I have way too much bubble algae. Help!

[LeleganceCoral]

i recently left for a month long vacaton, and when i got back there was bubble algae coating every surface in the tank exept the glass. My thinking is it happened because of the little ammount of bubble algae before i left and the auto feeder that i had overfeesing. I removed all the algae from the sand bed, back walls, and some of the rock however it always runs away from my hands or the net. This would take weeks if not a month. My idea was to put all the coral into my smaller tank that is already cycled and take the rock out to get all the bubble algae off. This would be easier by miles but i do not know if there are better ways or if this would even work. Would it stress my coral out to the point of dieing? Should i just manually remove? Please help.

 

[saltienewb]

Manual removal, then reefcleaners.
Pitho crabs and/or emeralds

 

[ScottJ]

If you can get the rock out, it seems to me a good way. Bubbles should just scrub off with a stiff brush. Rinse off the rock in some saltwater, and put it back!

 

[Nano_Man]

Fox face like bubble

 

[LeleganceCoral]

If you can get the rock out, it seems to me a good way. Bubbles should just scrub off with a stiff brush. Rinse off the rock in some saltwater, and put it back!

It is all connected strongly, and would be very easy to do that. I am simply worried about the coral dieing of stress.

 

[LeleganceCoral]

I have decided that the best of both world would be to move the coral out, clean them off, put them back in on the opposite side of the tank to allow for cleaning the rocks with a hard brostle brush and a net. The coral should be fine like this since it will only be a couple hours. Thoughts?

 

[slingfox]

I have decided that the best of both world would be to move the coral out, clean them off, put them back in on the opposite side of the tank to allow for cleaning the rocks with a hard brostle brush and a net. The coral should be fine like this since it will only be a couple hours. Thoughts?

The corals in our tanks came from across the world and had to be transported in very tough conditions. They will do fine being moved around a bit for a few hours.

 

[ScottJ]

I have decided that the best of both world would be to move the coral out, clean them off, put them back in on the opposite side of the tank to allow for cleaning the rocks with a hard brostle brush and a net. The coral should be fine like this since it will only be a couple hours. Thoughts?

If you can move the coral to the opposite side of the tank, that would be great. Might cause less mess to scrub the rocks out of the tank, though. Just get 2 buckets of saltwater. One to scrub in and the other to rinse in. Unless you can't get rocks out, like if they are all glued together. Then you have to do it in the tank.

 

[LeleganceCoral]

If you can move the coral to the opposite side of the tank, that would be great. Might cause less mess to scrub the rocks out of the tank, though. Just get 2 buckets of saltwater. One to scrub in and the other to rinse in. Unless you can't get rocks out, like if they are all glued together. Then you have to do it in the tank.

Thank you! I will move the coral and take the section of rockwork out

 

[NaCl addict]

i recently left for a month long vacaton, and when i got back there was bubble algae coating every surface in the tank exept the glass. My thinking is it happened because of the little ammount of bubble algae before i left and the auto feeder that i had overfeesing. I removed all the algae from the sand bed, back walls, and some of the rock however it always runs away from my hands or the net. This would take weeks if not a month. My idea was to put all the coral into my smaller tank that is already cycled and take the rock out to get all the bubble algae off. This would be easier by miles but i do not know if there are better ways or if this would even work. Would it stress my coral out to the point of dieing? Should i just manually remove? Please help.

Emerald crabs for me. Haven't seen bubble algae since

 

[nano reef]

Man I feel for you BUT whatever you decide Do not remove the rocks and scrub! I did that and they all came back and worse this time. Its going to be even harder now to remove because they are very small now so I cant get ahold of them to manually remove!

I am not sure what to do either. I put in 1 emerald crab and havt seen it since I put it in! Does anyone know if the hide during the day? I have taken a flashlight in the middle of the night and still havnt seen him! I wish I would have laid him directly onto a pile of it when I put him in but he is probably dead somewhere! I cleaned tank since and lifted all the rocks and nowhere in sight.

 

[dochou]

Fox face like bubble

Is this what you heard or is this first hand experience? I've heard many people say fox face but I don't know if it's because everyone reads about it and then repeats it, OR if it's really true. Thanks.

 

[goody]

+1 Pitho crabs

 

[Seancj]

I had a bubble algae outbreak. It was covering everything and killing my SPS frags. I manually removed as much as I could get to and added an emerald crab and a small scribbled rabbit fish. I would ocassionally see the emerald crab grazing on the bubble algae, but very slowly and it would often ignore it. The rabbit is a bubble algae eating machine! He has pretty much single handedly cleaned the tank of the bubble algae. I highly recommend them for this job. Find one of appropriate size for your tank.

 

[bobnicaragua]

My fox face and sailfin tang keep my tank clean.

