To Fluco or not to Fluco, that is a question! Bryopsis or Impatience?

Thiper · Oct 25, 2017

Welcome dear Reefriends!

I decided to start this topic due to my problem I've seen in my new aquarium. On about me - I'm a newbie that read a lot, but still got question that need to be answered

Secondly I'm not a native speaker, so sorry for my misteakes and grammar!

To the point!
My aquarium is 21 days old (started at 5.10.2017). I started on a living rock that I got from shop. I was assured that this is a great rock, the best I could ever get (as mostly sellers are saying when they see a greenhorn). So I followed up thier advices and started on a fresh salty water.

My tank is 120x60x50 (360l = 95 gal) + sump (100x45x40) - overall 440l - 116 gal of water.
Additional stuff inside - skimmer Bubble Magus Curve 5; pump Jebao DCS 5000; circulation RW8+RW4; lamps - T5 8x54W and LED NemoLight Aqua Fresh 72W. No further filtration or anything else. Just 40kg of raw great living rock.

After setting it up happens to look like this (no glue used).

but... (yea I changed the design a bit) there always is a but... (without additional 't'

) After 20 days it looks like... THIS:

//A 'beautiful' green islands.//

The problem is kinda large so I'm curious of what to do. Here are the photos and video of algae:

and a video:

So now the question is simple. Is it a Bryopsis and the only help is a Flucanzole curation, or should I just wait, because it's been just 3 weeks since I've started. As you can see on the last photo, some of algae become a bit gray. Does it change something? What to choose?

Thanks for any help

P.S. Greeting from my only fishes and coral!

andrewkw · Oct 25, 2017

There is very little if any downside to dosing flucanzole, particularly in a new tank. That being said this is a LOT of algae for a brand new tank. Being a newbie I think you should probably figure out why you have so much algae so fast vs using a magic solution even if it does work.

Are you using 0 TDS RO/DI water?

nautical_nathaniel · Oct 25, 2017

Welcome to R2R! You take really good photos!

The algae in question is bryopsis, it looks like little feathers up close. I would honestly go ahead and use fluconazole, you have a very large amount of it growing in your tank and it is super tough to beat into submission (speaking from experience). I used fluconazole and it totally eradicated all of it from my tank in three-four weeks, you can check out my journey with it here.

Like others have said, I would first figure out where all of the rapid growth is coming from. Nutrients in the water is the most important thing to figure out but it can also stem from other issues such as the quality of water your salt mix is mixed into.

saltyfilmfolks · Oct 25, 2017

Yup. It's bryo imo. Hit the fluconazole.

Prob bloomed like crazy because of the new tank high nutrients organics and co2.

And no, nutirint control is pretty much out with the bryo. Ime.

Oh. And slow down.

Nothing good happens fast in this hobby, and only bad things happen overnight.

Oldreefer44 · Oct 25, 2017

IMO you should wait awhile and give things a chance to settle down a bit. Not sure that intervening in the natural maturation of your tank is a good idea. The most important bit of strategery in maintaining a reef tank is patience.

Thiper · Oct 25, 2017

I'm having water of 0 TDS RO/DI. I was filling my tank for like a day, and at the end of it the TDS meter showed 2. Seller said there is no problem with that, up to 3 is ok because SALT will melt everything.
Of course I changed the resin unit immidiately, and set up a new one with a TDS Creep removal. So the tank was atleast half filled with 0 TDS water, and the rest was with 1-3 TDS. Now I'm adding only 0 TDS water.

Problem might get because of light - was having it turned on for 6h for a week (2 Narva Blue), 8h for a second week (2h NB, 6 full set), than 4 days of 12h (2+10). Now I'm having lights on only for 6h - only 2 blues. That WAS the problem as the seller said to me.

Why I want to use Fluconazole? Because as the others said - it's the hardest algae to get rid of. They said that I should pull out rock, clean it, reset everything and start from the very beggining. And... I'm a stubborn not to do it

The water tests after water change - Salting: 1.0245, Temp: 25.8, pH: 8, KH: 7.5, Ca: 440, Mg: 1320, NH4: >0.1, NO2: 0, NO3: 10, PO4: >0,1

@nautical_nathaniel - well trying to do my best with the photos, just like it

Wanted to be sure, that unfortunately it is a bryopsis, and this forum seems to be living and having a lot of knowledge to be broaden.
@saltyfilmfolks - I now. Patience. That's why I posted this thread

It's so hard when I see it. In one hand it looks... even good... but when I read about how bad it is for corals... I just want to get it out as fast as it is possible!
@OLDREEFER44 - That is something that bothers me badly now. Knowing that it is bryopsis, and having to choose - to wait or to react as fast as possible.