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

[LARedstickreefer]

I dose 1mL per gallon, twice a day,and haven’t seen any effects, good or bad.

Direct contact kills algae, but I haven’t seen it kill anything at all when dosed.

Don’t let it get directly on sps. I bleached half a Monti.

 

[Terry Mattson]

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.

Update with Pictures: This morning cleaned the glass and then shut blue / UV off and turned up whites to take pictures. Things looked different for sure. Looks like I have more green algae and the maty slime is red (NOT Brown / Gray). The intense blue caused the red to look brown.

 

[brandon429]

very very helpful pics

look at the work comparative pics I'm mustering up for that tank below. we have a miniature comparative from a nano to match any job a large tanker has. For sure undoubtedly, you want to spot test a couple rocks before you do anything with peroxide. that cyano is easy to beat one way or another IMO, no rush, part of sandbed maturation we can guide that out later.

those rocks, if we detail them, test one before we waste hours on the tank, we can experiment with known predictable techniques that insta-clear those rocks of primary plant growths, so that accretions like coralline and corals can go there instead and directly ward off algae by various chemical and physical means.

Nobody posts a picture of algae attached to the lobe of a bubble coral, ever, not any.

because coral flesh is algae excluding....I like to force out algae with these cheats, vs waiting, and then plant more good coral flesh in the spot and feed it well. Reefmiser gave enduring perm to repost these pics. He's the first person I ever saw use peroxide in a work setting, with a before and after. roughly 2011 ish

*others have a different take on gha control I'm ok with that*

merely relaying what we've honed after hard, hard work. the distilled goods. Clearing plant mass by force makes it not retain detritus and plant feed within the fronds...its actually an important step in preparing the tank to be enduring free of gha, after grazer balances are set and doing the right load work.

this is external vs internal work. the test rock is easy...remove one, rasp off with a knife tip (dental level rough debriding, no kid gloves) and make that spot free like a parrotfish would, using steel.


the whole rock, pick and scrape around corals. around coralline, work around them, leave them for farming.

put peroxide only on the cleaned spots you created and rinsed prior, its for cellular burn. You did the initial mass remover, it doesn't rot in the tank using this method. Work is the price of hesitating, we can undo that however, quickly.

scrape the plant and take its holdfasts with you, this is the guiding work required if we don't create balances to do it for us. the end result is a clean tank. reset, via skip cycle work.

do one test rock the right, thorough way.

do another just pouring peroxide across the targets, 3% straight out of bottle, and don't scrape or remove.


model two different effort modes and watch how those rocks behave a while....a week or so.

we haven't taken any risks with your main DT in this method.


we cause substrate to behave vs wait, it changes our attitude which might be the ultimate primary benefit as a reefer, even over the chemistry understanding aspect. Refusing algae means the tank is uninvaded, for good. getting good at the chem and balancing side merely means you don't have to work as much for the same ends.
peroxide is ideal for taking back initial ground, leaving the tank free of the catchpoints, then you redo characters like nutrients and blue/white light balance/intensity and grazers to avoid big work jobs in the future.

I feel this is the best way to get tanks back into line without stressing corals.

the one spot he didn't have algae was on the flesh of the acan, neat indicator there. all gha reefs are like that.

zoanthids can include algae and associates in their thick skin but the lps and sps coral's flesh is typically algae exclusive such that every pic posted of an invaded tank shows a pattern.

one way I made my tank gha free was to literally make all the rock covered in coral. I haven't worked on gha in about 8 years on my main rock structure.

the endpoint of hand guiding is earned cruise control.

dental work doesn't have to go on forever, you just have to apply it at the right time.

 

[jeffchapok]

My personal experience only, with no science to back it up....

I had success adding H2O2 to my tank several times to spot treat some GHA. Never more than 1ml/10 gal at a time.

That is, until I added nems to my tank. I had a rock flower, BTA and a condylactis. I repeated my normal H2O2 application, and within minutes all the corals in my tank began shrivelling up. The fish and invertebrates were unaffected.

This is where the supposition on my part begins. I think one of the nems was irritated by the H2O2 and released its own toxins into the tank. I suspect the condy, as it definitely began excreting a stream of a milky looking substance. I moved it to a holding tank and performed several 50% water changes over the next 24 hours, as well as added a bag of charcoal to my HOB.

Most of my corals recovered eventually, although some took a month or so before I was sure they were going to make it. I did lose a couple of hammers, some zoas and the BTA completely. Strangely, the condy deteriorated into what seemed to be just a blob of loosely floating jelly without any tentacles at all. I was going to flush it, but decided to leave it alone as there was nothing else in the tank with it. At some point it reattached and began to reform somewhat. I eventually moved it back to the DT and it has fully recovered and looks better than ever. But I'm scared of it now that I know what it can do and am considering rehoming it. I'm just not 100% sure it was the true culprit.

