, nitrate had reduced to undetectable but phosphate stuck at about 1.2ppm. I upped the vodka dose and po4 reduced to zero.
So far so good? Not so much... whilst po4 was high but nitrate was low I started to get cyano. I also noticed a small patch of bryopsis.
The cyano grew and grew... I figured it was using carbon as it's energy source as I'd also started to see nitrates creeping back up to about 5ppm.
As a result, I stopped carbon dosing... the cyano stayed, bryopsis took over and gha got a handhold too.
The pics are from today... I've just started peroxide today. I've removed the worst of the bryopsis manually and then dipped the rocks... but for the cyano and gha I have started dosing the whole tank at 30ml of 3%.
Am I doing the right thing? I really want to get rid of all algae and cyano so that I can start carbon dosing again to bring down nitrates. My assumption is that my 5ppm no3 is a false reading due to excessive algae growth.
The tank is 300 us gallons, filtration via skimmer and fuge with filter sock. The fuge has a dsb. Currently no corals affected by either algae or cyano, but it's only a matter of time.
Any more advice?
Thanks
OP
OP
nice setup for sure, very challenging in large tank volumes and those pics are really good for prep work and brainstorm
thank you much for kicking up our thread
that bryopsis w probably be beaten fine with the fluconazole treatment from the main thread... so we can reserve that for later its as good as done based on that thread but I would do it last since its most likely to be beaten back with little work other than adding something to the water. the peroxide may or may not work for the cyano, and you don't seem to show any sensitive organisms there so that dosing regimen of one mil per ten gallons of water will be safe to try-whether it works on target or not is tbd. Truly, peroxide is ok to try but if that was my tank it wouldn't be my first go. UV would be. I wouldn't have a large tank without a pond sterilizer buried in the garage somewhere for quick use for any non anchored invaders like cyano, spirulina, greenwater, dinoflagellates etc.
With as much money as it takes to run a tank that big a $400 uv sterilizer will be a headache remover/cheat. It wont take the cyano off the rocks, the whole tank should be hand siphoned 100% clean of cyano before any of the treatments are ran, and then the treatment is applied to the clean tank condition as a key trick for whatever you wind up using on the cyano. have a hand worked component in your attempts, not just a water doser for that amount of cyano
your pics indicate white-heavy lighting, do you have a way to drop the whites massively and make the blue come on way more intense? that lighting shift alone starts to give cyano a hard time, and the bright white is a constant we find in cyano challenge tanks.
most UV sellers on amazon have a return policy if something doesn't work, verify before purchase and once cleaned well, if your uv is oversized enough (key term pond sterilizer, we are burning meanly here) that cyano will be burned out of the system as those cells circulate around the tank during diurnal cycles. they recongregate during the lighting hours and the uv w intercept them. we pre clean the system so that our action X isn't a biomass reducer, allowing the target to die off in the tank...we clean so that our action X is merely a growback preventer, by having less target biomass in the system at the time of treatment the actions are amplified and you have a better chance. be it peroxide dripping, uv use, fluconazole for the bryopsis (clean as much of it as you can before start) chemi clean, any form of attack on targets should be done to a tank fully cleaned with elbow grease first. the attack with chems or cheats comes second.
You can get a feel for whether or not UV is worth keeping within a week. if you hand clean all that cyano now in a marathon 3 hour session of siphons and water changes, I bet it comes back in 3 days. If the uv works keep it for next round cheats, if not, send it back since it wasn't the most awesome uv on the planet. that's the heart of shopping w the giant, you can see if UV is right for you before lock in
regarding that bryopsis, if 3% applied in any way whatsoever beats it id be surprised. the fluco treatment is 98% likely to have it beaten in a month find that sticky thread in the main reef discussion forum for review.
