Algae HOPE Thread!

[GatorScott]

I was talking to a friend today who’s setting up a new tank and we started talking about algae and being persistent and patience and surviving the different algae’s you can possibly get. I was explaining how rewarding it can be to persevere threw some bad algae and how rewarding it is to beat it and have the tank thrive and not quit the hobby!!

Started to really think about it and In the short almost 3yrs I’ve had my tank I’ve been threw all these and survived.

-diatom
-Green hair
-Cyano
-Byropsis
-Dino
-unknown algae looked like vines growing on my rocks causing corals to close
-Bubble(still battling slightly but on the major downside of it)

I don’t know whether to be proud I never quit or ashamed I let it happen lol. But I’ve learned a lot as I went and learned the hard way most of the time. I’ve treated, siphoned, manually removed, scraped, pinched, blasted, netted, 3 day blacked out, the whole nine yards. And here I am thriving in my own mind lol. What have you been through and post a success pic and a pic when it was bad if you were brave enough to take a pic lol!

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Nice looking tank.

I understand your take on algae, it is nice to beat. I am on the down side of removing turf algae and Dino from my tank. I lived with it for at least 3 years until I recently started to battle it.

I will be honest I would have rather never have had either. I do look at my tank now though and feel glad it’s almost gone.

 

[GatorScott]

Nice looking tank.

I understand your take on algae, it is nice to beat. I am on the down side of removing turf algae and Dino from my tank. I lived with it for at least 3 years until I recently started to battle it.

I will be honest I would have rather never have had either. I do look at my tank now though and feel glad it’s almost gone.

Turf is one I haven’t had yet. I honestly didn’t realize I’ve been thru so much algae until I talked about it today lol. I too wish I never had any, especially bubble algae.

 

[ZoWhat]

.......

 

[ZoWhat]

Nice looking tank.

I understand your take on algae, it is nice to beat. I am on the down side of removing turf algae and Dino from my tank. I lived with it for at least 3 years until I recently started to battle it.

I will be honest I would have rather never have had either. I do look at my tank now though and feel glad it’s almost gone.

@Mastiffsrule

How did you beat Turf algae?

 

[Mastiffsrule]

@Mastiffsrule

How did you beat Turf algae?

Not beat yet, but close. I wish I could say 100% what i did that worked, but I threw the kitchen sink at it. I tried vibrant, Dr. Tim’s, and MB7. I really don’t think any of those really helped.

I ended up dumping in 150 crabs and snails and lots of pods from AlgaeBarn. Also threw in 5 emerald crabs. Basically beefed up my cuc. I cannot stress enough the manual removal of as much as possible on a daily basis to help. And I jacked my mag to above 1400.

I have seen a big improvement. I would say I am about 75% clear. My tank is a 10 years old 180, so I didn’t mind going slow. On smaller tanks Brandon429 has a nice thread on rip clean tanks to remove all the nuisance algae quick.

I now keep a plastic scrub brussh from home depot by my tank and brush the rocks of quick each day.

 

[ZoWhat]

Not beat yet, but close. I wish I could say 100% what i did that worked, but I threw the kitchen sink at it. I tried vibrant, Dr. Tim’s, and MB7. I really don’t think any of those really helped.

I ended up dumping in 150 crabs and snails and lots of pods from AlgaeBarn. Also threw in 5 emerald crabs. Basically beefed up my cuc. I cannot stress enough the manual removal of as much as possible on a daily basis to help. And I jacked my mag to above 1400.

I have seen a big improvement. I would say I am about 75% clear. My tank is a 10 years old 180, so I didn’t mind going slow. On smaller tanks Brandon429 has a nice thread on rip clean tanks to remove all the nuisance algae quick.

I now keep a plastic scrub brussh from home depot by my tank and brush the rocks of quick each day.

Me too. I got my turf reduced to 5-10% of what it was 6mos ago.

I'm using in my ~240g total volume in a 180g DT

* Dr Tim's WasteAway, whole bottle, one a month

* reduced all whites to almost nothing. 99% lighting in the 420nm purplish blue

* 20ml of 80proof vodka dosing DAILY

* only feeding once a day in an amt where fish eat everything in 5mins or less

* filter socks, replacing them every 3 days

* wet skimming about 1/2 gal a day

* have a makeshift algae scrubber in sump using chaeto and red/pink light shining on it 24/7

* MANUAL REMOVAL when I can using 2ft stainless steel hemostat clamping thinga-ma-bob

* every other day blowing off LR with hand-roaming powerhead

My tank is on year #7.... and I'm convinced my LR is saturated with no3/po4

Turf algae is the WORST. Wouldnt wish on my worst enemy. Its reeeeally sucks.... reeeeeeeeeeeeally sucks




.

 

[saltyhog]

@GatorScott I can relate! I hopefully am emerging from a year long battle with dinos. There have been several times I considered quitting. It's been that frustrating. Thankfully it seems to be under control now and the tank is recovering with good growth on my SPS.

Your tank looks great! Congratulations, keep encouraging others!

 

[GatorScott]

@skimjim I’ve used that Dr tims waste away. Kinda of a hidden gem IMO.

 

[brandon429]

How nice, how refreshing and rare. A group of aquarists who didn't self invade for months on purpose and then work backwards, you seemed to disallow the targets from the start, so I'd expect some nice looking tanks like the OP has. That's what it takes to reef consistently, a bunch of actual gardeners who do not sit back

95% of invasions are unlucky hitchhikers, 5% are a param issue. The reverse of what the masses think is the truth

the worst most dangerous advice in reefing is to wait passively for an uglies phase to self balance

We collect threads where it never does correct until mean stuff happens within the tank and we think mean stuff + saved tank is better than au naturale and invaded for fifty months where you hate the tank and all onlookers repeatedly get the uglies definition.

I do not know how, when or why the allowed uglies phase got into reefing. I'm glad my physician doesn't apply medicine that way: oh your arm hurts and your fingers are turning purple? Just give it time I've seen that go away on its own for this other guy

We each have our preferred control method. As long as it's some form of action with results I'm happy. Nature is unreliable for invasion control in reefing, but a human with resolve wins

*there is benefit in following the old/dated advice to purposefully wreck your tank then work back, only through the water, to hopefully earn a win. The benefit is, if you can pull that off you'll be a great water tuner and can handle super large tanks better than most since they're the hardest to access, you'll need that water tuning ability/hands off sage ability to make your investment last years. You will learn yet another control angle to prevent/respond to invasions: how to tune via the water, and you'll be benefitted.

The downside is 5% of people pull that off and 95% lose thousands of dollars not wanting to run that type of experiment.

the VAST majority of reefers simply want a working, reliable, no excuses required reef.
If that's your goal, do not self invade. Garden like gardeners do...how many dandelions does a gardner hobbyist host? how do they get them gone when they do show up? is it a sign of a bad lawn to have some dandelions? the difference between a good lawn and the neighbors bad lawn is manual labor.