Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide

[Serum153]

Tank filled and was almost cloudless Turned on the klir roller and added a filter sock and it was clear in 2 hours. Made a makeshift frag rack as I cannot bring all rock back. Scrubbed each frag plug with a stainless steel brush or remounted depending how bad the plug was. Grabbed a couple rocks, picked and sprayed h2o2. Will be doing a rock each day for the next week or two. Not going to aquascape until follow up treatments are done on anything that made it through. I would suggest a double rinse for the ones going back to display as the ulva when removed can bury itself in a crevice as you are rinsing. Grabbed a filter sock and caught any floating pieces of ulva in the water column as it sticks so easily to anything it can touch.

Rock 1 before h2o2

after removal and h2o2

rock 2 (with frogspawn) before

After removal of ulva and frogspawn (trying to attach a split nem to it since I don’t have too many good rocks at the moment)

 

[brandon429]

That’s simply one of the best most thorough documentations we have here, so thankful

 

[brandon429]

how is ulva looking in retrospect here!

 

[Serum153]

Sorry for the delay. Majority of rock has been added back after cleaning. Have 4 more pieces that I am treating for Aiptasia that I noticed while cleaning. Coralline algae made it through with little to no negative affects. No re-cycling problem at all. I will get shots of it when I aquascape again. These were just tossed back in for observation. Should anything sprout, the single rock will be pulled and treated. I have had some pieces in for weeks with no regrowth.
Before

After H2o2 spray (used tweezers and scoured each rock for any pieces)

 

[Serum153]

 

[brandon429]

I wish we could install sound effects for a post

thats just shocking and among the best progression pics Ive seen for our help threads, thank u

page 29 is a solid working documentation of ulva cleanout, close the chapter. Plus, its fairly compliant tank to tank. ulva rates as extremely susceptible to peroxide application. the rock is restored, unplugged, open for exchange w the environment

 

[Serum153]

Ulva was no joke and completely ran rampant throughout my tank. I was counting on my algae scrubber and export methods for it to disappear only to see it grow at unprecedented rates in a tank that had excess nutrients in check so I thought. This thread allowed me to win the war against ulva and I sincerely want to thank you. No idea if it was a snail or a drag plug that brought one little sliver in to my tank, but I will never introduce either without a very thorough inspection. Good luck to all and thanks again @brandon429

 

[schaNYC]

@brandon429

Im starting to see the beginnings of ulva in my tank. Will dosing 1:10 in the tank work to treat ulva as well?

 

[brandon429]

I would run the direct method above plus pre testing then it's a certain kill

For 1:10 dosing daily once or twice I bet it kills it 80% likely as long as you don't have sensitives to water dosing

 

[schaNYC]

After seeing ulva color fade to white, will they fall off eventually when dead or requires manual removal?

 

[brandon429]

I do believe white will fade to nothing and be gone. Ulva is very low mass, it’s one of the few plants that won’t degrade into a ton of waste if you kill it in tank. In my opinion it’s the #1 easiest plant to kill with peroxide, they’re a good match take pics for us so we can see the progressions when it’s all fixed up

 

[brandon429]

@schaNYC what route did you take

ulva is the number one treatable infestation for peroxide- thin cortical growth plant means free radical doom. The other life forms have better cell walls or cell membranes and or enzyme adaptation and don’t succumb.

 

[schaNYC]

@schaNYC what route did you take

ulva is the number one treatable infestation for peroxide- thin cortical growth plant means free radical doom. The other life forms have better cell walls or cell membranes and or enzyme adaptation and don’t succumb.

As I am currently in my fallow period to fight ich, I was able to easily take my rocks out and dip and scrub. Ulva is 98% gone and as predicted the algae turned pale over a couple of days and eventually disintegrated on its own. I have some remnants on sand particles still so it’s not completeeradicated, as well as some growing on pvc inside my sump which I can live with.

Unfortunately, the tank had a bloom of dinos which may have helped to defeat the ulva shortly after. Dinos are mostly gone after a combo of siphoning and tried a method from a reefbuilders article about raising tank temp to 82-83. That with a shortened 6 hr light schedule mostly eradicated the dynos.

Is This the Dinoflagellate Treatment We’ve all been Hoping for? | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

Being a reef aquarists, means dealing with nuisance algae, parasites, and other pests… Cyanobacteria, AEFW, Red Bugs, and who here remembers that pink cotton candy algae (Callithamnion)?

reefbuilders.com

Now dealing with cyano on the sand bed. Not sure where all the nutrients are coming from as I am hardly feeding due to the fallow period. I am thinking of dosing 5ml Of peroxide for a 50 gallon tank daily for a few days to deal with the cyano perhaps. Thoughts on that?

Rather newish tank of about 2 months so maybe just the rite of passage.

 

[brandon429]

You can easily deep clean the sandbed if the tank isn't large, back to crystal clear vs invaded/ with cloud

Or if it's big tank ride it out maturity might help it over time. It won't cause a cycle if we deep clean it, it will cause awesomeness

 

[brandon429]

Our friend @AmaleeC has done a rip cleaning event.