If that was my tank and I wanted to use peroxide, cuz its faster, then it w have to be 35% from the healthfood store, the mean stuff mentioned earlier posts here, its what I use. use eye protection, its a blinding agent, and throw out when done if small kids are around the house.
only a single test rock or two would be used for beginning, not mass tank work if you are opting for using peroxide on that bryopsis. I would remove a test rock or two and using a kitchen knife I would score off all the algae like a dentist scores off plaque. rough, cut the rock surface and debride it harshly. rinse. work around coral bases until that rock is made fully clean of target. then apply peroxide to the cleaned areas formerly covered in algae for the same reasons mentioned above. use 35% direct, let sit, rinse off and put the test rocks back in tank to check for regrowth over the next couple weeks before doing more work to the large tank. This was external work, taking the rocks out and making that effort on a test rock first...not tank dosing. we have to see how they behave before dosing.
I cant imagine any help to that bryopsis from water dosing peroxide at 3% but as long as you are dosing at 1 mil per 10 gallons its a known safe dose for everything in the tank except lysmata cleaners. again too bright white lighting comes into play if you have any stressed corals and we begin inputting peroxide too, the lighting is going to need to be adjusted most likely so you wont burn any suffering corals if applicable during the dosing of peroxide. in my threads we are hardly ever dosing peroxide to the water, we want the clinch win of test rock + external work where possible.
Id fix up that cyano with UV test run, and then after that id try the flucon for the bryopsis. peroxide for this tank is a very easy thing to try here because its cheap and easy to use, but I think for a true target kill id consider the other two or at least using peroxide along with the uv for the cyano portion. I like collecting algae free after pics in a given challenge more than I like using exclusively peroxide to earn them. The key is acting early and never farming algae, we are free to hand guide when the system is new when clean up crews failed to do their job. Concern over tank instability is the number one care limiter I see in forum posts over the years. My tank is force cleaned algae is now too scared to grow back jokingly but literally because coralline is now the total surface and that's the best algae excluder we can employ on surfaces just shy of actual coral polyps. hand guiding early kept substrate open for calcifying organisms vs plant organisms which are quicker to attach newer surfaces. Early forced compliance in substrates helps to get off the action in time, it's a means to an end it's not perpetual scraping. That's what my pico modeling shows anyway on the small old scale
Rasp cleaning with damage to anchor point substrate areas + 35% external peroxide follow up is the most powerful method I know for algae command. I don't really have to practice quarantine because of it and because it's easy to access all surface area in a small reef.
thank you much for kicking up our thread
that bryopsis w probably be beaten fine with the fluconazole treatment from the main thread... so we can reserve that for later its as good as done based on that thread but I would do it last since its most likely to be beaten back with little work other than adding something to the water. the peroxide may or may not work for the cyano, and you don't seem to show any sensitive organisms there so that dosing regimen of one mil per ten gallons of water will be safe to try-whether it works on target or not is tbd. Truly, peroxide is ok to try but if that was my tank it wouldn't be my first go. UV would be. I wouldn't have a large tank without a pond sterilizer buried in the garage somewhere for quick use for any non anchored invaders like cyano, spirulina, greenwater, dinoflagellates etc.
With as much money as it takes to run a tank that big a $400 uv sterilizer will be a headache remover/cheat. It wont take the cyano off the rocks, the whole tank should be hand siphoned 100% clean of cyano before any of the treatments are ran, and then the treatment is applied to the clean tank condition as a key trick for whatever you wind up using on the cyano. have a hand worked component in your attempts, not just a water doser for that amount of cyano
your pics indicate white-heavy lighting, do you have a way to drop the whites massively and make the blue come on way more intense? that lighting shift alone starts to give cyano a hard time, and the bright white is a constant we find in cyano challenge tanks.
most UV sellers on amazon have a return policy if something doesn't work, verify before purchase and once cleaned well, if your uv is oversized enough (key term pond sterilizer, we are burning meanly here) that cyano will be burned out of the system as those cells circulate around the tank during diurnal cycles. they recongregate during the lighting hours and the uv w intercept them. we pre clean the system so that our action X isn't a biomass reducer, allowing the target to die off in the tank...we clean so that our action X is merely a growback preventer, by having less target biomass in the system at the time of treatment the actions are amplified and you have a better chance. be it peroxide dripping, uv use, fluconazole for the bryopsis (clean as much of it as you can before start) chemi clean, any form of attack on targets should be done to a tank fully cleaned with elbow grease first. the attack with chems or cheats comes second.
