Tank overrun by GHA

[Surfandturf]

Hi all! Been a while since I have posted. I upgraded a little over 1 year ago to a 125 gallon. I have done nano tanks, SPS dominated systems and even a tank run off of 1 powerhead and a canister filter. Never had any issues with GHA. Based on the success that I had with the canister filter and LPS, I wanted to attempt to replicate the success in my new 125 gallon system. I started to feed my corals quite a bit (every two 2 days). I would feed a mix of phyto, benepets, and coral frenzy. Things were looking great as long as I kept up with my water changes. Fast forward a couple of months and I got really sick. Sick to the point that I could not do my normal weekly water change of 10%. This lasted for 1 month. I got the worst outbreak of GHA that I have ever dealt with in the hobby. The picture that I have now is current, but it has taken me months to get back to this stage and I am still brushing the GHA off the rock weekly with an electric toothbrush. I will say that I used a combination of NOPOX (daily) full dose and Vibrant (Weekly) half dose for about 2 months. Now I just do water changes of 10-15% weekly. Its been a long, hard battle my friends.

One of the interesting things is that I was using bio pellets that were supposed to reduce nitrate and phosphate. This is the first time in all of my years of reefing that I have used something other than water changes and protein skimmers. I can tell you that I am probably not going to go back to using the bio pellets as I have had way more success skimming and water changing than anything else in this hobby.

One of the major issues that I had with this GHA is the coral loss. The GHA was super aggressive and grew around and on the corals. It completely decimated my favia collection, and is still attempting to choke out my large lobo colony. The interesting part is that it stayed away from the mushroom corals and had little to no effect on the torch in the tank. It almost appeared that it was damaging certain corals by stinging it. Is that something that is possible? Will algae "sting" coral? I have heard that at certain lengths, GHA can become toxic to fish and inverts, but I have never seen a reaction by corals quite like this.

 

[AdamD76]

Close up pics?

 

[Surfandturf]

Close up pics?

I am trying to find some on my phone. I can take a few once the lights come on. Honestly didn't want to take any pics as it was and is so depressing. I lost my prized meltdown favia in this outbreak.

 

[brandon429]

Vibrant has a ten page thread of killing corals, that's the most likely cause of loss. chemical souping + vibrant in the presence of coral who want the opposite type of water: clean, with no decaying chemicals and high suspended clean food inclusions.

check out this alternate option read start to finish: no coral loss

 

[brandon429]

Help please... Stuck in an unbreakable cycle.

Hello. My reef is about 3.5 years old and it's been about 1.5 years since i upgraded to a 125 gallon setup. Since then, i have not been able to control the aquarium at all and the understanding i once thought i had about nutrients and chemistry is seemingly meaningless now. My rock is 100%...

www.reef2reef.com

see how all the chemistry detailing is gone and replaced by ongoing weekly work to keep the sandbed clean

gha on rocks is a problem no more

 

[Surfandturf]

Vibrant has a ten page thread of killing corals, that's the most likely cause of loss. chemical souping + vibrant in the presence of coral who want the opposite type of water: clean, with no decaying chemicals and high suspended clean food inclusions.

check out this alternate option read start to finish: no coral loss

I am aware of some of the negative effects of vibrant. Unfortunately for me, the coral loss was before I added 1 drop of vibrant.

 

[Jekyl]

I am aware of some of the negative effects of vibrant. Unfortunately for me, the coral loss was before I added 1 drop of vibrant.

The algae is taking all the nutrients from the coral

 

[Surfandturf]

Vibrant has a ten page thread of killing corals, that's the most likely cause of loss. chemical souping + vibrant in the presence of coral who want the opposite type of water: clean, with no decaying chemicals and high suspended clean food inclusions.

check out this alternate option read start to finish: no coral loss

So I took a look at Gobi-Wan's thread. It is pretty interesting. I enjoyed the videos about microbial life. I also read your suggestion about pulling out 1 rock and testing it, then moving on to some of the others. I can tell you that my problem was never as bad as Gobi's. The algae looks similar. Let me ask you this, have you ever had success dosing peroxide to a main display instead of pulling rocks out? Also, if I pull out the sand, wont I lose a ton of beneficial bacteria?

 

[brandon429]

from his thread + the linked prep reads in his thread the bacteria aren't a concern-any water change removes lots and lots of suspended bacteria...our tanks produce orders more by the hour so removal isn't a problem.


I would not recommend peroxide into this display because its a short topical kill then near certain growback. I can't recommend dosing anything to the water because of the alternate invasion/growback issue but people do that anyway in these large tanks because its so impractical to do the manual controls. if I had to choose any doser for the display least likely to kill things and with a decent chance of success its the fluconazole

 

[Lavey29]

Get an urchin army

 

[Just John]

Brandon, how about a sea hare to get rid of it while working on the cause?

 

[brandon429]

sounds ok by me. anything wet from another system is a potential bio security risk/disease vector for fish- per the disease forum and Jay's writings so that's one drawback to living animals aimed for a target job. if the animal comes from a tank of mixed fish during holding its a disease risk.

I have some strange dark algae developing in my very old blastomussa colonies (merletti, the strain with long skeletal stalks) and if direct application of 35% peroxide outside of tank doesnt kill it off I'm willing to try a scaled down dose run of fluc on a test setup side vase reef holding just this coral. won't dose to main display but I'd test model some fluc to see if it helps my 16 year old coral beat a very nasty attaching invader I let get in from the pet store.

 

[LeftyReefer]

I don't see how any GHA stands a chance vs that NAGINTA!!!

 

[Surfandturf]

Some pics. I have gotten it down to about 20% of the tank. These are the worst spots. Thinking if taking out this libo colony and srubbing the skeleton.

 

[Jekyl]

Have you increased the size of your clean up crew? Order the package from reefcleaners.org for 1/2 your tank size and add a long spine urchin or 2.

 

[Surfandturf]

Have you increased the size of your clean up crew? Order the package from reefcleaners.org for 1/2 your tank size and add a long spine urchin or 2.

I did. I got an additional 20 hermits and 10 cerith snails. I got an algae blenny and I also added a long spine urchin but it is not really touching the longer strands of algae.

 

[Jekyl]

I did. I got an additional 20 hermits and 10 cerith snails. I got an algae blenny and I also added a long spine urchin but it is not really touching the longer strands of algae.

Nothing out there will really get the long stuff. Removal by hand followed up with a toothbrush is the best method. I still recommend checking out a reefcleaners.org package. Snail variety in all different sizes.

 

[Surfandturf]

Nothing out there will really get the long stuff. Removal by hand followed up with a toothbrush is the best method. I still recommend checking out a reefcleaners.org package. Snail variety in all different sizes.

Ok I will do that. I have been manually removing it. It basically pulls off the sand bed in clumps. Then I scrub the rocks with an electric toothbrush and then use a baster to blow the detritus off the rocks. Then I do a water change and clean the filter sponges about 30 mins later to remove any of the algae that pushed through the system.

 

[Surfandturf]

So one thing that may have been a little confusing in my first post. I mentioned a canister filter. That was on a completely separate 55 gallon tank. On this tank I am running a 25 gallon sump with a skimmer in it rated to I think 150 gallons. It was definitely rated for larger than I need without including the sump water. I have also recently (as of yesterday) added about 5 lbs of rock to the sump in hopes of giving more area for beneficial bacteria to grow.

 

[Surfandturf]

My hair algae has been gone for about 3 weeks ish now. Electric toothbrush, nopox, and 20% weekly water changes. I also dimmed my lights to about 50% and have been slowly bumping them up.