ALGAE takeover

[Thomas Wieczorek]

Thomas those two posted threads show the complete skip cycle approach. Cloudless reassembly

for coral-laden rocks we still work on them in the air, over the kitchen sink. They can likely tolerate an hour or so being in the air, crazy I know


but u don’t have to concern, spray or dribble sw over the corals as you detail. Keep em target wet.
use knife tip to target debride algae away right up to the flesh


a pocket knife makes your target rock free of algae, tip dig, lift, scrape and dislodge and be rinsing down the drain with saltwater.

*when the frag is all manually metal cleaned, the rock around it, abutment algae targeted like a knife urchin, then go back over cleaned areas with peroxide and cell burn invisibles. Thats the right way to handle rocks. Peroxide doesn’t go on algae, it’s been scraped away. Peroxide goes only on clear rasped surfaces which have no discernible target.

when reassembled lower light white levels and run blues much better for a while to see if helps lower grow back. Manage params, clean up crews, filtration approaches, all in the clean condition not the invaded condition thats what everyone does

@brandon429 I went down a rabbit hole late last night reading up on some of the threads you where involved in. It was a GREAT read. Including the 120 rip and sand cleaning thread. Thank you for giving people the courage to act on situations of invasion rather then Wait stagnant. Something I've been doing for to long

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

like mentioned in other posts, try an algae scrubber or a refugium with chaeto on an opposite light schedule. Hopefully you'll grow all of that nastiness in the sump or HOB and not the DT

BTW WELCOME TO R2R

 

[Thomas Wieczorek]

Something that strikes me is I have done all that is mentioned in algea battle threads. I have a refugium. I have dosed vibrant. I run gfo. I cut my lights off 3 days. I have a fancy skimmer. I have the best lights available (opinion) lol. Radion g5. I have used mb7. I have tons of bio media in the sump. I run biopellets. I use filter socks (that I change and clean daily). I run 2 neptune apex wav pumps for flow. what's the problem? Why does the algea always come back? It seems like the rocks have nutrient pockets. They have taken their maximum amount of detritus. A storm event nessasary to flush the Rocks clean. A good rip cleaning to reset the bio clock. Some before pics taken just now. I have my bins and buckets ready. Water made. only 30g it's all I have room to make. This is not a full param reset. I'm pulling the live rock that's covered in gha and scrubbing. Flushing the pores out, hopefully this pushes me back on the table off the already tipped tipping point.

 

[dopey]

I haven't ever faced this type of algea; but I can relate to a period of neglect and having to overcome the shame and challenge of getting the tank back to good shape.

My battle was caulerpa, which completely overran my tank while I neglected it.

There is no easy fix out of this, and I think BRS's message of 'it took months to get this way, it will take months to get back'.

For me, it was the following:
1.) Consistent water changes (These did not happen during the neglect period)
2.) Using a large hose without attachment -- Then using my thumb+hose to physically suck out as much as possible during each water change.
........repeating this for many water changes.
3.) Adding utility fish (surgeon fish/tang).
4.) Adding a refugium to my sump

It took several weeks(months), but these past weeks have been very rewarding. It is not 100% gone, but it is disappearing day by day now. I no longer need to remove large sections during water changes.

This is chronicaled in my build thread -- including photos of it at it's worst and my acknowledgement that I was going to try and fix this.

Here is the last few weeks.
March 30th:

April 21st:

I have not dosed any chemicals. Just returning(and keeping) a consistent husbandry routine and what I described above.


Whichever method you chose to listen to good luck. It can be beat, but like everything in this hobby there is no quick fix.

 

[brandon429]

That show on Netflix

coral seas or something like that


you’ll notice on pristine reefs in the movie, algae grows 100% like above where coral flesh isn’t there to exclude it / the film makes its attributions for reasons coral flesh declines (global warming)



it was not a water param issue that caused mass algae in that movie


it was the absence of something designed to go after it, we fill in.

the presence of living coral flesh directly excludes algae. the water didnt have nitrate and po4 problems, it had lack of reasons not to grow algae problems.


rock, for the taking, is real estate acq by plants soon after bacteria we can see across the board, it is in the exclusion. Any more param turning and we’re into coral bleaching, by water, which isn’t happening in the movie

a balanced reef grows your degree of algae if grazing is absent (mass urchin dieoff) and if coral flesh dies off (warming attribution)


what we do above is apply tenets of human dentistry to a toothrock held over the sink

until a better preventative (physical) is found, a Gastropod, to ease our work the best way to deal with gha is to be fed up and:

 

[ReefGrammie]

Read a lot about Vibrant. I have a good CUC now just purchased last week.

just annoyed at myself for letting my tank get in the shape it’s in

I completely feel your pain!!! I went through the same thing...if you want to get sick, read through my build thread (nasty pictures included)!! Long story short, I had planned to take down my tank and hadn't done much maintenance in probably a year or two. I changed my mind, bought a new LED, and disaster happened! First a horrible GHA outbreak, then dinos or something else (brown and stringy with bubbles on top), then bryopsis. I was about to lose my mind for a while! This started last October.