You can get a feel for whether or not UV is worth keeping within a week. if you hand clean all that cyano now in a marathon 3 hour session of siphons and water changes, I bet it comes back in 3 days. If the uv works keep it for next round cheats, if not, send it back since it wasn't the most awesome uv on the planet. that's the heart of shopping w the giant, you can see if UV is right for you before lock in
regarding that bryopsis, if 3% applied in any way whatsoever beats it id be surprised. the fluco treatment is 98% likely to have it beaten in a month find that sticky thread in the main reef discussion forum for review.
If that was my tank and I wanted to use peroxide, cuz its faster, then it w have to be 35% from the healthfood store, the mean stuff mentioned earlier posts here, its what I use. use eye protection, its a blinding agent, and throw out when done if small kids are around the house.
only a single test rock or two would be used for beginning, not mass tank work if you are opting for using peroxide on that bryopsis. I would remove a test rock or two and using a kitchen knife I would score off all the algae like a dentist scores off plaque. rough, cut the rock surface and debride it harshly. rinse. work around coral bases until that rock is made fully clean of target. then apply peroxide to the cleaned areas formerly covered in algae for the same reasons mentioned above. use 35% direct, let sit, rinse off and put the test rocks back in tank to check for regrowth over the next couple weeks before doing more work to the large tank. This was external work, taking the rocks out and making that effort on a test rock first...not tank dosing. we have to see how they behave before dosing.
I cant imagine any help to that bryopsis from water dosing peroxide at 3% but as long as you are dosing at 1 mil per 10 gallons its a known safe dose for everything in the tank except lysmata cleaners. again too bright white lighting comes into play if you have any stressed corals and we begin inputting peroxide too, the lighting is going to need to be adjusted most likely so you wont burn any suffering corals if applicable during the dosing of peroxide. in my threads we are hardly ever dosing peroxide to the water, we want the clinch win of test rock + external work where possible.
Id fix up that cyano with UV test run, and then after that id try the flucon for the bryopsis. peroxide for this tank is a very easy thing to try here because its cheap and easy to use, but I think for a true target kill id consider the other two or at least using peroxide along with the uv for the cyano portion. I like collecting algae free after pics in a given challenge more than I like using exclusively peroxide to earn them. The key is acting early and never farming algae, we are free to hand guide when the system is new when clean up crews failed to do their job. Concern over tank instability is the number one care limiter I see in forum posts over the years. My tank is force cleaned algae is now too scared to grow back jokingly but literally because coralline is now the total surface and that's the best algae excluder we can employ on surfaces just shy of actual coral polyps. hand guiding early kept substrate open for calcifying organisms vs plant organisms which are quicker to attach newer surfaces. Early forced compliance in substrates helps to get off the action in time, it's a means to an end it's not perpetual scraping. That's what my pico modeling shows anyway on the small old scale
Rasp cleaning with damage to anchor point substrate areas + 35% external peroxide follow up is the most powerful method I know for algae command. I don't really have to practice quarantine because of it and because it's easy to access all surface area in a small reef.
Last edited:
Fantastic, thanks. I'll get a pond UV from my LFS, they'll happily take it back if no good.
I have flucon on order just in case, so I'll suspend peroxide dosing and go with that first.
The cyano I'm losing the plot... have tried chemiclean and cyanoclean already with little or no effect... here's hoping UV and manual removal will do the trick.
