Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide

[joshbbert]

Brandon pm'd me once a few months back about some gha he noticed in my pico. He suggested if possible, to remove the rock and treat the gha with peroxide out of the tank. Not only did it go away, it never came back thanks Brandon ;)

 

[WetWhistle]

This is not directly related to peroxide control it is more information related but it adds to the scope of algae control. So I am posting about my personal experience.

So I have added a new tank attached to my main system sump all plumed into one and noticed something interesting. Soon after I set it up diatoms and hair algae grew on the glass and the frag racks that I had added in. Since the systems is all plumed together and all use the same water and I have very low nutrients with little to no problem algae in the other tanks something else had to have contributed to the bloom.

The lighting is different then I have on my other tanks that are attached with a different color temp then I use on the other systems. I was running a 10,000k led lights on this system (vs 16,000K to 20,000K) so I assume color temp played at least some part in the bloom. Since the tank was newly set up it also didn't have the necessary cleanup crew that my other tanks have. Like pods, snails and fish ect that help keep my other tanks algae in check.

As I was interested in what was going to happen I left the bloom be and took no extra steps (except my regular routine) to get rid of it except changing the color spectrum to around 16,000K but I did no manual removal. The algae bloom didn't last very long as my tanks big productive refugium quickly kicked into action causing a bloom in algae eating critters. You could see thousands of them within a few days crawling all over the algae happily devouring it. Within the week all the algae was almost completely gone.

A few things come from this. Nutrients are not always the cause or control of algae blooms as my system is very limited in nutrients. Since I recently added a large amount of new water it changed the chemistry of my tank and however fleeting it was it was enough to cause a bloom in the new tank because of the lack of cleanup crew. So stable water conditions do factor in because if at least some of the right conditions can be met for a algae bloom it will explode. Lack of a properly mature tank with a stable live food source for algae control defiantly factors in. You need to have a proper and healthy food web that can bloom and die off as algae cycle does to help control the problem. So cultivate your food web!
Proper spectrum goes a long way because even if some of the needed triggers for algae are present it can still bloom. As I was able to easily change the color spectrum towards the blue it helped limit the usable light the algae wanted for continued growth and coupled with cleanup crew it was easily controlled.

One big plus side to this little experiment is my main Reef tank is mostly hard corals and because of the extra available nutritious food explosion I had a big growth spurt. Especially with my SPS. :)

 

[brandon429]

An alt way to consider the peroxide thread here is we are one of the few techniques that set prediction and outcome dates before the treatment is ran, and then test that in the posted outcomes (still building steam here but the nano-reef one and the reefcentral one are chock full) GFO and Po4 work begin stripping the entire tank of nutrients, as the first test, and give zero time frames for reference. GFO and Po4 measures are preventatives not removers of algae, the masses use them as removers and that's why so many have to seek alternate removal methods or deal with bleached corals

Use gfo in a clean system to prevent, not to reverse set in algae or overdose is a risk.


I have yet to come across a peroxide tank who wouldn't have benefitted from the direct action theory on the tiny little initial spot long before invasion pics were posted

The rules of today only allowed them to watch that spot grow.

My goal for algae battle science is to change the way people see that first tuft of GHA, bryopsis, invasive macro, first valonia, first gelidium sprout, etc.
-the current paradigm that keeps me busy is: do nothing to it, any direct action is a waste of time as there's a fuel you could be removing but aren't. start an ID thread. Put something new in your filter. Buy some plants. Buy a retail doser of some kind. Take every action on the water except for immediate decisive control on the algae.<---- the official moniker of the last 30 years of reefkeeping and why there is a massive, massive unmet ongoing need for nonstandard tank fix science.

This whole thread will comprise before pics that are the result of seeing the 1st spot, and not acting on it. We will get full tank overgrowth challenges, but learn to see that 1st spot as a wrecked tank, I do, and now my tank is immune to algae loss via paradigm shift.

 

[brandon429]

Summary so far


Don't begin by dosing your whole tank to see if things respond, begin by lifting out a test rock and hitting it outside the tank, don't remove the algae, rinse, and put back in for assessment in 3 days. Prepare to analyze your deep sand bed if applicable, is it full of waste such that if you touch it, a mini cycle might happen? We discuss later how to take apart an entire reef and not recycle it, for the goal of cleaning it thoroughly (cyano invasion fixes)

 

[MaineSalt]

I'm game here's my starting pic....I actually used peroxide last week and dipped a few rocks to see what happened.

 

[brandon429]

glad to have your post! Those test rocks tell us how this genus will respond before we attack

Did you treat them out of the tank as a direct run, or in tank? The goal ideally is set death phase params to be expected by doing a test rock out of tank, direct application, new bottle not a used one, let it sit cooking for a few mins then put back in removing none of it. How close was your initial run to that?

 

[brandon429]

If possible are there any updates on the tank above

 

[brandon429]

6+ mo follow ups are rare gold and my very first before and after set in this thread is officially updated thanks so much Matthewdvm!


its 9 pages but I linked his follow up page right below, bottom of this link here:
http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/355137-matthewdvms-fluval-edge-new-9-month-video/page-9#entry5155844


we predicted mos ago via pm how his treatment and regrowth would go down. The reason he didn't have a po4 issue but had a budding green hair algae issue is the crux of this thread.