The worst part was being patient through the whole disaster. I manually removed as much of the GHA as I could by removing the rocks and scrubbing them, then rinsing in clean RO water. I can't even reach the bottom of my 90-gallon tank, plus I had base rock partially buried under the sand, so removing that rock was out. All this time, I was dosing 10 ml of Vibrant twice weekly for a "dirty" tank. I restarted my phosphate reactor...my Hanna checker was registering zero, but I knew that probably wasn't the case. Thankfully, I pretty much had no coral at the time, so I wasn't worried about how the coral would do. After the GHA started turning white and dying off, I backed down slightly on the aggressive Vibrant dosing to about once per week. Meanwhile, the brown stringy stuff started. That went away when I bumped my alk up to around 8.5 very slowly. Then, the bryopsis started and was quickly getting out of control. i upped the Vibrant again, but finally decided to try the fluconazole, after reading many, many threads. Maybe I would have been better off to just try the fluconazole from the get-go...I don't know. I did one dose of fluconazole, removed the carbon, let the skimmer keep running without the cup, and kept also dosing the Vibrant. I'm am still dosing Vibrant about every 10 days now. There is no sign of any algae, and I hope it stays that way! Good luck!

 

[Thomas Wieczorek]

Work

 

[brandon429]

thats good, a knife is better because brush bristles press the bits down into crevices. if you are flushing out using saltwater it wont matter. peroxide on clean spots, avoid coralline areas it lightens coralline areas. working like that above allows you to be very directing, well done

 

[Thomas Wieczorek]

The rocks look much much better. Hopefully now I wont regrow the algae for a while. I will be planning a full rip clean soon with 100% water change/sand bed cleaning.

 

[Ajayabb]

Never tried H2O2. Do you rinse afterwards?

You can either broadcast dose of h202 approxiamately 1 cc per gallon or you can dose same amount via syringe and apply directly to algae on rocks Otherwise if you decide to pull rocks from display simply place peroxide in a spray bottle and sprays rocks followed by scrubbing and rinsing in rodi water

 

[Burrow09]

One more question...I am currently running a wet dry trickle filter and I’ve read a lot about upgrading to a different type of sump. Would upgrading sump help in solving this issue in the long term?

 

[brandon429]

No it won’t matter. A system with or without that filtration will still be algae free in my home, it is truly about the resolve to cause the clean condition and design an accessible reef vs an inaccessible one.

sumps that produce nitrate by design, wet dry, don’t produce as much nitrate as 9/10 sandbeds currently running but lots of people will hate on aerobic sump filtration while lauding the benefits of detritus from 2012. The various factions pro and against certain reef filter methods have not produced consistently uninvaded means or everyone would use their approach. In my algae work threads, it’s tanks with literally all filtration schemes.

 

[Ne$$]

I have been having the same problems. I did a 50% water change and scrubbed most of my rock. Right now, my tank is looking good and the fish are happy. I am making sure to do 15% WC every week to maintain the correct parameters.

 

[Emerald reefer]

Something that strikes me is I have done all that is mentioned in algea battle threads. I have a refugium. I have dosed vibrant. I run gfo. I cut my lights off 3 days. I have a fancy skimmer. I have the best lights available (opinion) lol. Radion g5. I have used mb7. I have tons of bio media in the sump. I run biopellets. I use filter socks (that I change and clean daily). I run 2 neptune apex wav pumps for flow. what's the problem? Why does the algea always come back? It seems like the rocks have nutrient pockets. They have taken their maximum amount of detritus. A storm event nessasary to flush the Rocks clean. A good rip cleaning to reset the bio clock. Some before pics taken just now. I have my bins and buckets ready. Water made. only 30g it's all I have room to make. This is not a full param reset. I'm pulling the live rock that's covered in gha and scrubbing. Flushing the pores out, hopefully this pushes me back on the table off the already tipped tipping point.

Hi Thomas I had the same issue as you. My tank was running 2years and always had algae issues. I would scrub and pull as much out as possible and it would look good for a few days I would then do a water change and boom algae again everywhere. I too was like you ready to tear down or give up. I had refugium that wouldn't go. Reason micro algae is more efficient at absorbing nutrients that the macro we use it the sump.i stop water changed as they only seemed to feed it and just pulled and scribed what I could and used filter floss in sumps to catch all little bits skimmed heavy and this seemed Al least slow it down but not stop it.alot of digging through forums and youtube vids and 2 things kept popping up. Vibrant and fluconazole. I live in Ireland and the reefing infrastructure is not here at all so could not get vibrant but I could get fluconazole from the chemist. Canestan for women.doc I have a problem but it's not what you think. Removed all carbon gfo turned off skimmer reduce light and let it run in tank for 14 days. Turn skimmer on after day 3 or 4 to start pulling out the gunk. After day 14 do a 30% water change. I am now 2+ years relatively free of GHA and turf. I mean there a lol bits that I think everyone gets but it is not overtaking everything.if I see it starting to grow . Fluconazole.hope this helps.

 

[Thomas Wieczorek]

Hello. Thank you for the reply. I live in northern NJ only 10 minutes drive from the gwb (George Washington bridge) I have so many reef stores in my local area it's truly a blessing. I also have brs (bulk reef supply) willing and able to ship to me any one of their products in one weeks time. With that said I've tried so many of the products claiming to rid our tanks of alge including fluconazole and vibrant. I went over 12 weeks dosing vibrant at the (bad infestation dose) wich is 2 times a week and NO luck. I doses fluconazole as well. I tried dinox. Thinking maybe it dinoflagellates. I used dr Tim's products like waste away and others. It's now been about 3 weeks since my rip clean and my rocks are still looking MUCH much better then those before pics. I'm still planning on a full and total tear down where I clean all the sand and change 100% of the water. While at it scrub the rocks again. I've given up on solutions in a bottle and have but my faith in manual work to keep my reef looking healthy. (To a degree) too much of anything is bad. I'm not saying I'll have my hands in the tank weekly scrubbing things cause that would just be bad. Ans maybe some of these bottle solutions have their place after proper husbandry comes first. I do appreciate your comment and I apologize for responding so late. HAPPY REEFING