Turf Algae Nightmare

KevinsReef · Jun 16, 2019

I’ve about had it with what people have told me is Turf algae. The only thing in my 90gal tank that will eat this stuff is my emerald crab. Kole Tang, snails, and crabs won’t touch it. I’ve been dosing Vibrant twice per week for 5 weeks. I only have to clean my glass once per week. I dosed 2 part ESV and NOPOX daily. My parameters are:
Alk: 8.4, Calc: 420, Mag: 1320, Nitrate: 0.5, Phosphate: 0.05, SG: 1.025.

Does anyone have any advice or success getting rid of this stuff short of tearing down the tank?

Thanks

Attached are some pictures.

Auquanut · Jun 16, 2019

Sorry for your troubles brother. I've never seen turf algae so localized and so bad. I'm no algae expert, but I'm sure the bigger brains out there can help. I've heard of people having results with directly applying peroxide, but I've never tried it myself. Hang in there. I'm sure it can be fixed.

KevinsReef · Jun 18, 2019

Auquanut said:
Sorry for your troubles brother. I've never seen turf algae so localized and so bad. I'm no algae expert, but I'm sure the bigger brains out there can help. I've heard of people having results with directly applying peroxide, but I've never tried it myself. Hang in there. I'm sure it can be fixed.

Thanks for your encouragement. I’ve had a reef Tank since I was in college in the late nineties. Most of my live rock I’ve had since then and only recently encountered turf algae. It must have come in on a frag or something.

I contacted Underwater Creations and they suggested increasing the frequency of the dosing of Vibrant from twice per week to every other day. I’m going to try that and give it a little while. If that doesn’t help I may try peroxide.

Auquanut · Jun 19, 2019

Good luck. Let us know how it works out. By the way, it's still an awesome looking tank.

Skynyrd Fish · Jun 19, 2019

Try some small urchins. I also had pulled most my rock and scrubbed in a bucket of tank water. I then siphoned all my gravel. Tank looks great.

KevinsReef · Jun 20, 2019

Thanks guys. I’ll let you know how it goes.

NTCook · Jun 25, 2019

KevinsReef, please do update if you find anything that works. I'm currently battling this stuff in what is otherwise my best system to date. Everything is spot on perfect... except this crap.

Did 14 days on Fluconazole and it was gone, carbon/water changes to remove Fluco and it came right back.

I was considering urchins as next step.

KevinsReef · Jul 1, 2019

NTCook said:
KevinsReef, please do update if you find anything that works. I'm currently battling this stuff in what is otherwise my best system to date. Everything is spot on perfect... except this crap.

Did 14 days on Fluconazole and it was gone, carbon/water changes to remove Fluco and it came right back.

I was considering urchins as next step.

The stuff is awful. I feel your pain. I had thought about Fluconazole but hadn’t tried it yet.

I added a pencil urchin on Friday. I placed him directly on top of a patch of it. He stayed there for a day or so and then went behind my rock work. I can’t tell that he’s done anything to the turf algae but I can see what looks like bite marks on some coralline. There is probably just too much for him to make a dent in.

Yesterday, I ordered a bottle of food grade 12% hydrogen peroxide. (Derived from 35%) H2o2 (32 fl oz (Quart)) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BXLKZMR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_eENgDbW3C3N3Y

I’m a little wary of using but I’ve seen videos from others where it seems to do the trick. However, I’d like to know what are the risks of using it and if can it do more harm than good to other inhabitants.

My nitrates are 0 but phosphate has crept back up to 0.12. I think this is because I started feeding more due to lack of algae that my that Tang will eat. So, for now I am doing the following:
Stopped dosing NOPOX. I had reduced down to 2 ml per day with nitrates 0 and phosphate 0.12
Stopped dosing Vibrant after 20 doses at 10 ml per day. Vibrant virtually eliminated normal algae like grows on the glass but had no impact on turf. It was starving my tang and snails.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

waxhawreefer · Jul 2, 2019

I had a bunch myself, I dosed vibrant every four days for about two months and it finally went away, that and all my coralline algae, bubble algae and some other funky crabgrass looking algae that no one could identify, one ml for every 10 gallons of tank water, including the sump volume, no ill effects to any of my sps! I still dose it weekly, even have calurpa in my refuge, just can’t over dose or it will wipe it out also, because once in a while I will find a spot or two of bubble algae, and by dosing it keeps it under control, hope this helps, might take longer, water changes may dilute the process!! Good luck

Miguel Negron · Jul 2, 2019

Sadly, I had this problem also. I was dosing vibrant and phosphate x, nothing worked. What I did do was pulled each rock that was affected and scrapped them with a grill brush. I legit went to buy a brand new grill brush since the bristles are very tough and started to scrap. Honestly this solution helped me out a lot! I would recommend it!

