AlgaeFix Marine to control Hair Algae

Update:

I have dosed AF 18 times with no problems that I know of. Snails, 3 BTA's and 2 clowns, 2 tangs, filefish, mandarin & lawnmower goby, coral beauty, 5 chromis and a hawkfish. I recently lost the Valentini puffer but I do NOT attribute it to the AF. I am dosing vinegar and using kalk at 2 teaspoons/gallon topoff water. There are shrooms, ricordia's, a few zoa's, 2 leathers and a hammer in the tank. I recently began dosing Bioptim.

The HA was on all my rock. The difficult parts are: impossible to remove it within the rocks' cracks and crevices, nitrates are at or above 50ppm and there's cyano. I believe the die off of the HA increases the nitrates which just refuels the remaining, live HA and the cyano. I purchased more snails and crabs but haven't been able to add them to the tank with the nitrates so high. It took a long time for the HA to grow so it's going to take alot longer time to get rid of all of it.

Today I am going to remove all the rock and sand. I bought a small wire brush and am going to brush the heck out of the rock to remove as much algae and cyano as possible. I will do a 60-70g water change too. I will use the old tank water to brush the rocks in and then will rinse them in new SW before putting them back in the DT. I am going to go barebottom at least until the cyano, HA and nitrates are gone. I think this is the only way that I will see improvement, unfortunately :(
 
terri_ann,

Glad the AF is working for you. ;)

No sure what size your system is, but I wouldn't change more water than 30% at one time. If you need to change more, than use smaller multiple water changes to be on the safe side & give any heavy metal build-up time to allow the organics to tie up the heavy metals into a safer form. :)
 
HighlandReefer said:
terri_ann,

Glad the AF is working for you. ;)

No sure what size your system is, but I wouldn't change more water than 30% at one time. If you need to change more, than use smaller multiple water changes to be on the safe side & give any heavy metal build-up time to allow the organics to tie up the heavy metals into a safer form. :)
Click to expand...

Hi Cliff:D
Yes, I believe it's safe to say that AF works.:fun2: I shouldn't have let the HA get so bad to where I now have to dose for so long:sad2: At least I bought the largest bottle:rolleyes:

I have a 135g and sump so with rock displacement, I figure it's about 145g total. I took the rock out and scrubbed as much of the dead and living HA off the rock as I could. I removed the sandbed also. The WC was about 20%...30g. I will test later today and depending on the results, I may do 2 more 20% WC's this week. Thanks for the guidance on smaller WC's:thumbsup:
 
Did another WC yesterday and dosed AF today. Rock looks much better now:D Wish the nitrates would go down so I could add the snails to work on the dead algae..... I may just put a few snails in this weekend to see if they will live. Somehow I need to get the dead algae out of the cracks and crevices...I added a pencil urchin a few days ago and he found a nice hole with algae in it. Took him 2 days to empty it:uhoh2: Can't find him today:facepalm: lol
 
Well, where do I start. I had a beautiful 120 gallon reef tank with lots of sps, zoas,and other corals after upgrading from a 57 gallon. Everything was going great, but a few things went wrong. My number 1 problem....Lack of water changes. I am now a believer. Too bad that it took my tank going to hell and me almost quitting the hobby to realize the importance of what water changes does. Even heavy skimming, a gfo and carbon reactor, and dosing does not replace what a good water change can do to export unwanted nutrients, and replace used minerals. My 2nd problem....I started using kalk in my auto top off, but I used it poorly, and by not mixing it thoroughly it crashed my tank and lead to my skimmer not functioning properly and clogging my GFO and carbon reactors. Last problem....Do not ignore algae! If you get a frag from someone and the rock has any algae on it at all, don't put it in your tank! If you see any algae crop up in your tank, spot remove it immediately, don't wait. So, after doing some soul searching and my wife becoming interested in starting a pico tank, I remembered how much I loved the saltwater hobby and vowed to myself to practice much better tank maintenance from now on.

All that being said... My tank used to look like this:
DSC_0104.jpg


Then because of my failures it ended up like this:
IMG_0208.jpg


IMG_0210.jpg


IMG_0209.jpg


So, I decided it was time to change it, or break it down. I started by cleaning my skimmer thoroughly, scraping the glass, and started siphoning off any hair algae I could. I ordered a large clean up crew and also got some Mexican Turbo snails. I dosed my first dose of Marine Alagefix. Since my tank is 120 gallons with a 30 gallon sump, I figured the water volume to be approximately 135 gallons and dosed according to directions.

Next, I changed about 15 gallons of water by siphoning off more algae at the same time. The hair algae began to weaken.
IMG_0221.jpg


After the second dose, I noticed the hair algae turned from green to grayish. A much lighter color.
IMG_0225.jpg


I then did a 40 gallon water change, and removed a few of the rocks on the left island and suctioned the hair algae off completely with a wet/dry vac. It almost came right off! Also I noticed the algae started to turn loose more from the rocks, and my skimmer started skimming copious amounts of it.

I just did my third dose yesterday and I am now about 95% algae free! The bright greenish yellow patches are sponges.
IMG_0226.jpg


I added a filter pad in my sump in the baffle right before the return. It has worked great in catching any remaining detrius and the water is starting to clear up beautifully. I am wet skimming, running heavy GFO and Carbon, changed my lights from old 14k bulbs to new 20k radium blues. I will probably do another massive 40 gallon water change this week, and after that I will start a weekly maintenance dose of Algaefix. I saw no negative effects on my cleaner shrimp, fish, or inverts. This product is great and in conjunction with manual removal methods works great!
 
Last edited:
Tank update: After dosing my 5th dose I am about 99% algae free! I highly recommend it and it helped me to turn my tank around. Now they need to make a product called Aptasia Fix!:lmao: I bought an aptasia eating filefish to take care of them. Hopefully he eats them all!

7-16-2012-1.jpg
 
AF does not work on bryopsis or other siphoning algae. Siphoning algae heal their exterior cell walls to quickly for AF to work. AF makes holes in the outer cell wall causing the contents to spill out and also enters the cell causing damage inside.

If you look at a siphonous algae under a microscope you can see that the algae has extremely large cells which can actually branch out. So their cells are very large. When a siphonous algae is broken the cells heal themselves very quickly.

brya141.jpg

Siphonous algae cell



MORPHOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
WITHIN THE ALGAE
http://scitec.uwichill.edu.bb/bcs/bl14apl/algae2.htm
 
Increasing your mag level using TechM mag supplement by about 300-400 ppm at a rate of 100 ppm per day seems to work for some hobbyists. It seems from posts that Tech M works the best, perhaps contaminates in the product are what actually control the Bryopsis. Some hobbyists report lethargic snails from doing this.
 
Thanks for the quick response.

Since my post I continued reading my search results and I think I have a better idea. Tech M seems to be choice to raise it. Seriously considering it as a last effort before I break down the tank and start over. Had considered replacing my lr but I have alot on the overflow box which would just reseed the new rock.

Fingers crossed. Thanks again
 
You can use the Reef Chemistry Calculator to determine this.

For a total water volume of 90 gallons it will take 486.7 ml or 16.4 fl oz or 97.3 tsp of Tech M to raise your mag level 100 ppm. I would only raise it 50 ppm the first time to make sure your total water volume guess is close. I would not raise your mag level more than 100 ppm per day.

Reef Chemistry Calculator:
http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html
 
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