My eternal curse - bryopsis; treating WITHOUT fluconazole?

[PhilT]

I picked up a couple long spine urchins, small body less than 1” diameter to see how they do. Anybody know... I put one on the rock that had a big growth but it was close to a mp40 right in front. Looked like the urchin was overwhelmed by the current, the spines were going every which way and then fell to the sand. Can the small urchins not handle strong current?

 

[Hermie]

I picked up a couple long spine urchins, small body less than 1” diameter to see how they do. Anybody know... I put one on the rock that had a big growth but it was close to a mp40 right in front. Looked like the urchin was overwhelmed by the current, the spines were going every which way and then fell to the sand. Can the small urchins not handle strong current?

I dont know where yo ugot yours, but my urchin came through the mail and was very weak needing to recover and adjust but now it's an algae-busting champ and all it's spines grew back. I would just give it a few days to "bulk up"

 

[Sallstrom]

I picked up a couple long spine urchins, small body less than 1” diameter to see how they do. Anybody know... I put one on the rock that had a big growth but it was close to a mp40 right in front. Looked like the urchin was overwhelmed by the current, the spines were going every which way and then fell to the sand. Can the small urchins not handle strong current?

They can. They got the same type of suction feet(tube feet) as sea stars so they can hold on to the substrate. Looks like thin black cords covering the whole body, inbetween the spines. Shorter than the spines.
The black longspined urchins are usually more active grazing at night.

 

[PhilT]

I dont know where yo ugot yours, but my urchin came through the mail and was very weak needing to recover and adjust but now it's an algae-busting champ and all it's spines grew back. I would just give it a few days to "bulk up"

Got it at LFS. It seems fine, just that the current may be too strong at that spot.

 

[GoVols]

Has anybody in here ever managed to keep this devil algae at bay WITHOUT fluconazole? If so, please let me know how!

-Mike

Some people used to use Tech M. No idea if this still works... but Google might be your friend. It seemed to be pretty safe, IIRC.

Yeah... Buddy

We got the ole Tech-M magnesium formula back... ;Woot ;Woot

Brightwell Aquatics Hydrat-MG

Treating Bryopsis Algae With Brightwell Aquatics Hydrat-MG | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

There’s many different kinds of nuisance algae that can cause problems in the reef aquarium and Bryopsis can be one of the worst, or one of the ‘best’ depending on your perspective.

reefbuilders.com

Always worked for me.

 

[PhilT]

Yeah... Buddy

We got the ole Tech-M magnesium formula back... ;Woot ;Woot

Brightwell Aquatics Hydrat-MG

Treating Bryopsis Algae With Brightwell Aquatics Hydrat-MG | Reef Builders | The Reef and Saltwater Aquarium Blog

There’s many different kinds of nuisance algae that can cause problems in the reef aquarium and Bryopsis can be one of the worst, or one of the ‘best’ depending on your perspective.

reefbuilders.com

Always worked for me.

Just dose per instructions on the bottle? Is it based on current magnesium level in your tank? Can your mg level get too high doing this? The link doesn’t really say how to dose.

 

[GoVols]

Just dose per instructions on the bottle? Is it based on current magnesium level in your tank? Can your mg level get too high doing this? The link doesn’t really say how to dose.

Slowey raise your mag to about 1600 ppm with that product, and hold for about six weeks. Your snails will go into hibernation mode.

Used to raise my mag to about 2,000 ppm amd hold with the ole Tech M.

When it's over and gone, let your mag slide back down and use another mag product, that is more pure.

They only brought it back for ole Tech M users for bryopsis.

Brightwell and Kent Marine are both owned by Jack Kent.

 

[AngryMike2016]

I tried the hydramat for four weeks at 1800. Did nothing.

 

[GoVols]

I tried the hydramat for four weeks at 1800. Did nothing.

Sorry bout that.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

A couple of comments about my own experience with bryopsis and fluconazole. I found that having an alk > 9 and fluconazole was a recipe for acorpora RTN. When I lowered the alk to about 7.5 (I was being conservative, as you might imagine), the SPS in the tanks survived the treatment.

Another observation that I made was that it was critically necessary to leave the fluc in the water column for at least 30 days. Less than that, and while the visible bryopsis was gone, fronds reappeared from the same spots in the rock when I did a 2-week treatment and then removed it using GAC and water changes.

My take on bryopsis is that once it's in the tank, you really don't have a choice but to wipe it out with chemical treatments and/or breaking the tank down and storing the live rock in circulating salt water for 3 months in complete darkness. That seems to have the same effect as fluc, though obviously one can't use that technique on a tank with living coral.

I've managed to wipe out bryo in all 5 of my tanks using some combination of fluconazole and breaking the tank down and storing the live rock in the dark. It's definitely an evil beast, and my experience suggests that if one tank has it, even if controlled with fish/urchins, it'll soon be in other tanks. So in my case, anything maricultured/aquacultured immediately gets the frag plug cut off, then it's off to QT for 4 weeks. If I see no bryo, then I'll think about putting it into my main tanks. Otherwise, the QT gets nuked with fluconazole, even if that means losing the coral. Bryo is that bad - seriously.

 

[AngryMike2016]

Seriously though; bryopsis is the real devil's lettuce.

 

[AngryMike2016]

I've presently been dosing 10% of fluc dosage (had many pills left) everyday, with the skimmer running cup on, and carbon reactor running. I figured I'd give this shot because why not, and it's actually been killing off the small fronds I've seen. When I ran the 'normal' method of fluc dosing, acropora complained by RTN'ining or withdrawing polyps within hours of dosing, but doing it this way my acropora haven't even noticed.

 

[reef r madness]

Turbo snails always worked for me. Just had to place them where I wanted them to work.

 

[Sir Chris]

My Mexican ceriths will eat any algae that they have a taste for that night. The love film but when the glass is glean there cleaning plugs or rocks and visually observed them clean plugs of it 100% to not return in that location

 

[Adam_C]

Hey @AngryMike2016. Any luck with the slow daily dosing so far? I'm kind of in the same boat. Done fluconazole 2x now on my 90 mixed (acro heavy) and last time it wiped out a bunch of my softball sized acros. It has reared it's ugly head again and I'm currently on day 2 of daily dosing 1 capsule.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I have had luck with most of the natural methods at times and always had spots pop up and then go away on there own. I am really curious as to why bryopsis is so bad at some times and what is causing it to blow up? I have kept it in check for years at a time with just one spot on the overflow and then when I moved the tank a few months later it started growing massive cupfuls every few days. I removed it every week and then cleaned the rocks half arsed but I cleaned them, and it has slowed back down to not growing much again.
I used to use Kent tech m a lot to get rid of it and wasn’t aware Brightwell used the same formula.
Honestly I was curious why Kent didn’t keep tech m going! And was unaware or forgot that Kent owns Brightwell, is this true?