*her live rock earned updated testing in bacterial strength, she pressure washed it with a blast of well water freshwater to make use of its raw force / dislodge/ pressure rasping

ten kudos for trusting bacteria


ten kudos for finding something thorough, deliberate (directly mentioned on page 1 first post) that nobody has used here

and kudos on your outcome pics. the biofilms that insulate our rock from minor peroxide insults also insulate them from freshwater awesome insults, well done innovation and follow through.

the characteristics of an uninvaded reef were made apparent in these pics:

 

[brandon429]

bump i just added in pics

not once in our chat did we try to ID the invasion, or take a reading of any type. She just acted and followed through and now is uninvaded.

in this condition we try grazers, or clean up crew members, or refugiums, changing lighting intensity or spectrum, or algae turf scrubbers, all of that playtime is fair game after the work is done (clean condition)



reef tank invasions are a matter of psychology- accept/deny- they're distantly a biology or chemistry issue. all our pages are just people who chose not to be invaded vs choosing to be invaded. we simplified algae control in this way it seems though its lots of work to deep clean

 

[brandon429]

Lots of algae posts in the forum today

remember, fixing gha is a matter of will alone, no other trait required


You are currently reading a map to be uninvaded, you’ll either choose to be algae free or you’ll choose to keep it

It has little to do with the actual aquarium, it’s your own resolve you are up against and 98% of aquarists will have less resolve than algae. Very painful detail to consider


while that may sound offensive, not everyone wants to be invaded, some do not.

we can easily discern who wants to be algae free and who wants to be invaded, in this thread we collect works from the aquarists who didn’t want to be invaded and now they aren’t, it’s a very simple process. Thirty pages of fixes no tests for phosphate and nitrate

those are not the cause of your algae, we ourselves are the cause and the cure.

*large tankers get some leeway. We don’t think you can disassemble clean a 250 as easily

my admonishment is for nano reefers lol but by all means this biology scales up...large tankers who want free of algae can benefit by changing their scape in ways that allow access vs no access/my rocks are stacked in place, and not having a sandbed full of filth benefits large tanks as well.

being free of algae covering the whole system is a matter of will alone. Preventing it from growing back without you having to surgically clean the system is a matter of bioengineering and luck and clean up crews and perfect phosphates and coralline coverage, exact lighting, low detritus, specialized fish, tank maturation, algae scrubbers, denitrators, adsorbent media on and on


the reason algae invasions pervade the hobby for 25 years is we are told the preventing arrangements are supposed to be the removers, they’re not. This forum is filled with help needs because preventers make unreliable removers


We are the removers, our hands, our will to clean

then the system flows perfectly and the lucky/skilled hardly ever have to work at it, but the unlucky still have equally controlled tanks they just work more as they will not cede ground. Simple as that.

 

[Tim Rudisill]

I'll snap some photos tomorrow and post them of my GHA outbreak. I'm off Monday/Tuesday, so I'll have a couple of days to dedicate to fighting it. The main question I have (and maybe unanswerable until I snap the photos) is /how/.

I know I should start with one rock to see how well it takes to it. I'm fine with that. I'll do one rock on Monday/Tuesday and see how it goes until my days off next week.

But /how/ do I do it? I think: I take the rocks out. I keep my attached coral moist with a spray bottle of saltwater. I use something (hand? tweezers? knife? something else?) to remove all the GHA that I can. I then apply a fresh bottle of hydrogen peroxide to the rock. (The whole rock? Areas where the GHA was located? Or just the areas where I can see some GHA left?). I leave the hydrogen peroxide on there for about 2-3 minutes, then I rinse it off (ideally in a bucket of RO or saltwater?) and stick the rock back into the tank. (Or do I use a power washer on it first?)

I've had this tank for about 2 years now and I'm still such a rookie. I would do weekly 5g water changes (32g biocube tank), but now I've upped it to 10g. But other than that? I didn't know I was supposed to blow off the rocks before doing a water change, so I'm sure my rocks are very dirty. I try to vacuum the sand but I'm also probably doing that incorrectly, too. My GHA stopped getting out of control when I began using a blackout curtain to cover it up at night since it would get between 20 and 24 hours of non-stop ambient light.

Anyway, I'm ready to get this tank looking great. I'd appreciate the tips!

 

[brandon429]

its best to copy one of the jobs on file they’ll demo the small details on cleaning


here‘s wvu’s link from page one we can do what he did. We take these tanks apart, clean them, put back together with pure cleaned sand too he shows

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

pending pics, your tank might not need total cleaning but as you can see, total cleaning benefits every reef so if the tank isn’t all that large I can tell you sight unseen that deep cleaning is regenerative and undoes several conditions associated with aging and selecting for plants in the system vs corals and accreting organisms

 

[brandon429]

I want someone’s tough fix job, whose got some algae