 

[brandon429]

that is 100% in line with work threads. anemones are on the list of sensitives

what we think is most sensitive in order, meaning use in tank is likely to kill or stress:
-any lysmata shrimp or blood shrimp cousin
-hermodice fireworms, for some reason they cannot deal with any h202 metabolically its amazing and not like most other organisms, as we all have way more than fireworms in our tanks. pod loss is NOT expected at 1 and 2 mils per ten gallons dosing, when that type of admin is warranted by testing prior.
-anemones. rarely die, always get mad, shrivel up a while.
-decorative macro for obvious reasons
-xenia
-coralline bleaches but comes back.

ok 6 on the list

list of tolerants:

-filtration bac. I would love x200 any formal studies done showing the ld50 levels for filtration bac, their inherent insulating scum layers etc, to 3% peroxide. we have not found a practical limit for tank use that causes recession or measurable loss of a biofilter, even in overdoses. I use 35% in my one gallon pico reef, 3% is bubbly joy water lol but its at least not going to blind someone with an error in application. at a few mils of 35% put into my one gallon 13 yr reef, still no recycle, my youtube vids show.

I stayed after hours constantly in the 90s in our bac lab at Excel Beef packing in Plainview tx, measuring effects of 3% and alcohol and quat and all kinds of juice on standard aerobes using plate count/aseptic technique etc. we had a fine little setup for environmental testing where we raced the USDA every morning to be cleaner than their reqmnts for our outgoing meat and prep surfaces. This is where I discerned that 3% microbiologically is about as helpful as distilled water in clearing bacteria, where bioslicks are concerned. Its likely highly offensive to teased out/single cell tests done on slides (not how they express in nature)

they use quat ammonia for a reason

-fish. one off losses always occur. I read someone lost a fish with a kalk spike the other day. peroxide doesn't routinely affect any fish we keep threads show.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

Strange you guys are having negative reactions from peroxide. I’m dosing wayyyy more and have zero reaction. My zoas do close up, but only temporarily. Nothing else reacts and I’ve got hammers, torch, sps.

 

[brandon429]

soon ill make a vid of me pouring undiluted 3% from a bottle right across my montis/tank cleaning time coming up. then a follow up in a couple days by vid.
you can habituate corals to massive levels. mine w tolerate brief 35% contact. directly to polyps, outside of water.

my corals can hold 35% on their polyps longer than a person could puddle it in the palm of the hand, fact. stuff's mean. dangerous, that its avail otc is astonishing.

I believe yours can take a lot in direct contact, its really not as bad as people make it out to be on the tank. I would say the initial ground swell against peroxide use, say long about 2011 onward, was about 98% wrong. based on work threads. it is a permanent tool for reefing, not a fad.

 

[Terry Mattson]

Ok. What about the red cyno? I once had an outbreak and tried red slime stain removal. Skimmer went crazy. The red slime did receed about 90%. Fish ok
But corals were not happy. All came back several weeks after treatment.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

Where did you find 35% peroxide? That’s rocket fuel dude!

I bet it’s great for underwater squirting of algae.

 

[brandon429]

we can get it here in the us at any health food store. I used to send my 14 yr old in to pick it up lol I always thought that was cra.

in Canada/max 12% I think

Britain, 6% I think.

35% is so beyond dangerous. it is primarily sold as a bath additive (diluted) which again, without eye protection, is beyond dangerous. You could be pouring it in the bath and a single drop of 20-30% blanch the cornea like a poached egg.

Once I got it on my skin and I asked Randy in a post if Id have lasting nerve damage really lol. nowadays the white skin occurrence is more of an annoyance. 35% in the pico reef.

My boxer shrimp could take near direct contact of the 35, see him there




I didn't really have a need to be using it, as you can see I burned out all the algae long ago lol. it was just playing around, demo'ing mushroom resistance to it. shrimp resistance/tolerance, overall system tolerance.

that's a 1 gal sps reef, no dilution, heckuva test for claims about bac as it will crash in two seconds on a miscall. got about 2 or 3 mils of 35% as runoff into the system.

I then partially refilled, burning everything up to the 1/4 mark then drained back down.

then refilled, that's safe enough for it all. incrementing with it

 

[brandon429]

regarding the cyano, everyone's opinion on that is valid we're all battling it a mix of ways.

bottle bac/mb7 and Dt Tims waste away are popular

peroxide can beat it, mentioned above by EM

I use sandbed cleaning to rid the tank of it, but your tank is pretty big.

the cyano also can easily be eaten by margarita snails etc, I'm not worried about it too much it might die off as we work the other areas.

also, simply siphon removing/guiding it out or installing UV can work wonders for light cyano in a maturing tank, threads show.

 

[LARedstickreefer]

we can get it here in the us at any health food store. I used to send my 14 yr old in to pick it up lol I always thought that was cra.

in Canada/max 12% I think

Britain, 6% I think.

35% is so beyond dangerous. it is primarily sold as a bath additive (diluted) which again, without eye protection, is beyond dangerous. You could be pouring it in the bath and a single drop of 20-30% blanch the cornea like a poached egg.