Do you think my assumption that the cyano was feeding on the carbon is correct? In which case I'm Hoping that stopping vodka dosing will help with control.
As for lighting... I don't have much in the way of options. One of the led units (seen being checked and tested in FTS) has blues on separate channel so can easily reduce whites intensity... other led doesn't. Any benefit I adjusting the one I can?
Also, quick question, I have separate QT tank... could this be utilised for treating individual large rocks? I have a few in there which are over 12" across so being able to treat separately to DT whilst keeping bacteria would be beneficial?
Thanks.
I have flucon on order just in case, so I'll suspend peroxide dosing and go with that first.
The cyano I'm losing the plot... have tried chemiclean and cyanoclean already with little or no effect... here's hoping UV and manual removal will do the trick.
Do you think my assumption that the cyano was feeding on the carbon is correct? In which case I'm Hoping that stopping vodka dosing will help with control.
As for lighting... I don't have much in the way of options. One of the led units (seen being checked and tested in FTS) has blues on separate channel so can easily reduce whites intensity... other led doesn't. Any benefit I adjusting the one I can?
Also, quick question, I have separate QT tank... could this be utilised for treating individual large rocks? I have a few in there which are over 12" across so being able to treat separately to DT whilst keeping bacteria would be beneficial?
Thanks.
OP
OP
https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/r2r-r...ight-marks-rimless-nps-paradise-may-2017.288/
that's a sick tank. and you know which little snippet caught my eye too, he mentions bluer for less algae. Strange tie I cannot explain w science, but its starting to anecdotally spread that white intensity is really hard to keep algae under control, Im not sure how to mod your lights other than raising them up possibly not sure on that. Many people will control their invaders in spite of whiter lights but for sure its another hedge in your favor to not be bright on the white
put blockers over some of the white areas somehow? not sure how to do that and not mess up heat transfers just brainstorming.
Regarding the carbon feeding, I must say we've seen those tanks invaded like that without carbon. Perhaps those people had a sinked up sandbed, or maybe they were feeding ultrapotent feed to provide extra carbon and extra resource, not sure but in all the thousands of wrecked tank threads I asked to be in I cant find a specific tie to your type of invasion other than you are dealing with two types of invaders that are nearly always potentiated in someones reef tank.
Even if they aren't expressing, we know that most tanks who endure brief nutrient changes (say, from loss of a small animal or fish) can reflect in quick cyano invasions or algae outbreaks, even if running mos or years in a prior balanced condition.
I can take a high pressure sodium terrestrial plant light and shine it down low on anyone's reef on this whole board and grow algae in a week to demonstrate the power of lighting as a sole competitive edge for certain algae. lastly, remember changing out those 90's VHO's and what did we get when we ran old bulbs an extra 6 mos? cyano
I really enjoy the challenge of your tank and making predictions about it. Such a large size tank, coming from a guy who only works with one gallon reefs its humbling feedback. you indeed may have a sandbed contributing mildly to the invasions but frankly most people with a sandbed are storing some waste and just using other offsets to beat back their algae. When I mentioned Bryopsis above that might have been a bit general terminology, several types of stranded green algae are nearly always a possibility in live rock settings and cyano is constantly vectored in or out of a tank anyway, garden soil on fingernails can do it.
If that's spirulina then its likely marine-specific cross contamination as the vector, and that can include everything from fish slime coats to frags and snail shells moved in from some other tank. any water transferred whatsoever can be a vector, its hard for aquarists to prevent trading or use QT to prevent the trade of green hair algae and cyano/spiru invaders. both spirulina and cyano will be beaten by properly oversized uv and a preclean, fun bet to see. So glad you have access to one sledge hammer of a UV lol.
my old tank used a pond sterilizer on 75 gallons to cheat my way through the 90s. bulb changing for who?
I expect challenges occasionally from cyano and some gha... that's a given occasionally it seems. quick action is the cure, not preventing invasion.
