Winning the war, me and bubble algae.

Soryu

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I am in no way giving instructions here, every tank is different and everyone will have differing results when trying to defeat this beast.

So my first weapon here is Vibrant, this stuff is a miracle worker and it's been the silver bullet for my green hair algae and now the silver bullet for my green bubble algae. I've been pushing really hard to remove it manually but due to the porosity of my rocks it's almost impossible to remove all it without bursting it and releasing spores. I've started dosing vibrant weekly and since then I've seen the rate of growth of my bubble algae slow and very few new bubbles forming.

I think that part of my problem in the past has actually been my aggressive water change schedule. Doing 25% weekly and carbon dosing I've seen my nutrients plummet to near undetectable levels. My next step was to reduce the water changes to 10%, stop carbon dosing and skim a little dryer to increase my nutrients.

Now this may not be related but I also started dosing Red Sea AB+ coral nutrition daily. I also started feeding Rod's Original which I'm sure is full of phosphates.

Most of what I've done seems like I was making a huge mistake as far as I can tell. But my corals have exploded in growth, and my bubble algae is dying back slowly. I was at the point where I was about to break this tank down and restart it. Now I couldn't be happier!
 

Chrille26

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Congrats on beating one of the worst plagues! What finally worked for me after trying emerald crabs and manual removal was this guy:
IMG_20200923_175420-01.jpeg

A bicolor Foxface. It took a few weeks but when he got taste for it he vaccumed my reef of bubbles. :) Sadly I need to rehome him soon due to size.
 

OrangeCountyReefer

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Put 3 emerald crabs in my 25 gallon lagoon about 2 weeks about and 90% of the bubble algae and actually most of the other algae is gone as well
 

Cast

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Congrats on beating one of the worst plagues! What finally worked for me after trying emerald crabs and manual removal was this guy:
IMG_20200923_175420-01.jpeg

A bicolor Foxface. It took a few weeks but when he got taste for it he vaccumed my reef of bubbles. :) Sadly I need to rehome him soon due to size.
I will take him!!!
 
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OP
S

Soryu

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We tried the emerald crabs with no success but we added a new pair and they seem to be happy to eat them. I'm looking at a foxface lo for my tank too if I can get one that I feel okay size wise putting into my quarantine tank.
 

Algae invading algae: Have you had unwanted algae in your good macroalgae?

  • I regularly have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 22 34.4%
  • I occasionally have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 17 26.6%
  • I rarely have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 5 7.8%
  • I never have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 5 7.8%
  • I don’t have macroalgae.

    Votes: 14 21.9%
  • Other.

    Votes: 1 1.6%
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