Zwagerman thanks for posting! We really just enjoy the challenge of cleaning these kinds of tanks. Your initial pictures above didnt show sensitive species so I thought this looked promising. I hate for anyone to have to take over an hour to read our drivel lol but truly there are so many details to pick up, if I was a large tank owner thats the investment to make. The best part of the whole thing is there is no big investment of time or risk to your tank to try this. Its so simple. You just lift out your easiest rock you can get to, apply some peroxide to it out of the tank, only on the algae target area, let sit for a few minutes, then rinse off well in clean saltwater from a bucket, and place the rock back in the tank without manually removing any of the target.
The thread shows in tank work and application we may consider after the results of the test rock are shown. Mainly, the read discusses the 5 or so intolerant animals and how to work around them:
-solitary anemones like sebae or heteractis can be stressed
-cleaner shrimp, lysmata, are the most sensitive animal in the reeftank to our technique they must be planned for accordingly
-Xenia are stressed, anthelia cousins
-coralline can be lightened but will grow back
-decorative macros in a sump or refugium for obvious reasons
Let us know of any concurrent treatments you are running such as a new gfo reactor etc
Then for three days we watch that spot...its death rate, the non impact to the surrounding corals will make you at ease with the next set of treatments etc. a single rock test is no particular commitment. If there is anything untoward in that test you don't like, we can stop etc. but I think you are going to like this
Zwagerman you know something interesting Ive seen as a repeating pattern in all these posted tank issues? We have been told as reefkeepers than when an invasion happened, there was a water parameter to blame. Getting algae X means X variable was out of whack, so we spend all this time working around the algae and never actually dealing with it directly. We make changes to otherwise acceptable tank chemistry, affecting all the inhabitants, just to follow old school outdated rules that didnt permit us to act on the algae itself. This line of thinking got us up to sixty pages of wrecked tanks so far.
Sometimes, an invasion is a matter of import and nothing else. I can introduce several types of algae such as gelidium to perfect param low nutrient sps tanks and get them infected too. When an invader is present among great water params, we don't stress the tank but getting even lower numbers, we remove the target.
I'm all for nutrient control, and that may work as a fine preventative, but the peroxide technique is a reset button as needed and for many of these tanks it was the only thing that worked. We have a huge chance of fixing this tank and giving you a clean start it will just take some elbow grease and some time.
