Can't get Algae Under Control...
- Thread starter Brandon Rush
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That is a big nice tank, really is~ not easy to rip clean, however the outcome biology is the same as any other tank on the sand rinse thread, this is the challenge of large tanking/but you guys and gals get all the good fish 
Regarding the sandbed maintenance, you see opinions vary on how to proceed, w have to choose whichever you think is best but when I see tanks undergoing a bit of plant coverage like happens on the real reef occasionally I'm thinking take apart/clean/reassemble
not that its easy, but I can't stand the twenty month option of maybe getting things back in line by Feb through the water.
also, there's frag and coral safety. We (tank rip cleaners) beat the pants off any other slow starvation method for algae control, when it comes to coral preservation. Irony=if you disassemble clean that whole tank over the weekend vs stage it out eight months of increments and param changes, your corals are better adapted to add mass right away (and start outcompeting algae) vs being drained of energy reserves as we sap phosphate/nitrate to try and starve a target.
conversely, if you choose the method where we boost N or Phosphate to try and outcompete, that indeed might work over time, but its notorious about boosting the gha complement while trying to reduce the cyano portion. To me, water works are just too darn slow although when they work, they save you massive hours long effort/cut hands from dealing with rocks etc
to at least learn incrementally how your rock invader responds, take out a test rock and rasp it clean with a knife/peroxide on the rinsed clean portion of the rock (not on the tuft of algae like everyone does, but on the cleaned former invaded spot as cellular kill)
set back in tank and lets watch how it regrows even when the greater system is selecting for growth. A rip cleaned system selects for coral mass growth over plants because its a very clean, non stored up system
you can feed a rip cleaned system really well to add mass, but the invaded system is overstored usually with detritus, and adding more feed which is what corals like becomes part of the prob.
This is why I see everything in terms of aquarium surgery, we need to flush out some stuff not everyone agrees with the work required though, when dealing w bigger tanks like yours. at least you can test model some stuff early, see if it grows back etc
Regarding the sandbed maintenance, you see opinions vary on how to proceed, w have to choose whichever you think is best but when I see tanks undergoing a bit of plant coverage like happens on the real reef occasionally I'm thinking take apart/clean/reassemble
not that its easy, but I can't stand the twenty month option of maybe getting things back in line by Feb through the water.
also, there's frag and coral safety. We (tank rip cleaners) beat the pants off any other slow starvation method for algae control, when it comes to coral preservation. Irony=if you disassemble clean that whole tank over the weekend vs stage it out eight months of increments and param changes, your corals are better adapted to add mass right away (and start outcompeting algae) vs being drained of energy reserves as we sap phosphate/nitrate to try and starve a target.
conversely, if you choose the method where we boost N or Phosphate to try and outcompete, that indeed might work over time, but its notorious about boosting the gha complement while trying to reduce the cyano portion. To me, water works are just too darn slow although when they work, they save you massive hours long effort/cut hands from dealing with rocks etc
to at least learn incrementally how your rock invader responds, take out a test rock and rasp it clean with a knife/peroxide on the rinsed clean portion of the rock (not on the tuft of algae like everyone does, but on the cleaned former invaded spot as cellular kill)
set back in tank and lets watch how it regrows even when the greater system is selecting for growth. A rip cleaned system selects for coral mass growth over plants because its a very clean, non stored up system
you can feed a rip cleaned system really well to add mass, but the invaded system is overstored usually with detritus, and adding more feed which is what corals like becomes part of the prob.
This is why I see everything in terms of aquarium surgery, we need to flush out some stuff
not everyone agrees with the work required though, when dealing w bigger tanks like yours. at least you can test model some stuff early, see if it grows back etc
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I can see you don't have tons of sand, its a thin bed but it still has some accumulations, it almost seems more beneficial to be bare bottom here.
The direct surgical approach + peroxide will fix those frags, I just guided my own monti frags this week with it and they had border edge algae intrusion too. I would lift up a frag, use a pocket knife to debride all the growths off the plug working around the coral part, carefully scraping and saltwater rinsing the plug.
when its edges and corner skeletal areas were made free of algae, it was clean totally, I applied perox using a paintbrush around the edges to burn off left over plant cells. wait a min in the air, rinse, put back and now my plugs are free again.
