saving a tank from bryopsis outbreak

[kimba]

I have an old 12 gal. JBJ nano cube that has an outbreak of briopsis. My new 12 gal JBJ with LEDs will be delivered on Tue.

My hope is that I will get the briopsis under controll while my new tank cycles and I can use all my LS and coral in my new tank without introducing the briopsis. I took out all my LR that didn't have coral (yes, I feel bad, but was desperate). I am hoping to bring that rock back to life in my new tank.

so far I have manualy pulled the briopsis and hair algae from the tank wall and corals. I also did research on peroxide dips since my corals were covered so badly. I was nervous, but I did it to 1 coral (my star polyps) and it seemed to work, so I diped the rest.

Any and all suggestions are welcome. I have so many questions about this whole process.

Thanks

 

[kimba]

I guess a pic of before and now might be nice so you can see where I'm at.
The before pic wasactually after I manually pulled all the algae off the coral, you couldn't even see them

 

[shornik]

This is my standard reply, get some lettuce Nudibranchs, start dosing something like Bacter Clean-M, be patient :mad:

 

[kimba]

My first question- where I am fighting algae, should I shorten the time my lights are on. I usually run them from 8am-8 pm?

oh, and my moon lights don't work so my compact flor. Are all I have

 

[redfishbluefish]

Use Kent's Tech M (magnesium) and raise your mag level to 1800....no more than 100 ppm per day. That should do it. Other magnesiums don't work....something magical in Tech M.

I'd also be careful about causing die off in the rock while pulling it out and/or dipping in hydrogen peroxide. That die off could continue to feed the briopsis.

 

[kimba]

This is my standard reply, get some lr Clean-M, be patient :mad:

How many nubibranches for a 12 gal. I have some PhosBan it's 3 yrs old and has no experation date. I don't know if it's still good. I called the company, but haven't heard from them.

I was thinking of getting a little clean up crew,I had a turbo snail that ate hair algae like cake.

 

[kimba]

Use Kent's Tech M (magnesium) and raise your mag level to 1800....no more than 100 ppm per day That should do it. Other magnesiums don't work....something magical in Tech M.

I'd also be careful about causing die off in the rock while pulling it out and/or dipping in hydrogen peroxide. That die off could continue to feed the briopsis.

I have been concered about that, and causing my tank to cycle again. I put a fresh bag of purigen in and have been testing (only with dip sticks, I don't like. My real test kit will come Tue with new tank.) All trites and trates are 0

 

[kimba]

I'm so nervous dosing with anything in 12 gal tank. I have done so much in the past 2 days, I was gonna let it sit a bit. I was hoping with manualy removing what I can see, keeping up with water changes (which obviously I hadn't been) and maybe less light it would go away on its own. I don't want a quick fix, I want to fix the reason WHY I got it. (Probably high phosphates)

Oh, and I use RO water

 

[brandon429]

+10

simple arrest
you just headed off months of headache. The old rules that ruins tank by taking chances says leave it in, and try to starve it through the water. but you opted out, fast, feels kinda bad breaking rules

can I use these pics and your reference thread/name in 2 large peroxide threads? w repost them w name and link credit
My opinion about what to do now

enjoy being algae free forever, what you just did applies to any invader although you don't have to use peroxide. forced removal is the key

there is no possibility of recycling a tank using peroxide even in gross overdoses. seems odd I know, im not talking about a tank full of peroxide or something ridiculous but rather common in tank use

its like this: Bacteria require certain threshholds to die, you cant just aim something at them and they go, take antibiotics for example

nobody denies a 10 day course of various mycins wouldn't kill some infection. But what if you ate only 1/4th of a pill from a 10 day course, its antibiotic after all...would 1/4th of a ten day trial kill anything?

same w tank use peroxide.

a label that something is an antibiotic doesn't mean that it is when used highly diluted, it actually doesn't kill bacteria well at all, I ran a microbiology lab in the 90s for a beef processing plant and it was a horrible sanitizer, horrible we couldn't even use it for boot wash or anything had to go with a chemical called quat to really cause bacterial harm in short dip order. these are the conditions required to get significant bac kill from peroxide:
higher than 3%
no porosity in the treated surface
no slicks or biofilms present as insulators
long contact time, high light helps during

our hobby algae control science is 30+ years based on leaving invaders in the tank, saying anything directly controlled is a waste of time it will just come back but that's not the case per our giant threads. Your algae was minor set in, so a couple treatment times to zap the holdfasts and you'll find its as gone as using gfo or any other months-long through the water treatment would lend, only you got your results in two days ish after application.

 

[kimba]

Yes, you can use the pics, especially if it helps someone else. It was so overwhelming and I felt so guilty, I almost gave up. Sooooo glad I didn't.

 

[kimba]

So any ideas on how long I should use the lights on? I know my coral need them so I can't keep them off, but I was thinking of maybe going down to 6 or 8 hrs? Would that help kill off algae/briopsis?

 

[brandon429]

yes about 8-9 hours is all I run it helps lessen its growback.


Your next ten years of reefing will be different than my first ten, mine were algae stress years from listening to the old ways in the books regarding algae control/you just saw the ability to force control over a tank, and pictured it for others.

the big deal concept is simple--> disallowance.

