What does adding Hydrogen Peroxide do to tank chemistry and organizims in tank

Terry Mattson

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I have read that adding hydrogen peroxide to the tank can reduce or kill off the rather thick brownish and a patch or two of red slime coating on the sand bed . . . Dino? and or Cyno? The sand is not the finest but is small in size so the sand goby can sift it. Before I consider adding hydrogen peroxide , I want to understand what this does to the chemistry of the tank and organisms living there. From some other thread I read today dealing with this challenge, it is recommended to add 1ml per10 of gallons of hydrogen peroxide. I do have some green hair algae on the rock, and on the back glass and some slime that bubbles on the back glass. When I clean the back glass (occasionally), the material comes off in little sheets / strings.

Corals are not impacted by any of the algae or slime looking substance on the sand. So my question is: Is it safe to add HP to the tank? what is it doing chemically to the tank?? And any opinions on dosing hydrogen peroxide being a good idea?? I do have chem-clean but it is safely the box . . . do not want to disrupt the health of the tank livestock. Trying to fix this using nature . . . if at all possible. But I am growing a little frustrated.

The tank is a Red Sea 350 (73 gallon plus 18 gallon sump). Have a reef set up with about 70 to 90 pounds of rock (guessing). Skimmer, refugium lit by a H380. I pull a good pint of Cheto out every week. Run a 18 watt UV, GFO and carbon in a reactor. Also have a icecap 3000 for flow. ATO system is installed. The tank cycled in Jan 2019.

Corals are doing well and growing slowly. Hammer, Frogspawn, Candy Cane, Duncan, Mushrooms, Acan, Star polyp, ZOAs (~80 heads) and three other LPS . . .
Fish are doing great, Kole Tang, 4 clown fish (2 pairs), 3 fire fish, dody back, diamond goby, and mandarin.
Cleaner shrimp and blood shrimp (red with white spots), and a arrow crab. A few snails and 6 blue or red crabs.

The tank is loaded with copods. Needed for mandarin. mandarin is now thick and appears to be getting bigger. Do not want to do anything that will kill those pods for sure . . .

I currently dose kalkwiser using a dosing pump, 2 teaspoons per gallon with 15 ml vinegar. Total per day is ~ 384 ml. / into 24 equal parts. Thus far I do not have build up of deposits on the heater etc.

I test every week.
SG 1.025 to 1.026
Phosphate is .031 (however, this week it read 0 using a hanna checker)? Have not retested yet. With that said: The GFO is lasting longer and longer since adding corals and H300 light to refugium.
Nitrates continue to read close to zero for over 4 months. Using API test.
dkh is 7.8 nearly every week I test (I do add about 1/3 cup of sodium bicarb to help lift it o 8.5 per BRS calculator).
PH is 8.04.
Calcium is 430 (red sea test kit)
Magnesium is 1350 (red Sea test kit)

I dose phytoplankton twice a week (20ml each feeding - pumps off): Target Feed Corals Reef Roids and coral frenzy once a week (~1/2 teaspoon total) - pumps off. Two drops of iodine once a week (test kit gives me a reading of about .06 ppm) . The iodine was like close to zero and the zoas would not open. Added iodine and all 80 plus heads opened within 30 hours. . . . Feed the fish a mixture of pellets, flake, two different type of frozen foods each morning. Some times feed a little of the frozen foods at night. I do not strain the food; thus, giving a slurry for the corals.

Water changes are small but consistent: I replace 1 gallon per day of new salt; plus, an occasional vacuum of sump ~ 5 gallons / 8 weeks.

So, back to the main question:
Is using hydrogen peroxide effect and safe given the information above? what is the chemistry change impact to the tank? Will it kill off pods needed to feed the mandarin?

Any help or information is appreciated.
 

vetteguy53081

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Peroxide is safe - yes ( 1ml per 10 gals) and will eradicate diatoms and mainly dinoflagellates.
 

Dom

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Does Peroxide (H2O2?) get consumed in some way? Is it something that is dosed or is it added once... sorta like a "set it and forget it" additive?
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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I don't know that it really does everything that is claimed (besides add a small amount of O2), but one thing it may do to limit pest organisms is make metals like iron less bioavailable by oxidizing them into less soluble forms, such as ferric iron vs ferrous iron.
 

vetteguy53081

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Does Peroxide (H2O2?) get consumed in some way? Is it something that is dosed or is it added once... sorta like a "set it and forget it" additive?
It is comprised mainly of water and dissipates. the actual peroxide will digest waste and bacteria as it also does with an open cut on a human
 

Randy Holmes-Farley

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Does Peroxide (H2O2?) get consumed in some way? Is it something that is dosed or is it added once... sorta like a "set it and forget it" additive?