Once I got it on my skin and I asked Randy in a post if Id have lasting nerve damage really lol. nowadays the white skin occurrence is more of an annoyance. 35% in the pico reef.

My boxer shrimp could take near direct contact of the 35, see him there




I didn't really have a need to be using it, as you can see I burned out all the algae long ago lol. it was just playing around, demo'ing mushroom resistance to it. shrimp resistance/tolerance, overall system tolerance.

that's a 1 gal sps reef, no dilution, heckuva test for claims about bac as it will crash in two seconds on a miscall. got about 2 or 3 mils of 35% as runoff into the system.

I then partially refilled, burning everything up to the 1/4 mark then drained back down.

then refilled, that's safe enough for it all. incrementing with it

I once took something around 20% and microwaved it until it was super concentrated. Burned my hand with it and stained the counter in my apartment. Poured it into a potted plant and watched it go crazy.

Edit: Try it on some hydroids. I can’t find a cure for them aside from using epoxy to cover them up.

 

[brandon429]

eyeprotection.com lol

 

[GWHouston]

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.

@brandon429 will you post a link to this thread? Thanks in advance.

 

[Dom]

Ok... so I have a small 15 gallon tank with sump for a total water volume of approximately 20 gallons.

While the sump has a refugium with Chaeto, there isn't a skimmer. Because of this, I have a pretty decent amount of algae growth which requires a mandatory scraping of the glass prior to weekly water changes. But some things can't be scraped with a razor, such as the return pipe and overflow which are PVC.

In this tank are a pair of tomato clowns and 3 nice pieces of live rock with Zoas.

As an experiment, I have decided to try dosing H2O2 to see how it impacts algae growth.

In this thread, the recommended dose is 1ml per gallon. That is a daily dose of 20ml. I've started out with a .5ml per gallon dose and will bring it up slowly.

I'm curious to see what happens.

 

[brandon429]

That's a massive overdose, 1 ml per gallon, and it still wouldn't kill your filter it could kill the animals

One mil per ten gallons is safe
I'm going back to see if I mistyped any doses

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

There's our cyano works thread. Red beds in, clean beds out like clockwork. Two things we disavow there: ammonia testing and bottle bac crutching. The whole think is work in large and small tanks and not one ammonia test, ammonia is always predictable and follows detritus, that's what we are mindful about

*lack of surface area does not occur in reefing if you are using any degree of matured live rocks...that's how we get away with instant sandbed removal in a ten year system without a ramp down phase. Live rock has such massive surface area, even the manmade stuff, that sandbed bacteria are incidental and not a breakpoint to healthy filtration. They're excess, so do whatever you want to them (tap rinse a bed, replace it, rip it out and go bare bottom, all the same)

If we were accepting ammonia tests, they'd always say .25 so why bother (non seneye ammonia readings - don't want)


The thesis of that thread is your filter bacteria are to be trusted at all times they don't need your help. Work deliberately to win, hesitation and partiality kills. Leave no cloud in the sand and the method can be trusted.

 

[brandon429]

If you added the .5 ml per gallon yesterday then you're testing at the highest possible safe zone right off the bat, bump it down massively. I would think algae will be zapped in a few days at that level but that level isn't well tested with fish, it's risky.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Wouldn’t the calcium chloride be acting as a catalyst in a conventional aquarium? There for the peroxide wouldn’t last long to become oxygen and water? I like the idea of using peroxide as a substitute to ozone but am guessing that there ain’t much info on the subject available just yet.

 

[Dom]

That's a massive overdose, 1 ml per gallon, and it still wouldn't kill your filter it could kill the animals

YIKES! My mistake; I misread...

It's been about 12 hours since I added the H2O2. I just checked the tank and everyone seems happy.

So it would be 1ml per 10 gallons and a total of 2ml daily.

I'll wait until after my Sunday water changes to start again.

 

[brandon429]

They’ll be ok. Dan might be able to show soon what the degradation time is but going off the feel of post patterns you’re in safe zone now


Sixty I’m not good at chemistry w have to hear from the crowd on other factors influencing or associated with peroxide use. Change of states for metals and organic interactions are all I’ve read about so far in Randy’s forums over the years.

Figured I’d post our work thread using peroxide. Peroxide is 10% of the overall affect here, 90% is people taking their tank apart for surgery so they can clean out the rocks and sandbed of the feed that fuels what we’re having to put peroxide on


We test rock there, never jump off into whole tank work. We know how the invader dies and regrows before upscaling to main tank. A gha beatdown is going on there lol

Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide

What you are really in for: Hand cleaning, hard work siphon and rasp-removing of accumulations and invasions outside the tank and doing massive water changes is 90% of this thread, peroxide is 10%. We almost never dose peroxide into the tank water, this is a you-work-physically-hard as catch-up...

www.reef2reef.com

Linked are eight years of work at reefcentral and nano-reef to arrive at these interesting patterns over time regarding peroxide use. I’ve been blasting my reefbowl with it the whole time just to participate and track coral impact