Dipping Frags for Bubble Algae

griss

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I have some Zoa frags on a frag rack in the 40. I’d like to move the racks to the 150 but, both the rack and the frag plugs are covered in bubble algae (it’s between the polyps too). I’ve been trying to determine if a diluted peroxide dip will work for Valonia? Does anyone have experience with this?
 
@brandon429 may have more info but I’m not sure if the zoas would melt if dipped in peroxide. I believe Vibrant (if you can find it) was one of the few that had high success (you just don’t want to use it in your tank but a dip should be fine). That said, I don’t know the effect vibrant had on zoas.

For me, my best success was overloading emeralds and pithos. I have probably 20 emeralds and 20 or so pithos in my 40 and 6 emeralds and 8 pithos in my 13.5.

One thing I found helpful (at least for pithos) is they aren’t rock climbers (within reason) and relatively lazy. So bringing the rock to them gets it cleaned quicker if that makes sense.
 
Thanks Shane. I wasn’t thinking full strength peroxide. I was going to use the dilution chart I found on Humblefish. On the web, I’m reading mixed results so, I was hoping someone here had experience trying.

FWIW I plan to add emeralds and pithos to the new tank. Just didn’t want to add anything to the old one since I’ll (hopefully) be taking it down soon.
 
In my opinion zoanthids are the #1 resistant to peroxide although it may irritate them for a while. Valonia sure is rough agreed, I fear importing it into my tank for sure.

The best way to treat in my opinion is to remove rocks it's on, set them on the counter, and use a knife to detail surgically dislodge and rinse away all the material rendering the rock seemingly clean (but there's still small holdfasts and plant material attached to rock usually, it's why they're a scourge) and then in the clean condition, directly apply your peroxide or vibrant from a used bottle you got off ebay right to the cleaned areas, let sit a bit, rinse and put back and cross fingers.

I didn't like dosing so many chems into the water since the stuff is so resistant, but agreed vibrant/ whatver it was / was the strongest valonia kill our hobby ever found. If vibrant was better at writing label ingredients disclosures it would still be here.

Vibrant was not killed off due to bad performance, it was killed and fined heavily for not disclosing active ingredients/ some say misleading labels. It sure helped a lot of tanks we can see in Facebook posts and forum posts when it reigned. As mentioned the crabs and certain fish might work, but nowadays there's marked disease import risk to the display if we start adding random unfallowed animals in response to a challenge. It wasn't like that fifteen years ago.
 
Thanks Shane. I wasn’t thinking full strength peroxide. I was going to use the dilution chart I found on Humblefish. On the web, I’m reading mixed results so, I was hoping someone here had experience trying.

FWIW I plan to add emeralds and pithos to the new tank. Just didn’t want to add anything to the old one since I’ll (hopefully) be taking it down soon.
If you want to try to get them clean before hand, maybe buy a few and stick them in an acclimation box, then put the Zoa rock in with them for them to clean.
 
Thanks @brandon429 I will never use Vibrant again though. I did use it in the past (when it first came out) to clear up a Bryopsis and Valonia issue. But, despite water changes/carbon following the treatment, I lost all my Acros.

Great idea Shane. I might have to hit a LFS tomorrow and pick up an acclimation box.
 
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