It disappears rapidly.
 

EmdeReef

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~1ml/10g every 12hrs (the interval probably doesn’t matter) helped me get rid of a bad cyano and a less serious dino problem. It took a while though (2+ weeks), also my rocks look too clean now - never seen this before. All the parameters (I can test for) stayed the same over the period. There’s also definitely an effect on DO at least based on my old MW DO meter.

That said, if you don’t fix the underlying cause of cyano it may come back. During my week long trip almost all the cyano was back, knocked it back again with hydrogen peroxide.

There’s been a couple of studies showing promising results that larger concentrations can kill ich and velvet starting at about 70mg/L, however I don’t know if possible to achieve this in a reef tank?!. @Humblefish was successful eliminating velvet with I think a 150mg/L bath - don’t know how corals would react, my green slimer frag died after a dip in ~100mg/L.

@Randy Holmes-Farley Is there a reliable (and affordable) way to test h2o2 in salt water?
 

brandon429

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organic differences tank to tank affect its lifespan but not by much

we've seen enough redox readings/paradoxes by now to see its fast degassing

its one of the most useful tools in reefing, says big peroxide threads.
it can be employed to burn through offenders while specifically not harming about 90% of what we keep, amazing targeting ability too.

by subjecting all tank to the same burn... then the known sensitives succumb. to use peroxide correctly, 90% of the time its not dosed to the tank, but to something you lifted out of the tank.

and the filthy sandbed/cause of it all is fixed, if applicable.

peroxide has associated actions like EM mentioned so you don't need to circle back


My advice: consult a work thread don't approach it with pure chemistry. you will miss critical points if you approach it from a chemistry perspective, massive important details only work threads show. consult peroxide work threads

for example, you can't get from chemistry:
-no lysmata shrimp is expected to survive any form of peroxide dose, and, no fish kept across all tanks has been found to be sensitive in the known safe levels. That kind of patterning comes from work threads, it cannot be predicted on paper.
-there are five specific items likely to be stressed, and pretty much all else is gtg depending on the custom approach. its rarely about adding it to your water, mostly you have more work to do than that for having designed a tank a certain way. pics will tell

that being said, post a pic of your tank lets see how it fares as a candidate.
 
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Dom

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It is comprised mainly of water and dissipates. the actual peroxide will digest waste and bacteria as it also does with an open cut on a human

So you need to add it regularly to the tank? If so, what is the frequency; weekly... monthly? Adding is based on observation?
 
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Terry Mattson

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organic differences tank to tank affect its lifespan but not by much

we've seen enough redox readings/paradoxes by now to see its fast degassing

its one of the most useful tools in reefing, says big peroxide threads.
it can be employed to burn through offenders while specifically not harming about 90% of what we keep, amazing targeting ability too.

by subjecting all tank to the same burn... then the known sensitives succumb. to use peroxide correctly, 90% of the time its not dosed to the tank, but to something you lifted out of the tank.

and the filthy sandbed/cause of it all is fixed, if applicable.

peroxide has associated actions like EM mentioned so you don't need to circle back


My advice: consult a work thread don't approach it with pure chemistry. you will miss critical points if you approach it from a chemistry perspective, massive important details only work threads show. consult peroxide work threads

for example, you can't get from chemistry:
-no lysmata shrimp is expected to survive any form of peroxide dose, and, no fish kept across all tanks has been found to be sensitive in the known safe levels. That kind of patterning comes from work threads, it cannot be predicted on paper.
-there are five specific items likely to be stressed, and pretty much all else is gtg depending on the custom approach. its rarely about adding it to your water, mostly you have more work to do than that for having designed a tank a certain way. pics will tell

that being said, post a pic of your tank lets see how it fares as a candidate.