The obligate hitchhikers: valonia, invasive caulerpa, invasive dinoflagellates, asparagopsis red algae, any bizarre reef invader et al can never be brought about by running old bulbs or by running a grow lamp above a tank. Quarantine is truly effective for the obligate hitchhikers, and keepers are more procedurally responsible for those invasions moreso than a cyano/gha one in my opinion.
framing the invaders as obligate hitchhikers or not tells me how to battle them, and what to expect. I literally destroyed red invasive asparagopsis in my tank permanently, the DNA is not there and im through stocking the bowl. It cannot come back, so when finding ways to kill it I knew I had to remove it once and for all and only stop the reimport to win forever. I do not expect that with cyano. I clean my sandbed out when cyano starts to grow as a helpful bioindicator, its a critical component in reef systems anyway. we all want the algae/invader free condition which is the real imbalance
that's a sick tank. and you know which little snippet caught my eye too, he mentions bluer for less algae. Strange tie I cannot explain w science, but its starting to anecdotally spread that white intensity is really hard to keep algae under control, Im not sure how to mod your lights other than raising them up possibly not sure on that. Many people will control their invaders in spite of whiter lights but for sure its another hedge in your favor to not be bright on the white
put blockers over some of the white areas somehow? not sure how to do that and not mess up heat transfers just brainstorming.
Regarding the carbon feeding, I must say we've seen those tanks invaded like that without carbon. Perhaps those people had a sinked up sandbed, or maybe they were feeding ultrapotent feed to provide extra carbon and extra resource, not sure but in all the thousands of wrecked tank threads I asked to be in I cant find a specific tie to your type of invasion other than you are dealing with two types of invaders that are nearly always potentiated in someones reef tank.
Even if they aren't expressing, we know that most tanks who endure brief nutrient changes (say, from loss of a small animal or fish) can reflect in quick cyano invasions or algae outbreaks, even if running mos or years in a prior balanced condition.
I can take a high pressure sodium terrestrial plant light and shine it down low on anyone's reef on this whole board and grow algae in a week to demonstrate the power of lighting as a sole competitive edge for certain algae. lastly, remember changing out those 90's VHO's and what did we get when we ran old bulbs an extra 6 mos? cyano
I really enjoy the challenge of your tank and making predictions about it. Such a large size tank, coming from a guy who only works with one gallon reefs its humbling feedback. you indeed may have a sandbed contributing mildly to the invasions but frankly most people with a sandbed are storing some waste and just using other offsets to beat back their algae. When I mentioned Bryopsis above that might have been a bit general terminology, several types of stranded green algae are nearly always a possibility in live rock settings and cyano is constantly vectored in or out of a tank anyway, garden soil on fingernails can do it.
If that's spirulina then its likely marine-specific cross contamination as the vector, and that can include everything from fish slime coats to frags and snail shells moved in from some other tank. any water transferred whatsoever can be a vector, its hard for aquarists to prevent trading or use QT to prevent the trade of green hair algae and cyano/spiru invaders. both spirulina and cyano will be beaten by properly oversized uv and a preclean, fun bet to see. So glad you have access to one sledge hammer of a UV lol.
my old tank used a pond sterilizer on 75 gallons to cheat my way through the 90s. bulb changing for who?
I expect challenges occasionally from cyano and some gha... that's a given occasionally it seems. quick action is the cure, not preventing invasion.
The obligate hitchhikers: valonia, invasive caulerpa, invasive dinoflagellates, asparagopsis red algae, any bizarre reef invader et al can never be brought about by running old bulbs or by running a grow lamp above a tank. Quarantine is truly effective for the obligate hitchhikers, and keepers are more procedurally responsible for those invasions moreso than a cyano/gha one in my opinion.
framing the invaders as obligate hitchhikers or not tells me how to battle them, and what to expect. I literally destroyed red invasive asparagopsis in my tank permanently, the DNA is not there and im through stocking the bowl. It cannot come back, so when finding ways to kill it I knew I had to remove it once and for all and only stop the reimport to win forever. I do not expect that with cyano. I clean my sandbed out when cyano starts to grow as a helpful bioindicator, its a critical component in reef systems anyway. we all want the algae/invader free condition which is the real imbalance
Last edited:
Ok, update... nearly a week into treatment.