You could run your lights 24x7 and be bryopsis free is the point, working very hard to remove it lol, but it used to be the claim that if you don't detail manage po4 you'll have algae problems. or lights on too long. or heat too high. or overfeeding once and you pay for it with 9 mos of algae problems, all those variables have nothing to do with whether algae is in your tank, they just cause it...we have the final say even after causatives on whether our rocks look great, or green. Causatives have nothing to do with someones algae wrecked pictures, that's caused by purposely allowing it because we are typically bound to our training, and that training says we must use preventers only, which is wrong.

purposely looking at it and leaving it in there is the direct cause of all algae problem tanks. when you control causative factors better, you wont need to chem cheat, but chem cheating just fixed your tank until balance is found and its no longer bad to simply command a tank into performance, telling it how many days until it complies/ consider the old way, you trail behind your reef for mos/yrs, awaiting slight changes to take effect. you make 1000 excuses to tank watchers why your rock looks like it does


OR

we just opt out. your tank viewers come over, it looks great, you tell them you are having an algae challenge and they wonder why you said that, they cant see any of it. Your challenge subsides when you find the balance and don't have to farm it out.

we are reversing the nature of algae as we see it, and that means you cant lose a tank to it. Im not saying you have to dump peroxide for every problem known either, I don't need it in my tank anymore for rock algae im immune to it... having burnt it out like you just did 4 yrs ago, over a few mos time. I still use a wet paper towel w peroxide to wipe the inside of my drained tank to clean the walls.

when I get lazy on water changes and feeding red cyano will develop, that's an invader too just like any other...but ill do full water changes and scrub it off the rocks and as long as I don't get lazy on wc thereafter it does not come back. it responds to nonchemical scrubbing because it doesn't have holdfasts, and I clean thorough not weakly.

here are 300+ tanks seeing algae a different way after 5 yrs running. look at my post on page 3, I gave 5 yr feedback to Reefmiser for having shown me the opt out way, which saved my tank and all my future tanks. Not every invasion responds to peroxide, we just made it harmless to attempt. The thread shows very few in 5 yrs who didn't comply
Then hop to page 30+ onward and skim the pics, they are just like yours. this thread was my transition from a farmer into a fixer

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/268706-peroxide-saves-my-tank-with-pics-to-prove-it/page-3

 

[sswsanjay]

When I had it in my 20 gallon (total water volume with sump was 42 gallons) I used hydrogen peroxide.

Turned off all the flow and pumps in the tank, used a pipette to squirt hydrogen peroxide right on the bryopsis. Used max 3ml a day.
After the bryopsis started to bubble up due to the hydrogen peroxide, I would turn everything back up and over time the bryopsis would turn white to the point that my kole tang would eat the reminants.

Worked for me, and I this tank was an SPS dominated tank, didn't harm the corals to my observation.

Good luck!

 

[kimba]

Thanks, guys for all the help. I am ordering a clean up crew, I hadn't realized mine was so sparse. I have 4 sand sifting snails, and I think I'm down to just one blue legged hermit.

If I remember corectly it's a snail per gallon? I think I'll get a 10 pk of turbo snails and a 10 pk of blue legged hermits. I might get 5 more sand sifter snails. They are out of nubibranches where I order.

 

[kimba]

Not sure if this worked, but this is one of my favorite pics of my tank

 

[kimba]

This was one of my favorite coral.

 

[Triggreef]

6 emerald crabs would knock that tank algae free in a week or less and keep it that way. Not sure what you had is bryopsis looked more like hair algae. Doesn't matter though, they eat both.

I had ridiculous bryopsis in my 40g frag tank. 20 emerald crabs wiped it out in a week. It took 60 in my 200g reef to knock out my bubble algae but they did it in about 3 weeks maybe less. Added benefit is when your algae problems are gone you are left with great scavengers. They clean between zoas polyps where nothing else can get. They absolutely climb up sps and chase the polyps but don't cause any damage. Unfortunately those traits fool people into thinking they will also munch on coral, but I assure you they do not. I have darn close to 100 different types of polyps, tons of lps, acros, monti, birdsnest, stylo, you name it. They do not eat coral.

 

[kimba]

Do emerald crabs need an established tank? After my new tank cycles, I plan on getting rid of this one and putting everything in the new tank.

 

[Triggreef]

Everything needs an established tank. But changing your glass shouldn't cycle the tank, or at least it doesn't have to if you plan it right.

That said, emerald crabs are super hardy. I've had them in my fowlr tank live through copper and nitrates off the scale and po4 in the 3.0 range.

 

[kimba]

Everything needs an established tank. But changing your glass shouldn't cycle the tank, or at least it doesn't have to if you plan it right.

That said, emerald crabs are super hardy. I've had them in my fowlr tank live through copper and nitrates off the scale and po4 in the 3.0 range.

Wait...are you saying I can just switch tanks? I was planning to set up the new tank and cycle it. While it cycled for a month or so, I figured that would give me enough time to treat the GHA and briopsis. I'm afraid of reintroducing the uglies into my new tank when I move over corals and cleaning crew.