OK. I will get some pictures taken and get them posted tomorrow.
 

vetteguy53081

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So you need to add it regularly to the tank? If so, what is the frequency; weekly... monthly? Adding is based on observation?
I do it only for dino until fully gone. You can add some regularly as a safeguard against re-occurrence
 
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Terry Mattson

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I want to thank all of you on taking the time to help with this. Learned a lot from members of R2R. Will get pictures to this thread tomorrow. So you can see what it looks like. And take steps as indicated. Will hold off on any dosing until further evaluated.
 

brandon429

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yes for sure, out of approximately ten thousand tank treatments we documented on peroxide use, we thought adding it to the tank was good for about 100 of them. the rest took the tank apart, cleaned things, and didn't even need peroxide.

this is coming from a total peroxide advocate btw, love the stuff.

But what I love more is solving invasion issues, and that may or may not indicate peroxide per pics. neat to have varied options anway, can't wait to see. for example, the sand rinse thread is the most cures for cyano bacteria in one thread anywhere, 23 pages running. it uses filthy sandbed cleaning and no chems to get the outcomes. they post a cyano problem and if they reach into the sand and grab some, then drop, a cloud of cyano + feed results.

we have them reverse that, such that a drop is snow globe clean....no clouding.

then cyano is gone, easy. following the old sandbed rules gets most people cyano, so we broke the rules and cleaned the beds

there's a very old works thread in the general forum from Lee regarding peroxide, that's nearly everyone dumping it in the tank. Nothing wrong with that approach, but by employing it correctly, custom-matched to tank pics, we do far far better than random dumping at 1:10.
 
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Randy Holmes-Farley

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organic differences tank to tank affect its lifespan but not by much

I doubt you actually have info on the lifetime of peroxide molecules in reef tanks, so what is that statement based on?
 

Dan_P

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I doubt you actually have info on the lifetime of peroxide molecules in reef tanks, so what is that statement based on?

Who is actually measuring peroxide in the aquarium? Is there a preferred method?
 

brandon429

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It’s based on the orp readings posted before during after, peaks and troughs show about 4 hours till the rebound back up/ pre dose levels

Given no organics and just a clear glass container dosed, how long is the breakdown on paper curious to know if vastly longer or shorter

other than orp drops/raises in that order I don’t know of any other way typical aquarists could be gauging any aspect of its duration.
 
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Dan_P

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It’s based on the tons of orp readings posted before during after, peaks and troughs show about 4 hours till the rebound back up/ pre dose levels

Given no organics and just a clear glass container dosed, how long is the breakdown on paper curious to know if vastly longer or shorter

other than orp drops/raises in that order I don’t know of any other way typical aquarists could be gauging any aspect of its duration.

Just did a quick search. Half lives for ocean water in hours (coastal) to days (further out). So, yeah, depending on the amount of organics, dissolved and particulate, I could imagine high variability in hydrogen peroxide life time in an aquarium. I would also guess that the average aquarium water is like coastal water.

I like the ease of ORP measurements but would rather measure a chemical species. Hach has a hydrogen peroxide titration kit, but I am totally ignorant about any potential interference from seawater. If Randy could comment on the titration method, I would be happy to give it a try (I have been meaning to try it).
 

brandon429

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A classic test interesting to see would be dosed into a normal mature reef, and then one that is bare bottom and mature, and then a totally new setup. Covers the range of organics for sure...will be neat to see if it hangs around for a long time in amounts that could constitute a compound dosed not given enough time to dissipate or however it neutralizes

A tiny chemical trace taking a while didn’t seem as impactful as knowing how fast you can apply another dose so you’re still within one mil per ten gallon general dilution
 

Dan_P

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A classic test interesting to see would be dosed into a normal mature reef, and then one that is bare bottom and mature, and then a totally new setup. Covers the range of organics for sure...will be neat to see if it hangs around for a long time in amounts that could constitute a compound dosed not given enough time to dissipate or however it neutralizes

A tiny chemical trace taking a while didn’t seem as impactful as knowing how fast you can apply another dose so you’re still within one mil per ten gallon general dilution

Since I have only one aquarium, I might vary the organics by adding back skimmate to a sample of tank water, testing tank water after feeding, etc.
 

brandon429

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Can’t wait to see the peroxide specific test that’s awesome. For the peroxide dosers who want to dose the max levels / say for bad dinos or large tank cyano challenges / 2-4 mils per ten gallons, we have them dose it max once daily. I’m thinking the time-to-safety is definitely under 24 hours, if it took longer to degrade they’d be doubling up dilution and killing stuff.
The highest dose I recall from the reefcentral peroxide thread was four mils per ten gallons daily into an sps reef w no losses but extreme coral anger/ closed up days during
 

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