Cooked Veggies Maybe the Answer?!?!?!

West1 · Jan 31, 2019

Interesting enough for me to try it.

mshonk · Jan 31, 2019

So no3 hit 2ppm yesterday and is dropping. Its not quite 1ppm but its very close. This is from 1 qt 2 days in a row. Not too sure how much algae was hit though. Anyway look at the blue coming back in that enchinata on the rock that was cleaned. And some tank shots.

Dr. Dendrostein · Jan 31, 2019

mshonk said:
BACKSTORY:
As of recent I have been on a quest to restore the colors in my sps. In doing so I am dosing no3. With doing this it seems that despite gently working into it you will get a case of the uglies. I now have gha, its not an overwhelming amount but an eyesore and issue to be rectified.

ONLINE VIDEOS/INFORMATION vs MY PERSPECTIVE:
Long story short tutorials and videos portray that gha would be a nutrient issue no3,po4, maybe nh4. I agree.
NOTE:
[not sure on nh4 but since purchasing a seneye I have learned that nh4 is not directly harmful in the tank but can turn to nh3 which is. Fortunately the seneye records them separately and are always present. My tank has,
nh3 .001-.003 ppm
nh4 8 - 14 ppm]
Whether import or export are the cause is not the discussion. GFO or other media is a band-aid where husbandry and biodiversity seem to be the answer. Stopping the nutrient import and physically removing the the gha are more or less what I have dug up on the interwebs. Though, some videos state killing the algae in the tank does not solve the issue and releases the nutrients back into the tank and would be counter productive. Which is where I start to disagree.
I am not a chemist or scientist I may be wrong but I am an excellent analyst and understand the scientific method.

If you kill the algae in your tank and are running gfo it should pull some or all the excess po4 from the water column.

If you run a fuge/reactor/ etc with macro algae the macro should pull some or all the po4,no3, and/or nh4.

Killing the algae in the tank most certainly releases the nutrients back into the water column but if they are picked up by other means in the tank by killing small sections of algae why not?

THE APPROACH:
OK the good stuff.
I tried the method from the videos and have it under control but I could tell that removing the algae this way would take some time. Like a lot of time. After doing this for over a month watching some areas clean up and other areas requiring removal over and over again and being only slightly better off then I was a month ago I decided an old method that I came up with was warranted. I never took the time to understand it but it has always seemed to work for me and now with some awesome side effects.
When I was tired of scrubbing and manual removal of algae in my old tanks I would wait for when I needed a top off and boil a quart of rodi water and use a turkey baster and hit the algae covered spots on the rocks. You can get surprisingly close to coral with the boiling rodi without even causing a reaction from the coral. The algae will turn a more vibrant color of itself and that is when you knows you are done with that spot. I never observed closely in the past from this point until the next day but the algae would eventually turn whitish or just be completely gone by the next day and by the end of the night anything that was white was also gone.
Last night I saw it in action and why this method has always worked well for me. After hitting the algae areas with the hot water I saw something awesome. The algae my CUC and tang have been ignoring for a month plus that I hoped they would eat but never even looked at was apparently now a delicacy!

THE ANSWER:
They love COOKED VEGGIES!!!! I personally don't think they like them cooked but cleaned [saying the animals love cooked veggies is just fun], I would imagine it was a very radical cleaning of the algae that they liked but was just dirty the whole time. I am not saying to boil a gallon of rodi and go crazy but if you have CUC or grazers who seem to not be grazing where you want you might want to try this on some small problem areas and see if it works for you. The didn't flock to it like crazy, but one by one I saw my tang picking slurping it up like spaghetti and the hermits and astreas munching away on the fresh cooked veggies.

So I killed that algae, the CUC and tang have now utilized some of the nutrients, then poop out the portion not utilized and the corals will have at it, and then my macro will work at the rest. Manual removal wasn't necessary. I used the biodiversity of the tank to handle the export. Before anyone says it yes you will need to trim your macro algae which is manual removal but I roll that into maintenance I was already going to do. The method that I used versus trying to just pluck it out is less frustrating, doesn't require your hands in the tank, and allows the inhabitants to utilize existing elements in the tank as the removal process.

I plan on doing it again today with before, during and after pictures

Great idea, that's thinking outside the box. I would never have thought of this. Thank you for sharing this and we will put it to good use soon. Thanks again, comrade.

mshonk · Feb 6, 2019

One week ago is when I started documenting this method. As a follow up pic here is the same spot. It definitely turned a little white but no algae growth is coming back. There is a little bit of cyano elsewhere in the tank but not much at all. No gha anywhere else that I can see other then next to one of my acros. I am going to try just rinsing with room temp ro water to try and entice some of my cuc to clean it up. We'll see how that goes.

mshonk · Feb 6, 2019

Additional note my no3 is back to normal. Resting at or just over 1ppm. So during this whole process I saw a 1ppm spike but my system devoured the no3. I haven't tested po4 but I will this weekend.

mshonk · Feb 8, 2019

Po4 is at .0306ppm. No spike there when using this method.

mshonk · Feb 16, 2019

Almost 3 weeks now. Almost certain all gha is gone. My no3 is at .25ppm this morning with dosing, and po4 at .039858ppm. So po4 was steady through the process. no3 had a 1-2 ppm spike and is now being consumed. I just restocked the tank and the fish were a little larger than anticipated but I hope that they add the no3 I need without dosing. I have some cyano but I beleive that is because of low no3 and po4. All in all it worked well. I will post a pic later.

mshonk · Feb 16, 2019

Pics

mshonk · Feb 22, 2019

Almost 4 weeks later no gha in sight. My no3 is finally increasing from restocking and dosing. I want it to reach 5ppm some day but 1ppm is my current target. Po4 dropped again to .018ppm I plan on making a few minor adjustments like a shorter photo period with my algae reactor. I have noticed some cyano on the sand pretty sure that set in from the po4 lowering. Nothing major. There has been a slight increase in filamentous alage on the glass. Though, I did restock my tank going from 2 -6 fish. I will point out that the algae seems to take off when my nh4 is above 10ppb. My seneye reef measures nh3 and nh4 independently of each other.

mshonk · Mar 17, 2019

7 weeks. No hair algae coming back anywhere I hit it in the DT!!! There is a little in the middle chamber of the sump not much though. still but look at that color coming back in that red planet.