Reef Frog
New member
If you're willing to do this, you may want to consider using hydrogen peroxide during the scrubbing. It will melt the bryoosis. Be sure to rinse the rocks thoroughly in SW before putting them back in the tank. The downside here is:
-A possible mini cycle so keep an eye on ammonia levels
-Large amounts of residual peroxide could harm cleaner shrimp.
-There are more details to know so read up on it before proceeding
You'll have a clean tank. But it will return unless you bring phosphate down and keep it down & GFO in a reactor is the most common method. A well designed ATS is probably the ideal long term weapon here. GFO must be replaced when exhausted - don't wait a week and give the BigB a chance to make a counter arrack! Snooze & you lose. A series of large water changes and mechanical filtration are needed as well. The Tech-M used simultaneously may also suppress regrowth here, but I've never used it myself.
It can grow into enormous plumes around corals quickly if left unchecked and it will light starve your corals. The algae also seems to irritate the polyp tissue and cause polyp retraction. But it's easy enough to pull off big chunks by hand to give the corals some breathing room. Corals with exposed calcium skeletons like frogspawn or candy canes will often grow it there. A few drops of peroxide & a small brush can eliminate it. Bryopsis's affinity for growing near large coral polyps is probably because it can take advantage of slime & waste produced by corals.
I don't think your average urchin will eat it. Nothing seems to prefer it except for some type of nudi or sea slug whose name I can't remember right now. But they're short lived & hit or miss and the algae will return unless nutrients are slammed down low. I'm surprised the poster above had good results with herbivorous fish; I've never heard of that except in rare cases after peroxide was used. That seems to make it palatable to some fish, sometimes.
