Brown Wafer algae

[serval]

Your clean rock looks nice! Yes, the milky stuff is the calcium carbonate and other stuff from the pulverized rock you just scraped. You can do this a bit each day until it's under control. I would employ the critters that supposedly keep rocks clean at the same time...make sure their populations are what they should be. Best of luck!

 

[mgould73]

Your clean rock looks nice! Yes, the milky stuff is the calcium carbonate and other stuff from the pulverized rock you just scraped. You can do this a bit each day until it's under control. I would employ the critters that supposedly keep rocks clean at the same time...make sure their populations are what they should be. Best of luck!

Just another quick question, when you cleaned off your rocks, did it initally grow back? and how long would you say it took for it to all go away?

Thanks,

 

[serval]

Yes, it grew back initially. It took a long time to go away... I'd say at least a year. Aquariums teach one patience like nothing else does...

 

[rigleautomotive]

OK,so I want to get a blanket post out here as I have gotten a few PM's on this recently and I have been free of the algae for a year or two now.I will paste my reply to the message as it kinda says it all.HTH

The algae I was battling was lobophora and was a bear to get rid of.It grew in fairly low PO4 and NO3 and nfast whit good light and flow.It came in on Bali rock as a small patch and I fought a plauge for a couple years before I stumbled upon a cure for myself.I ran a CO2 reactor(@ the time) with aragonite in it for years(more then a decade) and always had a low PH but did not concern myself with it much as the corals all grew fine and looked good IMO.I started a few lengthy conversations with Calfo on line and in person regarding re mineralization of sea water and he sparked a fire in my head.I might say I dis agreed with his statements until after I did my own experimenting.His point was natural reefs and the natural high ph that vwas evident.and the very depressed ph that co2 arag reactoprs produce being counterproductive.I too started to remineralize with lime water for as much of my natural alk daily draw as possible.Saturated to the max and watching alk closely while letting the ph to rise as high as it may go.I was getting a typical reading of 8.3 to 8.5 with a system with high evap and a high energy reef in operation.The lobo and all other algaes except for dark pink and purplu crusting types were completely gone after one month.Needless to say anthony was correct,I was wrong in my assumption that depressed ph in a closed system reef was not detrimental.For the last several years I use as much as 90% kalk to maintain my daily consumption with a small dose of
NaHCO 3 and CaCl daily for a high energy reef with many stoney corals

 

[Tigé21v]

I havent read the thread, so forgive me if this is mentioned 100 times already, but are emerald crabs not touching the stuff? I had this same algae problem, added two emeralds and they totally eradicated it. You could actually watch them snap it off and eat it.

Same here. Bought a few emeralds to rid the tank of bubble algae, lo and behold a few weeks later there was no more lobo. I think they actually preferred it over the bubble.

 

[rigleautomotive]

Yea,I tried emeralds,mythrax and sally light foots along with every other known reef safe herbivore with very limited no success in the long term.The crabs did develop a nice appetite for corals eventually .

I must say I had a full tank of this stuff at the worse point so I would have really need a dense population for it to work I assume.The sheets of lobophora started top break off in large sheets and desintergrate when I began heavy kalk usage.The removal of the Kalk for a short time to test my findings did show a regrowth on some of the remaining fragments on overflows etc...And then again the removal of the CO2/arag reactor and addition of strong limewater additions proved to make the algae recede and a few days later become detached from its substrate and effectively die.It has been gone(thank you reef gods) for some time now but I do not miss it a bit.It would literally block overflows withing one week if not harvested very often.

That being said every tank is different and this was on a high energy 180 gallon Reef .Smaller systems or ones with less of a cronic issue may do fine with the herbivore route but in the years I battled the lobo ,my success came when I started heavy limewater additions

 

[Rich1Reef]

I know this is an old thread ...... but my rock was almost completely covered with this (90 lbs of it). I added a Reef Dynamics Bio Pellet Reactor with NPX pellets 2 months ago and this stuff is gone. It's the only thing I changed. I didn't add the reactor to battle this. I added it to eliminate my fuge. This was a nice bonus.

 

[StudioReef]

I have it too!

I have it too!

For me this algae has been starting off really slow but suddenly went to a complete outbreak covering rocks and plating in places very hard to get to. It seems to grow more where the flow is highest.
My phosphates and nitrates are undetectable!

Will try a combination of all of the above
Thanks for this thread:thumbsup:

 

[StudioReef]

I made a video about how it went following the advice from this thread

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