Bubble algae alternatives to Vibrant

[Wunderpus]

I have some bubble algae around the tank that’s hard to access to remove manually. No real success with emerald crabs, and nutrients are super low... I’d like to avoid vibrant as I have chaeto, and i know a lot of folks have issues with dinos or cyano post-vibrant usage. Are there any other options here?

 

[justinkdenny]

A foxface would be good if your aquarium is large enough.

 

[Wunderpus]

A foxface would be good if your aquarium is large enough.

I considered it, but it's really on the fence as it's a 60 gallon... I am certain it would be fine short-term, but I don't want to catch the darn thing...

I am considering this method:
Fluconozale at 2x the dose (as many seem to have some success with that on bubble algae)

Doubling my refugium lighting to pull excess nutrients from the (hopefully) dying bubble algae as well as prevent new growth of the BA.


The issue really came to a head when I added more lighting to the display... I think the display tank algae is now out-competing the refugiums lighting. So, hopefully doubling the lighting on it, I will get more growth followed by more pruning etc.

Does this sound like a solid process? I'm not a fan of drastic measures, but this seems like it may slowly starve out the bubble algae...

 

[Wunderpus]

Update- Trying the fluco first, I've just seen too many horror stories about vibrant... Is there a species of foxface that generally is most apt to eat bubble algae?

 

[Scott Ulrich]

I've been running vibrant for a month and it has been amazing. I honestly plan to continue dosing at a lower level once the bubble algae is gone. I did get rid of my caulerpa but a small price to pay. I wonder if people who had issues just stopped dosing vibrant cold turkey? I would think you'd want to slowly reduce the amount so the system can adjust.

The pictures below are 1 month vibrant 2x weekly, first with manual removal, second is a rock without manual removal. I tried emeralds, manual removal... Once it took over it was a losing battle until I used vibrant. Good luck!

 

[Cell]

I believe most negative issues with Vibrant stem from not closely monitoring nutrient levels when using it.

 

[Fernthereefer]

From my experience, the danger from dosing vibrant is if your nutrients are really low to start with. The heterotrophic bacteria in the Vibrant use rapidly the available nitrates to proliferate and overtake the algae. But you risk crashing a delicate system in these instances. I went through it after turf algae. Lost corals, saw Dinos take over. Took 3 months to recover.

Now I am dealing with bubble algae EVERYWHERE. Tried manual removal, made it worse. Emerald crab not taking interest.....So I am attentively following this post.

PS: After dosing Nitrates and Phosphates for a while, I slowly reduced the dosing until I stopped to find an equilibrium... which is Nitrates at 0.5ppm and PO4 undetectable, but corals looking nice and open. So I am dreading having to resort to Vibrant again..

 

[Scott Ulrich]

Now I am dealing with bubble algae EVERYWHERE. Tried manual removal, made it worse. Emerald crab not taking interest.....So I am attentively following this post.

I had 2 emerald crabs and they are the bubble algae, but at the rate they eat, there was so much I would need like 200 crabs to put a dent in it. I think they would be a little at prevention rather than cures.

I had similar nutrient issues I think when I first started macro algae with nitrates bottoming out...