Team
Don't forget one change up in the order of ops that could drastically change growback issues
We had to evolve the same way in the peroxide years, initial kill usually isn't a problem for these plant kill options that rotate into the hobby each decade
Growback is where it's at, for the serious.
This below is the most powerful gha and bryopsis and red/green brush algae remover known to the hobby, an order of operations that places removers and preventatives at different intervals- and it deals with holdfast regeneration.
Those missing items are your noncompliant tanks here, every page, just like a huge peroxide thread
Fluc is powerful, it deserves a reefy award and will be permanent tool but it needs positioning vs being the sole action we depend on to save a tank
The reports of growback will lessen drastically if things are evolved
Before treatment of anything, decloud your entire tank. Take it apart, fix the cloudy sandbed feeding everything you don't want. Do the number one thing you don't want to do, the number one thing people who don't fix up aquariums will tell you not to do-clean that cloudy filthy aquarium before you dose anything
Clean off your rocks such that all the pent up algae allowed to grow isn't storing detritus on site any longer. Your current rocks blast off a cloud of funk if you pick them up and shake them mid tank, people who don't make large tank restoration threads want you to keep that feed base. The result is dead bryopsis, fed cyano, now begin to add cyano cures to your water, always reacting, they don't take the future into consideration over the topical kill.
The opposite condition is shaking and twisting an algae-free rock in the middle of the tank, and nothing casts off because you've cleared out the rocks and made your most important filter area no longer eutrophic. The opposite condition to feeding your bryopsis is being able to reach in, grab sand to the bottom, drop it in tank (or have no sand, until you earn invasion free condition) and nothing clouds, it snow globes, now you aren't feeding and housing waste. Your reef is bio-new. It's mudless, that's all. All corals and fish and animals are brighter after the full cleaning, thankful to be swimming in less waste, less eutrophic conditions.
That above just culled 99% of readers from practice since it involves work, accountability for not gardening directly, and total rule breaking by forcing all waste mud out of your tank. this leaves only the 1% who are serious about taking back their investment.
When your rocks are out of the tank as it's being cleaned, use a metal ice pick or a steak knife to target -rasp- the algae out of its holdfast area, bite it with the digging tool like the beak from an urchin or a bite from a small parrotfish. Got a big job? Procrastinators probs. Some people choose to act before 99% internal coverage.
Once the rock is cleared manually, rasped like a dentist does to plaque, hit the cleaned (formerly invaded areas) with peroxide and let it soak a bit, rinse off, reassemble your clean reef.
Lastly, in last place after you've worked, with the tank passing all clouding tests, dose your fluc to the
-clean condition-
you just earned for your whole tank. All the clean up crew you want, go in the clean condition tank-not the invaded one. Start few, add more based on -growback- assessments which vary tank to tank. You don't drop thirty astreas into a cloudy, fully invaded reef so that snail waste helps the plants further. See how opposite the uninvaded live? This is the stage for your constant detailed param measuring and adjustment, the clean condition tank.
Params are set once, and maintained to what corals like **theyre not set to what starves algae***
Now that you read ways to be algae free without testing and adjusting params, consistency increases for your corals/they like/secrets of the uninvaded.
The latest reefing trends about adjusting N and P up and down, in reaction to invasions, are ignoring the very organic stores that initially cause many imbalances. Watch your internet cure threads coming up to see how many ways there are to deal with the imbalances that mass storing of eutrophication fuel causes for people who measure nitrate and phosphate ratios
Position your fluc not as a mass kill, so everything rots in tank and contributes to detritus stores- but position your fluconazole as the ultimate preventative.
if and when some still pops up (hesitators problems, did removing dandelions only once clear your garden?) you revert to lifting that rock out, and rasp killing (gardening, dandelioning) always use your hands and will to be algae free, not a backseat doser. Backseating is what gets us invaded, not a parameter or light or vectoring or water or sunlight problem.
Being fully sure that full tank cleaning is bad, while being fully invaded, is also a recurring problem pattern in threads. It's an amazing fact that the invaded are the best critics of what works or not for tank invasions, be open to new approaches especially if you have a tank under forty gallons, easy to access.
If you are serious about getting uninvaded then quit following what the masses do and try something opposite. Read big work threads like this one--discover related details between noncompliant tanks, and evolve with that.
Don't just keep posting to page 500 water dosing on top of total cloud for years still in place, that'll have some people not getting fixed we can see. post something -different- you've done to hedge chances and how they include fluconazole.
There are no fish, corals, or live rock inhabitants that are stressed if the cleaning is done right, following cleaning thread examples. This condition makes them healthier; not stressed. Stressed is the myriad param changes people make for months on end with hardly any sustained invader compliance. Have a busy weekend- enjoy your tank quickly afterwards.
I love fluconazole, but I love reworking tanks and truly addressing causatives much better. Fluc is in my toolbag. I'll never need it, as I don't store cloud nor entertain invaders. it's in my toolbag for thread work that's for sure because I can still use it to get a kill in some challenge tanks even though in the end they're not going to clean anything whatsoever.
For the green plant invader phase of always keeping detritus in the system, fluc is wonderful. It is perfectly intended for that rare reefer who keeps a clean tank, isn't reactive in nature, but still somehow selects for bryopsis based on their unique conditions. The ability of fluconazole to work true wonders in the cleaned, guided and cloudless tank is amazing and it beats peroxide in every way for bryopsis work. It even beats what 35% direct application of peroxide can do for bryopsis.
B
An exact example of what I'm talking about, every detail, in a nice big reef tank
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/beeping-green-hair-algae.527285/page-3
He can use fluconazole if required to stave off the next cleanup. Since he reduced the self-feeding mass of plants, any fluc used now vastly outweighs the actual mass of plants it's intended to work against. Opposite of every application here so far evolves options