Miguel Negron · Jul 2, 2019

I had this problem! I took every rock out and scrapped them down outside the tank in a sink with a Grill Brush. I went to the store looking for one because a grill brush bristles are very tough and took off the algae. I highly recommend!

brandon429 · Jul 2, 2019

That peroxide can beat your algae it’s ideal. It’s not dosed to the water

You should test model it first, before you work the whole system. Like this: take any rock with target that can be lifted out.

Set on counter

Use steak knife tip like a dentist is exacting on the teeth, and scrape point debride that algae out of the rock, digging holdfasts out, working in between coralline and coral.

Scrape and rinse, saltwater only, evacuate the cleaned area until algae no more at all on the test area zone. Do a lot of the test rock, take time. Price of waiting, we undo that here

After your rock is clean and not before, apply peroxide using a dropper, externally, to the formerly invaded spots. Detail. Don’t contact corals with it etc. be creative. Let burn, rinse off, put back. This method makes it gone and we spend time gauging growback, if any from the test rock

It’s not that you have to do your whole system, it’s that so far this is the only method that doesn’t subject your corals to param changes, fails to deliver a clean rock, focuses on target and is as likely to work. The option was there day one when it was small. That there’s a little bit of ground work to catch up is nbd all those corals will tolerate being in the air, I have same corals in my tank and it drains for 30 mins in the air routinely on video to show skip cycle work mode etc

You can for sure produce a clean compliant test rock using reef dentistry, and metal rasping, and rip those holdfasts out by metal force. Peroxide is only the invisible cell cleanup post rinse. If the test rock works as predicted, then upscale

Hermie · Jul 2, 2019

I know this isn't what you're looking for but it actually looks kind of cool lol

Coming from a freshwater background, a lot of people in aquascaping love to get rocks covered with algae like that. I understand it's different in freshwater...

brandon429 · Jul 2, 2019

Agreed nice call

AquamanE · Jul 2, 2019

Following. I have some of this stuff also.

Those with “take out the rock and treat” wont work for me as this is a big tank with rock structures, but heed to the OP if it’s an option for him.

brandon429 · Jul 2, 2019

There’s also the classic changeup: drain down the water to expose the rock areas do the same but this isn’t as ideal for scraping due to fragmentation, so on a drain run test just dab or dropper the peroxide on one area at a time and let sit cooking, fill water drained into a brute back up and watch the spot for a while. It’s work, but you’re pulling and reusing all the same water on a potential tank wrecker

A little bit of peroxide runoff into a large tank isn’t harmful it goes inert in a few hours but the known sensitive animals are lysmata shrimp, likely to die if contacted, and blood shrimp. Most other animals corals and fish we keep will not be phased by a couple mils runoff.

*not 3 % that’s weak juice, get 12% or 35% and be careful/eye burns are real possible / corneal doom be careful. It’s ironic the reef itself is pretty tolerant. I have YouTube vids of me injecting 35% into my one gallon pico reef far worse concentration. The above cleaning is risky only to lysmata shrimp and cousins

* this is one of the very few invasions id advocate trying fluconazole since it’s targeted for these types and has a good chance

Diznaster · Jul 2, 2019

I had something similar looking, it was easy to scrub off with a toothbrush but came right back. I had fairly low NO3 also PO4 was hard to keep down. I think it was because this stuff was consuming a latent source of fertilizer. In my case that source was 4" MarinePure blocks. They worked great at trapping detritus in my sump and converting it to nutrients. I did a deep clean, ditched the blocks and added a rollermat. Green monster is gone now. PO4 creeping up might be leeching from rocks. They can be a giant storage buffer and re-release quickly. I did a few treatments with Phosphate Rx, and GFO reactor. I could drive PO4 down and it would rebound, do it again and it would rebound less, again, again. Once I got it to stay low (depleted the rocks), it has stayed low with moderate GFO usage for maintenance (I feed heavy).

reaper0268 · Jul 2, 2019

Use Reeflux and do normal water changes. If it isn't gone after a month, wait 30 days with normal water changes and treat again.

I have a 90 mixed reef and had to treat it twice to get rid of some nasty bryopsis. It will kill it. I have flowers nems, bta, sps, lps. It had no effect on livestock.

Salt1823 · Jul 2, 2019

Hairy pincushion urchin. Harder to find but they eat what the others will not. My entire 75 gallon was covered in same plus a wierd caulerpa that nothing else would eat. I ordered 2 from liveaquaria. They have cleaned all but one last rock in center. Had them in since April & they keep the rocks clean that they have already cleared. Has to be the hairy pincushion