Growback from gha attacked directly in many cases is less pronounced than if you treat it solely by nutrient restriction, a massively against the grain claim.

We beat it permanently in this tank above by seeing algae as independent of nutrient issues, not dependent on them. .. more examples to come. Specifically, we have beaten and prevented hair algae here not ever asking about his nutrient levels. Nano tanks have an algae battle advantage over large tanks by ease of access.

 

[djbetterly]

Hey Brandon,

So with your advice, I've decided to post my tank. A few days ago I siphoned out a bunch of the algae with the exception of a few spots that were hard to reach. Looking at the tank, the one rock that has the most GHA is removable, the others are not. Let me know your thoughts. The images should give you an idea of what I have in the tank for corals. After some extensive water changes, I was able to get the nitrates down to around 10ppm. I plan to do one more large water change to hopefully get it below 10.

With the photos, I saturated the green of the algae so its a bit easier to see.

 

[brandon429]

I cant thank you enough for such a good detailed pic offer!

excellent candidate for spot kills due to specifics in the pics. Any underwater injected test patch should bleach out in 3 days and fall off by end of week, attracting any grazers in the tank who previously ignored. the test patch tells us if doing the rest of the tank is worth the effort, occasionally highly resistant strains pop up I predict this is not one. if it is, we didn't waste time dosing your entire tank.



only cleaner shrimp unseen might be a concern, the rest will tolerate in tank treatments for what you cannot remove just fine, especially since we are dealing in light patchwork and not total dominance. Any shrimp we cant see need to be factored but thats it. Your entire tank is peroxide tolerant to dosages we'd never use here we have a very safe buffer room considering we work 1 spot at a time. time for an underwater test patch.

 

[djbetterly]

This is awesome! The one rock that I can remove, should I pull it and spray it down out of water or should I do an underwater treatment?

In regards to treatment, are you saying I can do a concentrator or a syringe at base of algae?

 

[brandon429]

any removable rock that can be spot treated outside the tank should die much faster, when you treat a patch put the rock back in to photograph the death phase it doesn't matter if some degrades in the tank. a days feeding is 10x worse and this is a specific test to see if you have a responding algae or a tough one

the syringe at the base of the algae is better than topwater dosing where people just put in some peroxide to the tank and broadcast everything equally.

one of the capture techniques like a square of saran wrap, or the pill bottle doser is better than the syringe. The syringe extends contact time to the target before it disperses out, a topwater dosing never hits the target any harder than it does the nontarget coral.

The under water bells or tarps beat what the syringe can do because they extend contact time before leaking out into the tank so each type of peroxide dose we do in a living aquarium should be these spot treatments done one patch at a time, underwater.

The only time I can ever validate dumping peroxide into a full working tank is for bad infestations on every surface + the fact they have refused to do the required manual removal that would guarantee a clean up.

In your case, its ok to forego removing every single rock simply because the patches here and there should respond just fine to any underwater concentration technique.

 

[djbetterly]

Great! Last question before I start. I'm going to do one more big water change. Should I do it after I treat or before? Does the peroxide get pulled out with the skimmer, what happens to it?

 

[brandon429]

opinions vary on that, if its complexes with organic molecules then the skimmer may remove some but its unimpactful to the treatment at all, whether you dose before during or after. a few mils in the tank as a concentrated underwater test patch, just one to make an ID from in a few days, will simply dilute so much in the tank it wouldn't register impactful on any common detection system

the max amount we think is safe to dump in a tank is one mil per ten gallons of tank water. we plan on using a fraction of that on each test patch, one at a time until a few weeks goes by and its clean. if the first test responds well, its ok to do 2 or 3 patches at a time when we are well below your max mils:10 gallons rule./

we have seen safe tank additions up to 1 mil per 1 gallon of tank water, a 10x overdose :)

 

[djbetterly]

Ok, so here are photos right after first treatment.

 

[brandon429]

I see whiskers of a lysmata cleaner shrimp in there lol, is there a cleaner shrimp> those are the most sensitive peroxide animals likely to die keep in mind

however, many times they don't just know that is your one liability risk in the tank. that algae I predict will die within 3 days if not its a pretty tough/resistant strain

the ideal is to run one test on a removable rock now, to compare the two

 

[djbetterly]

I hate seeing anything die, but if I lose that, its not the end of the world. Well, I guess I should have only done one rock...sorry about that. I did everything! Ha...When do you want pics again Brandon?

 

[brandon429]

in three days! we want to see how well the dieoff can be predicted. any externally treated rocks done outside the tank and put back in should be all white within 48 hrs im guessing, and the underwater treatment ones perhaps a day later. if the shrimp is alive in 5 hours I bet he survives and they have in many larger tanks, we just know to watch out for them.

 

[djbetterly]

Mr. Clean is still kickin'

 

[brandon429]

Yep I bet he's ok. It was the dilution that saved him I've seen them survive before that's really cool outcome he was your only risk thanks for great updates this w go well.p
Did you inject

How did you concentrate on target
Those might have been the external treats above wasn't sure