Action taken:
1. UV installed... TMC pro clear Ultima 55w. Possibly overkill bit hey (rated for 45000 litres!).
2. Some larger rocks removed and given 2hr peroxide bath. After removing as much as possible by hand and scraping. Dramatic effect on bryopsis, gha and cyano. Used 6% h202 with approx 50ml per gallon. Killed everything! Only did this on rocks with no corals attached. Have spot treated those with corals attached today. See pics for bubbling on the cyano in particular.
3. Sand bed dredged for contaminated particles. Have removed these entirely. Have been doing this bit by bit each day, same as rock baths in order to keep bacterial stock damage to a minimum.
4. Lighting period reduced from 12 hours to 8.
Overall result...dramatic reduction in bryopsis, cyano and gha. Soft corals affected far more than LPS and SPS. Kenya trees in particular looking bad and shedding mucous. Not much in the way of polyp extension. Xenia, gsp, sinularia and toadstool untouched but reduced polyp extension, the ricordia shrooms, zoas and all mobile inverts seem unaffected in any way. Fish unharmed.
Noticed a heck of a lot of detritus, particularly at the end more affected by cyano. Some trapped under cyano mat and lots trapped under and in rocks. I've now ordered two 12000 lph wave makers to add to the flow. These will be run on alternating flows at either end and current wave makers all moved to the back to give lots of cross flow.
Am hoping this will clear much of the detritus and prevent cyano growth in the future.
Not overly impressed with UV... cyano is on the back foot for sure, but difficult to say how much this is down to the UV given the other treatment going on.
Decided against fluconazole. Price prohibitive in the UK. Looking at about £400 to treat whole tank, so opting for UV and h202 instead.
Thanks for the help so far!
Action taken:
1. UV installed... TMC pro clear Ultima 55w. Possibly overkill bit hey (rated for 45000 litres!).
2. Some larger rocks removed and given 2hr peroxide bath. After removing as much as possible by hand and scraping. Dramatic effect on bryopsis, gha and cyano. Used 6% h202 with approx 50ml per gallon. Killed everything! Only did this on rocks with no corals attached. Have spot treated those with corals attached today. See pics for bubbling on the cyano in particular.
3. Sand bed dredged for contaminated particles. Have removed these entirely. Have been doing this bit by bit each day, same as rock baths in order to keep bacterial stock damage to a minimum.
4. Lighting period reduced from 12 hours to 8.
Overall result...dramatic reduction in bryopsis, cyano and gha. Soft corals affected far more than LPS and SPS. Kenya trees in particular looking bad and shedding mucous. Not much in the way of polyp extension. Xenia, gsp, sinularia and toadstool untouched but reduced polyp extension, the ricordia shrooms, zoas and all mobile inverts seem unaffected in any way. Fish unharmed.
Noticed a heck of a lot of detritus, particularly at the end more affected by cyano. Some trapped under cyano mat and lots trapped under and in rocks. I've now ordered two 12000 lph wave makers to add to the flow. These will be run on alternating flows at either end and current wave makers all moved to the back to give lots of cross flow.
Am hoping this will clear much of the detritus and prevent cyano growth in the future.
Not overly impressed with UV... cyano is on the back foot for sure, but difficult to say how much this is down to the UV given the other treatment going on.
Decided against fluconazole. Price prohibitive in the UK. Looking at about £400 to treat whole tank, so opting for UV and h202 instead.
Thanks for the help so far!
3 weeks in and cyano nearly gone!