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

TLDR: If I were you, I wouldn't worry about it not coming out on initial removal. Just make sure you get it suspended if you have dead spots, and get one of those in tank micron filters to help create flow and suck up the junk. Makes the job 10s of times easier.

I went on a vacation and then came back to not notice neglect my tank a little around november december last year, and before I realized it I had 2 inch thick bubble algae on all the rock away from the front display, it grew so fast from that point that it would cover the overflow and pumps overnight and was kind of hard to scrape away.

I did the dumb thing and decided like all other pest algaes I had was to just continue what I was doing and it would die off since I had crabs to eat it. Good lord I was wrong, the baseball size chunks were just breaking off on their own and regrowing in no time. The move I did to get rid of it was get one of those marineland in tank magnum polishing filters, and just bust the stuff up. I didn't worry about getting it out of the tank, just getting it detached.

it took a week of a stiff tooth brush and bashing on it just to pop it and free it from surfaces. it seemed that microbacter razor I started dosing at the end of this, that the bubble algae couldn't even hold on anymore and would just get knocked loose by flow. in total, I went from probably a volume of 10 gallons of bubble algae to none with only a few hours of work.

The poor decisions that led me to this was primarily the never having measurable nutrients, I was heavily dosing ammonium and nitrates and phosphate to keep it up, but soon as I went on vacation and stopped, and stopped dosing chaeto grow, the nutrients shifted from my healthy chaeto to the ugly bubbles. and I decided the new normal of not dosing these things was what I should continue to let the tank stabilize. In the future, if I see a patch of it spreading, I will absolutely put the filter back in the display and bash and scrub it out.

 

[SaltyWalty]

Is this what you heard or is this first hand experience? I've heard many people say fox face but I don't know if it's because everyone reads about it and then repeats it, OR if it's really true. Thanks.

I have a one spot fox face (they stay a bit smaller than some of the others) he completely scrubbed my tank of bubble algae. I lent him to a friend and he did the same in his tank.

 

[nano reef]

Is this what you heard or is this first hand experience? I've heard many people say fox face but I don't know if it's because everyone reads about it and then repeats it, OR if it's really true. Thanks.

I have read that too and if its being printed a lot it probably true. Wish I had room for one. Reef4less has them on sale cheap!

 

[nano reef]

If you can move the coral to the opposite side of the tank, that would be great. Might cause less mess to scrub the rocks out of the tank, though. Just get 2 buckets of saltwater. One to scrub in and the other to rinse in. Unless you can't get rocks out, like if they are all glued together. Then you have to do it in the tank

TLDR: If I were you, I wouldn't worry about it not coming out on initial removal. Just make sure you get it suspended if you have dead spots, and get one of those in tank micron filters to help create flow and suck up the junk. Makes the job 10s of times easier.

I went on a vacation and then came back to not notice neglect my tank a little around november december last year, and before I realized it I had 2 inch thick bubble algae on all the rock away from the front display, it grew so fast from that point that it would cover the overflow and pumps overnight and was kind of hard to scrape away.

I did the dumb thing and decided like all other pest algaes I had was to just continue what I was doing and it would die off since I had crabs to eat it. Good lord I was wrong, the baseball size chunks were just breaking off on their own and regrowing in no time. The move I did to get rid of it was get one of those marineland in tank magnum polishing filters, and just bust the stuff up. I didn't worry about getting it out of the tank, just getting it detached.

it took a week of a stiff tooth brush and bashing on it just to pop it and free it from surfaces. it seemed that microbacter razor I started dosing at the end of this, that the bubble algae couldn't even hold on anymore and would just get knocked loose by flow. in total, I went from probably a volume of 10 gallons of bubble algae to none with only a few hours of work.

The poor decisions that led me to this was primarily the never having measurable nutrients, I was heavily dosing ammonium and nitrates and phosphate to keep it up, but soon as I went on vacation and stopped, and stopped dosing chaeto grow, the nutrients shifted from my healthy chaeto to the ugly bubbles. and I decided the new normal of not dosing these things was what I should continue to let the tank stabilize. In the future, if I see a patch of it spreading, I will absolutely put the filter back in the display and bash and scrub it out.

Donst popping them spread the spores though? Did the mairinland filter suck up all the pieces you broke off and Did Razor harm your corals? I have read Vibrant and Mb clean and razor but I think Razor is the strongest!

I wonder why that didint work for me. I took ever single rock out and scrubbed it with a metal brush shaped like a tooth brush. It came back and now they are much smaller and harder to grab ahold of to remove manually.

 

[nano reef]

I wonder why that didint work for me. I took ever single rock out and scrubbed it with a metal brush shaped like a tooth brush. It came back and now they are much smaller and harder to grab ahold of to remove manually.

Wow! somehow my double quote got all screwed up and cant change it once you start! lol