Bubble Algae problem Please Help

[dzl1]

Just a little background on my tank. I HAD a 55 gallon, with a 8 fish, 3 starfish, 1 shrimp, and several snails and hermit crabs. I also have zoas and palys, acans, trumpet coral, hammer coral, and mushrooms. Live rock. Actinic Lights are on for 10 hours a day from 12pm to 10pm. Coral plus lights are on for 8 hours a day, from 1pm to 9pm. I feed my fish everyday. Frozen brine shrimp, half a cube. I also have a RO/DI system, protein skimmer, sump with bioballs.

That tank i had for 1 year and 3 months. In the mean time ive tried manual removal. Also did lights out for three days but that was before the bubble algae showed up. Will lights out work on BA? Had BA for about 5 months.

Fast forward to today. I now have a 72 gallon that ive had for about three weeks. I put new sand, same rocks, same livestock. I also used about 40 gallons of water from the previous tank and the remaining is new water. Im going to replace current sump with a refugium, with the hope that that will help with the algae.

Now when i did the changeover, my wife and myself inspected and picked off and scrubbed and then washed each and every rock. We were up until 5am working on this!

Today we saw bubble algae again:headwalls: We manually picked it off but we are discouraged because we spent so much time trying to eliminate this and it just laughs at us and keeps coming back.

Sooo... im looking for help trying to solve this. I have heard that emerald crabs eat it but its hit or miss. Plus i heard they can develop a taste for zoas. Not going to happen. Ive also heard the chemical route, but again i dont want to harm any of my fish and any of my soft corals.

Whats left to try? Vodka and sugar dosing? AR15? Rocket propelled grenade? Also in what order?

Again remember that im in the process of setting up a refugium. Any and all help is appreciated.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Based on personal experience with bubble algae, and presuming you remain unwilling to try biological control (emerald crabs) you're likely stuck with some amount of it in the tank unless you break it down and nuke the rocks.

And in my experience BA will grow in very low nutrient conditions. But it does slow down. Have you tested for nitrate & phosphate? That would be the first place to start.

 

[jminick2]

emerald or foxface have a CHANCE of eating it. When u remove it you have to siphon while simultaneously picking it off because their spores spead so easily. It is a hardy algae hard to get rid of.

 

[dzl1]

Yes i forgot to mention that i do weekly wtaer changes, 10%. i also test my water. nitrates and phosphates are always within range. Although i know that with algae present it will consume the phosphates/nitrates and give a false reading.

 

[dzl1]

jminick2, we remove the rock completely out of the tank before we remove the BA. Then we scrub and wash out before we put it back in the tank.

Dkeller, problem with removeing rocks and nuking them is that i have soft corals directly attached to the rocks.

 

[tmz]

What is the PO4 and NO3? What does within range mean.?

 

[dzl1]

Tmz, 0 ppm for both.

 

[tmz]

It could still be feeding from some PO4 leaching from the rock which might take some time to stop. I had it a long time ago, only see a bubble or two rarely for the last several years; persistent low nurtients ;02 to 04ppm PO4 and 0.2to 1ppm NO3 ,coincided with it's waning. It might be oligotrophic( tolerant of low nutrients) as DC suggests but it went away with nutrient control via organic carbon dosing and other methods in my case.

 

[bertoni]

In my experience, bubble algae will fade away on its own with some nutrient control, but I might have been lucky. I'd just try some GFO first, and consider cutting back on the feeding.

 

[Tzwizzle]

For what it's worth, I noticed that the emeralds went after the smaller bubbles but left the large ones. Manual removal with crabs might be your ticket. In my current tank I had some but was able to starve them out with cheato and hair algae : )

 

[oblio]

I have had little patches of bubble algae pop up and either stay dormant or grow a little, never could really beat it, the couple of emeralds I had wanted little to nothing to do with it. A few months back I used some "Kalk-paste" and covered them up with the white paste from a old syringe from a testing kit. Didn't touch it, just let it sit there, just turn everything off for few mins, apply the paste then turn pumps back on. Unless your blowing water right at the area the paste seems to sit there. A few weeks later the paste seems to have disappeared and I don't "see" any algae, dosnt mean it isn't there waiting to make another appearance at some other time. But so far, this seems to have worked better than anything I tried.

Time will tell.

PS: I use "Pickling Lime" as a means to create the Kalkwasser paste. I picked it up at Ace Hardware for pretty cheep. couple of teaspoons of dry media in roughly 1/8 cup of water seems to work. Also seems to work for killing just about anything in the tank so be careful around anything you actually want.

 

[dzl1]

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I just got some cheato for my refugium. And I might try the kalk paste. I will post results of what happens.

 

[tmz]

Kalk paste is good for killing most algae and aiptasia. Just use it a little at a time to avoid a pH spike.