OP
OP
that's shocking turnaround did you pre clean it all before the UV? if Im reading your pics progression clearly I think you might be getting this rascal under control? THANK you for these inputs keeping our old thread refreshed w new material thanks tons
Last edited:
Yes, anything without coral attached was removed and treated. Anything with coral attached was spot the. All with h202.
OP
OP
ok that framing helps to know. I cannot wait to see a 2 mo update to check on sustenance of these changes this is great progression tracking very helpful for large tank challenges. my additional brainstorms are that the hand removal portion isn't once and go...getting to the invaded stage was cyclic, and guiding it back out is cyclic although things like the UV reduce our work ideally, if they work. We still need to be hand removing/siphoning the cyano out and any other algae as the tank begins to reset over the next 8 weeks. ive seen in the past where the new installs/peroxide and cleaning were only done once and then the keeper sat back and waited. we learned to expect a few more cleanings as we guide things out, and then when lighting and nutrients are adjusted during that work phase it all comes together (ideally) in a couple mos to have a low work/low algae or invasion tank. nice going so far
OP
OP
bump due to calls to action in recent algae challenge posts
Highlights from 2017:
-use test rocks out side the tank before you go dumping stuff in the tank, including Vibrant, no pox, flucon, do your old school caveman or woman rasping on a test rock outside the tank to see how it behaves, before you upscale proven action to the rest of the tank.
-don't dose peroxide to visual algae. take a knife and score off the algae, roughly, outside the tank surgically so your effort has made it algae free, like a dentist does when your teeth bled a little because he wasn't playing around with plaque. Once your test rock is rasped clean, then treat it with peroxide only to kill off remaining bits of holdfast and plant parts/cells
-if you have a dosing need for the whole tank, a rare rare situation, then you can measure that out into a 5 gallon test bucket (matching dilutions projected) and model whether your test rock will come out o.k. in a test bucket, before you dose your entire tank with anything.
Its not that peroxide was ever harmful to anyones reef...some tanks were getting growback after lots of effort so a 2.0 patch was distributed, rasping.
we furthered the science of tank restoration by adding what a parrotfish/hawksbill turtle does to algae in the wild. We have only re arranged the order of operations to include a model of nature + the oxidizer cheat that comprises so many hundreds of pages online now.
Peroxide never was a fad, its a permanent tool in reefing we're just adjusting how its wielded.
As a reminder, the number one thing we do in all these peroxide threads on the web is combine a work component in the restoration; lack thereof is the cause of the invasion, not nutrients. A hallmark of my correction threads is nobody is posting any N or P readings, not required to win. This is a work thread, not a chem doser thread.
-have a sandbed in any challenge tank removed while you fight, then put back totally clean, for mean challenges like dino invasions etc. Some cyano invasions require bed work, rinsing in tap water etc, don't forget this sand rinse thread below for always being able to deep clean and skip a recycle upon setup:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...a-one-against-many.230281/page-7#post-4107442
you cant imagine the thousands of posts of GHA invasions that lasted months, years in some cases, with a keeper refusing to address the fuel source just up under the forest.
Display tank sandbeds are better off clean than full of nitrate powder for any algae challenge situation. That thread shows theyre neutral in a setup anyway.
There absolutely are times we dump peroxide in a full reef, but we arrive at that step, not lead with it. We don't have this risk of loss of tank life anymore, peroxide is actually pretty tame upon dilution into our tank. We're trying to prevent waste of time/quick growback especially in large tanks with the lead up and in the very least, when dosing to the water, we like to have that work component always present such that we're dosing to an uninvaded system still. Remove targets by hand, do water changes, then dose if the invader is a non holdfast type (cyano, diatoms, dinos, greenwater issues rare etc)
Highlights from 2017:
-use test rocks out side the tank before you go dumping stuff in the tank, including Vibrant, no pox, flucon, do your old school caveman or woman rasping on a test rock outside the tank to see how it behaves, before you upscale proven action to the rest of the tank.