I'm missing the grazers nature provides to handle this stuff naturally, so I manually prevent any takeover.
The direct surgical approach + peroxide will fix those frags, I just guided my own monti frags this week with it and they had border edge algae intrusion too. I would lift up a frag, use a pocket knife to debride all the growths off the plug working around the coral part, carefully scraping and saltwater rinsing the plug.
when its edges and corner skeletal areas were made free of algae, it was clean totally, I applied perox using a paintbrush around the edges to burn off left over plant cells. wait a min in the air, rinse, put back and now my plugs are free again.
I'm missing the grazers nature provides to handle this stuff naturally, so I manually prevent any takeover.
Hermie
Valuable Member
just did this with my frags last night except I did not use peroxide, only iodine dip. I plan to do another round in a week or so and use peroxide that time, someone just provided me a scientific article that showed that algae growing on corals actually feed a microbial community that kills off the coral over time, so while it's not the algae directly responsible for coral tissue "shrinking," the root of the problem is the "root" of the algae. I was hoping with this intervention I did last night that the iodine will help kill off the microbial community which is somewhat treating the symptom instead of the cause (the algae roots/holdfasts), I physically removed as much algae as possible and I just have to monitor to see when I will go in again and do the peroxide application
need a work thread on it, can you see if they had anyone apply it/follow up/ then log it in a works thread for outcome was curious. no harm in trying iodine that's for sure, whatever safe ratios they use for controls/dips sure might harm some algae agreed.
a problem with the peroxide method is tank size really affects ability to use it the right way...nanos have no prob, anything we can disassemble and access 100% of it, peroxide is a reliable kill mechanism when combined with rasping, but we need to clear out sandbed clouding and deposits to really squelch the growback. larger tanks simply can't be accessed as easily, so dosing through the water or doing various nutrient adjusts is more popular than direct access kill which is 100x better than water dosing.
*right this very second, for the last 5 weeks, Ive been in chat with my friend who is water dosing a giant reef, exporting the dying target, slowly each day, and is hand guiding a challenge reef right back to clean using only peroxide in the water...its amazing his patience and its working. lemme see if I can get pic permission real quick, at least its an offer.
none of the corals in the tank above are perox sensitive.
www.reef2reef.com
that's our work thread. we have very tight controls on outcome, its usually a bunch of clean tanks rarely are we beaten by the plant.
going to see if I can use my chat pics real quick to show how powerful his water dosing is, he squirts in measured amnts peroxide once a day for 5 weeks. hand siphon, water changing out the dying portions but he does not have to take his tank apart to win a very similar invasion to that shown above.
a problem with the peroxide method is tank size really affects ability to use it the right way...nanos have no prob, anything we can disassemble and access 100% of it, peroxide is a reliable kill mechanism when combined with rasping, but we need to clear out sandbed clouding and deposits to really squelch the growback. larger tanks simply can't be accessed as easily, so dosing through the water or doing various nutrient adjusts is more popular than direct access kill which is 100x better than water dosing.
*right this very second, for the last 5 weeks, Ive been in chat with my friend who is water dosing a giant reef, exporting the dying target, slowly each day, and is hand guiding a challenge reef right back to clean using only peroxide in the water...its amazing his patience and its working. lemme see if I can get pic permission real quick, at least its an offer.
none of the corals in the tank above are perox sensitive.
Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide
What you are really in for: Hand cleaning, hard work siphon and rasp-removing of accumulations and invasions outside the tank and doing massive water changes is 90% of this thread, peroxide is 10%. We almost never dose peroxide into the tank water, this is a you-work-physically-hard as catch-up...
www.reef2reef.com
that's our work thread. we have very tight controls on outcome, its usually a bunch of clean tanks rarely are we beaten by the plant.
going to see if I can use my chat pics real quick to show how powerful his water dosing is, he squirts in measured amnts peroxide once a day for 5 weeks. hand siphon, water changing out the dying portions but he does not have to take his tank apart to win a very similar invasion to that shown above.
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