Treating Nuisance Algae with Fluconazole (Pico Mixed Reef)

[VKP01]

This thread will be documenting my attempt to treat an unholy trinity of bryopsis, GHA, and turf algae using Fluconazole, with this thread as reference.
The tank is a 4.4g mixed reef (mushrooms, plate, lord coral, acros, etc), and is 1.5 years old.
There’s already a few threads like this, but I figured one more wouldn’t hurt. Who doesn’t enjoy watching algae melt

Parameters:
Temp 81°f
Salinity 1.025
pH 8.5
Ca 425ppm
KH 9dKH
Mg 1400
NO3 5ppm
PO4 0.02ppm

I had a bad bloom of this algae a few months ago, but nearly eradicated it through manual removal and turbo snails. A recent bloom of dinos killed my snails and, combined with my college midterms, let the algae take over again.
Doing frequent wcs and reducing nutrients in an attempt to control the algae caused problems with dinos (which for the moment are under control).
This time I’ll be fighting it with flucon. I’ll be doing one dose of 70mg (20mg per gallon, with a water volume of 3.5g) and let it work for 2-4 weeks. Before dosing I manually removed as much algae as possible, to lessen the nutrient spike during treatment.

Now the before pictures... viewer discretion is advised
This is how the tank has been on and off for several weeks, with me removing algae by hand weekly:

After today’s pre-treatment scrub:

Here’s what came out ;Yuck:

I know Fluconazole works wonders on Byropsis, and should kill GHA given a little more time, but I haven’t heard much on turf algae so I’m hopeful to see what it does. Really looking forward to finally beating this algae, hopefully for good this time.

I’ll be dosing it later tonight!

 

[VKP01]

I’m using these 100mg tablets from Allivet.com, crushed the tablet and dissolved 2/3 of it in tank water then added it to the tank.

 

[VKP01]

Day three: bryopsis is turning white, no change to the hair or turf algae yet.

 

[VKP01]

Day five: pretty much all of the bryopsis has turned white, and the turf algae in the highest light areas is turning white! I didn’t expect the turf algae to go so fast.

 

[ReefPig]

Looking good mate

 

[VKP01]

Day nine: majority of the bryopsis has fallen off the rocks, most of the turf algae is turning white, and some clumps of hair algae are falling off the rocks.

 

[VKP01]

Day 15: bryopsis is gone, turf algae is still going. Some of the hair algae is still falling off the rocks, but there’s also new hair algae growing. I did a 20% wc and replaced with more medicated water.

 

[Marc2952]

Whats the update? I just started the treatment aswell.

 

[VKP01]

Whats the update? I just started the treatment aswell.

It got down to mostly just gha and I wasn’t seeing much change so I added carbon back in, within a couple days the other algae was coming back. I added another half dose to the tank and it melted back to how it was.
Doesn’t seem to be doing much for the gha, but definitely knocks the others out. I’ll have a fts later this afternoon.

 

[VKP01]

No bryopsis, very small amounts of dying turf algae, and hair algae that’s taken their place. Once I can go out to get snails to keep the gha under control I think we’ll be good