Lettuce Algae - How to get rid of it?

Avengerx77 · Dec 29, 2021

Ok, so I have some lettuce algae in my DT that is taking over my tank. It is a 60gal one with sump, running chaeto for 12 hours in the fuge, which was 10hours before. Unfortunately, I only have 3 Aestrea and 7 Ceriths, seems they are doing a good job but are not keeping up. I have not been able to get more snails anywhere, even Turbos are out of stock around here. Was considering a Starry or Lawnmower Blenny but there arent any available either.

Is there a product I can use in the meantime? Nitrates are around 5ppm and Phosphates I am battling to keep them up, so it ranges between 0,03 - 0,00, so I am also starting to see some small patches of cyano, but is mostly the green one lettuce/ulva. Ligths are XR15Blue running LPS/Soft pattern for 12 hours, including ramp up.

Spare time · Dec 29, 2021

Have you tried a few urchins?

Tbg299 · Dec 29, 2021

Do you mean sea lettuce (Ulva)? I would just cut off as much as you can with scissors and throw it in the refugium.

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Spare time said:
Have you tried a few urchins?

Unfortunately, there aren't any available either, as far as CuC goes around LFS, most likely they will start importing until end of January. Was thinking to ask around to see if they have Vibrant available.

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Tbg299 said:
Do you mean sea lettuce (Ulva)? I would just cut off as much as you can with scissors and throw it in the refugium.

Yes, Sea Lettuce. They are just starting to grow in the tank, so you can see a handful of leaves all over the rocks, nothing yet that you can trim to move to the Fuge. Maybe I will start manually removing as much as possible during water changes.

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Any fish that can eat this algae for a 60gal tank, hopefully that are not in the Tang space?

Reefin' Alaska · Dec 30, 2021

Avengerx77 said:
Any fish that can eat this algae for a 60gal tank, hopefully that are not in the Tang space?

I dosed Peroxide in my nano with Ulva. Worked pretty good. 2 weeks it was all gone.

vetteguy53081 · Dec 30, 2021

Peroxide will work as will liquid vibrant
Tangs and most herbivores like rabbit fish will eat it

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Just asked around today on some LFS and none of them carries Vibrant, sucks to be limited in what I can get around here. Where could I find Peroxide, like home & garden stores? Not living in the US, so ordering from Amazon might take a while to get. Also, will any type of Peroxide helps and how should be dose, in terms of quantity and if poured directly into tank? Is it Hydrogen Peroxide?

brandon429 · Dec 30, 2021

check this way out, read about these ulva fix jobs:

brandon429 · Dec 30, 2021

Reef2Reef Pest algae challenge thread hydrogen peroxide

Tank filled and was almost cloudless :D Turned on the klir roller and added a filter sock and it was clear in 2 hours. Made a makeshift frag rack as I cannot bring all rock back. Scrubbed each frag plug with a stainless steel brush or remounted depending how bad the plug was. Grabbed a couple...

www.reef2reef.com

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Thanks, will give a really good read. There are some rocks I will not be able to take out as they are glued together as part of the aquascape and some of them already have some corals in it.

brandon429 · Dec 30, 2021

youll have to decide if that locked system remains or becomes accessible based on need.

A key detail is the modeling

you just do one rock not the whole tank

we already know itll work but this allows you to assess it stays gone before doing the big job

take out a rock and using a steak knife dig tip up under the anchor points its a metal rasping action that dislodges them

when clean, you put the perox in drops on the former anchor spots where there is no algae because it was dislodged, this burns anchoring cells

those dosers mentioned above/ vibrant and fluconazole above all have full system kills in their study threads, don't trade off a locked scape for a 5% chance of wipteout is my reco, we're at ten years no wipeouts on the associated subthreads in there

but its all based on need, if some animal shows in testing to work then that reduces work but be secondarily aware of bringing in fish diseases by changing in and out various animals, straight up velvet vector per today's posts in the disease forum. the methods that allow you to keep the locked scape in check all have a risk price. our price is you must unlock the scape, not any risk to fish corals or much growback risk either.

killing all the mass in the tank with a doser even if safe like the majority doser treatments are, results in degrading mass in tank and that's how you see the cyano invasion tradeoff so common in algae and dino in-tank kill threads. non access has an elevated price and tradeoff risk.

Vibrant Killing Corals..

So I had some very small spots of algae in my tank, 3 spots each the size of a nickel. I decided to test out vibrant to see what this chemical was all about. I started out with a conservative dose of 3ml for a 100 gallon tank. Well this was a horrible mistake. Within 12hrs I started to notice...

www.reef2reef.com

vibrant is pretty safe. I rate it about 95% safe in all applications, its positive threads are 500 pages long. there's ten pages of not positive/that gives us at least some fail rate. peroxide in any way added has no fail rate like that at all, even the overdose runs rarely kill a setup and how we do it is surgical/not possible to kill the tank.

vetteguy53081 · Dec 30, 2021

Avengerx77 said:
Just asked around today on some LFS and none of them carries Vibrant, sucks to be limited in what I can get around here. Where could I find Peroxide, like home & garden stores? Not living in the US, so ordering from Amazon might take a while to get. Also, will any type of Peroxide helps and how should be dose, in terms of quantity and if poured directly into tank? Is it Hydrogen Peroxide?

Peroxide would be drug store, walmart and grocery store. You want to take a pipette or syring and aim it at the base Preferrably with rock out of water and as long as out of water, you might as well cut them all at base then apply peroxide

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Kurant said:
I dosed Peroxide in my nano with Ulva. Worked pretty good. 2 weeks it was all gone.

What ratio are you using?

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Just got the Peroxide name for it here in my country, so will see if I can get some tomorrow.

RGoltz · Dec 30, 2021

If you are willing to wait, emerald crabs will get the job done. The natural way is the best way!

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

RGoltz said:
If you are willing to wait, emerald crabs will get the job done. The natural way is the best way!

Yes, for sure. Will use this sporadically just for it not to overtake the tank, but I do prefer to purchase a good army of snails, when available. On the emerald crab, I am trying to avoid any sort of crabs, due to the potential of them eating any of my snails and potentially corals.

I will start easy with the peroxide and initially use it on rocks that I am available to take out from the tank.

Reefin' Alaska · Dec 30, 2021

Avengerx77 said:
What ratio are you using?

I was linked a post I believe by Brandon who's in this thread (Not sure he was the post but he was in the thread.) and it seemed to be the common thought of 1ml per 10g.

Avengerx77 · Dec 30, 2021

Kurant said:
I was linked a post I believe by Brandon who's in this thread (Not sure he was the post but he was in the thread.) and it seemed to be the common thought of 1ml per 10g.

And how frequent, daily, twice a day…?