-don't dose peroxide to visual algae. take a knife and score off the algae, roughly, outside the tank surgically so your effort has made it algae free, like a dentist does when your teeth bled a little because he wasn't playing around with plaque. Once your test rock is rasped clean, then treat it with peroxide only to kill off remaining bits of holdfast and plant parts/cells
-if you have a dosing need for the whole tank, a rare rare situation, then you can measure that out into a 5 gallon test bucket (matching dilutions projected) and model whether your test rock will come out o.k. in a test bucket, before you dose your entire tank with anything.
Its not that peroxide was ever harmful to anyones reef...some tanks were getting growback after lots of effort so a 2.0 patch was distributed, rasping.
we furthered the science of tank restoration by adding what a parrotfish/hawksbill turtle does to algae in the wild. We have only re arranged the order of operations to include a model of nature + the oxidizer cheat that comprises so many hundreds of pages online now.
Peroxide never was a fad, its a permanent tool in reefing we're just adjusting how its wielded.
As a reminder, the number one thing we do in all these peroxide threads on the web is combine a work component in the restoration; lack thereof is the cause of the invasion, not nutrients. A hallmark of my correction threads is nobody is posting any N or P readings, not required to win. This is a work thread, not a chem doser thread.
-have a sandbed in any challenge tank removed while you fight, then put back totally clean, for mean challenges like dino invasions etc. Some cyano invasions require bed work, rinsing in tap water etc, don't forget this sand rinse thread below for always being able to deep clean and skip a recycle upon setup:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...a-one-against-many.230281/page-7#post-4107442
you cant imagine the thousands of posts of GHA invasions that lasted months, years in some cases, with a keeper refusing to address the fuel source just up under the forest.
Display tank sandbeds are better off clean than full of nitrate powder for any algae challenge situation. That thread shows theyre neutral in a setup anyway.
There absolutely are times we dump peroxide in a full reef, but we arrive at that step, not lead with it. We don't have this risk of loss of tank life anymore, peroxide is actually pretty tame upon dilution into our tank. We're trying to prevent waste of time/quick growback especially in large tanks with the lead up and in the very least, when dosing to the water, we like to have that work component always present such that we're dosing to an uninvaded system still. Remove targets by hand, do water changes, then dose if the invader is a non holdfast type (cyano, diatoms, dinos, greenwater issues rare etc)
Last edited:
6 month update... had a very minor cyano bloom in September... maybe 6sq inches total. Dosed h2o2 to the whole tank again, 7 days and all gone. No return as yet.
FTS taken just now to show extent of the changes (note new lighting also) also shots of substrate where both bryopsis and cyano was prevalent. Please excuse the lack of PE on corals, lights are normally off at this time and I just flicked them on to take shots.
OP
OP
your rocks are guided into self-regulating masses of corals and coralline, that's biorejection. the algae focuses on the glass where there is no bio rejection this is exactly like my tank.
when I leave it for weeks unserviced ill come home to opaque glass next time ill take a pic.
looks wrecked but its illusion
razor scrape + 35% wet the glass from the inside, it all comes off, and the rocks and coral are pristine. sign of an old/mature/ideal tank, biorejection right up to the glass.
I actually imported X strain of stranded green algae with recent frags and it only grows on the glass, the rocks are basically invasion proof. see this brain coral, where would algae grow on it heh
the uncovered part is the part that sits in the sand
since we have never seen a pic of someones GHA tuft, lyngbya tuft, or bryopsis tuft coming from the center of a healthy brain coral mouth, we can literally see bio rejection in action. they'll post pics of it coming from the side of the skeleton or corallite, but it wont be on the flesh, ever that I can recall and its in none of our giant threads.
coralline and coral flesh are powerful, powerful excluders of algae that's why we burn it the heck off in the beginning so that we farm that real estate into purple, not green
Last edited:
Similar threads
