how to get rid of [fill in blank]: various plagues: FYI

[Sk8r]

1. hair algae: it's a phase almost all new tanks have---the phosphate clinging to the live rock serves as fertilizer to algae spores that are just about everywhere on the planet [try having a tank while living on a lake if you wonder about the universality of this stuff!]---cure: best: a refugium; second-best: a phosphate remover. In either case, your cleanup crew will eat it, poo it, and release the phosphate into the water column where it can be gotten out.

2. red slime: it's another phase. It happens..ime, when you have sunlight from a window hitting your tank in a certain spot it will happen there. Improving flow helps; get rid of dead spots. Curtain the window. Best, ime: turn out your lights for 3 days, shield tank from window: 4th day actinic only. Do this once a month. Do not use Red Slime Remover unless you are an older, stronger tank. There is hazard of it weakening your sandbed.

3. flatworms: things that look like little Star Trek emblems. Some say the yellow coris wrasse will eat them; some say a scooter dragonet will; but in this one case, Flatworm Exit is a chemical fix that can be used. The biggest danger with these is their multiplying into such a huge biomass that when you do use FE, it takes out your tank.

4. ich: best: quarantine your new fish, even your first, and be very careful of your specimen sources: ich can ride in on specimen rocks that have been with fish. A medicated dip doesn't hurt with corals: this is species specific, so it makes a difference whether your specimen is zoa or stony coral: read up on it. Inverts: just give them [after acclimation] an intermediate rinse in a second cup of tank water, which will be one dip to try to get any hitchhiking parasite off them.
Best and correct procedure: If ich appears in your quarantine, treat there in qt, with hypo or copper. This is usually successful if you get right on it.
Next best---if ich appears in your main tank: withdraw all fish from your tank and treat together with hypo or copper. NEVER treat with hypo or copper in your main tank. Leaving your main tank with no fish for 6-8 weeks.
Third best: give up. The fish will die. Your other fish will die. Do not get ANY new fish for two full months. Then do what you should have done the first time, set up a quarantine for any new fish. If any of your old guys survived, they'll will pretty well be ich-resistent, and probably---but it's not guaranteed---will never manifest it or host it, so it will die out. If you have survivors, it would be smarter to wait two more months to see if it appears again. If there have been no other outbreaks---you probably won't see it again. But you might, once the new guys go in---if Murphy strikes. So you're back to square one. [You'd be a lot smarter to do it right from the start.] Ich is one of the longest-lasting and most destructive problems a tank can get---and it's one of the easiest to stop, if you do it right---from the start of your tank, meaning your very first fish.
If you have been lucky so far---realize it's luck, which is bound to run out, and start qt'ing new arrivals religiously.

6. Caulerpa or other macroalgae taking your tank: either hope your tank is 75 g, in which case a tang may handle it; or set up a fuge 1/3 the size of your main tank, which will take it out in about 2 months.

7. things keep mysteriously dying. Answer: your water quality is off. Test for: alkalinity, calcium, ph, magnesium, salinity as well as nitrate and ammonia. Answer B: make sure when you acclimate that you are getting within .001 of the same salinity---over the better part of an hour, and simultaneously matching ph. It's likely either your water quality or your acclimation habits.

 

[ihopss]

I had no luck with lights out for red slime.

 

[Sk8r]

I did. But mine wasn't bad, and I have a fuge. The slime is a bacterial sheet, not a plant, [algae] at all, so you can't combat it by normal anti-algae methods, but the nutrients are the other way to go after it. Restrict feeding, limit light---oh! and check the age on your bulbs: many expire at 6 months even if they're continuing to light. if the spectrum shifts due to bulb age, that can be a major factor. This stuff was prevalent at the end of the Permian Extinction, when the atmosphere was a mess and the spectrum of sunlight getting through was weird. The more your tank resembles those conditions, plus chemical balance, the worse it gets. I did use Slime Remover on my young tank, and it damaged it: I spent the next six months trying to get the sandbed and pods back in shape. I'd say if you're going to use it, follow instructions, have a powerful skimmer, and be prepared to nurse that tank back to health longterm. It usually looks worse than it is...I had the total red with bubbles in it---but it needs to get out of there as soon as you can.
Also red slime and diatoms look quite a bit alike. Diatoms can be combatted with, yes, a diatom or 1 micron filter---applied cautiously, once a week, for a while. Others may have better suggestions, as I've never personally had that plague.

 

[dileggi]

As always, great info...especially the HA portion...right on target for me today as per my other thread.

 

[Sk8r]

I forgot to mention: one of the biggest contributors to an HA problem is expired ro/di filters and lights going bad.
Phosphate very frequently comes in from tap water, and some people set up with conditioned tap because they think it doesn't matter. Yep, it matters. Give your ro/di a TDS test: total dissolved solids.

 

[Sk8r]

8. bubble algae: valonia. Learn to love this texture: a positive attitude toward bubble algae is the only thing that will get you through this 'phase' sane. Emerald Mithrax crabs are supposed to eat it: mine didn't: it preferred to pick at coralline. My largest scarlet hermit actually did, but, y'know, 3-4 bubbles don't cut it. A fuge helps. But this stuff is so weird it doesn't respond to any of the usual algae cures. Sure, they say: "Don't pop the bubbles---it'll spore. Get something to eat it or remove the rock and clean and it and put it back." C'mon. Anything that eats it isn't going to pop the bubbles? Scrubbing off the rock and putting it back isn't going to bring spores with it? I'm fatalistic about this stuff. I say it's a nice occasional contrast to rock and always impresses visitors. "What are those big green pearls? Are they a coral?" Say yes. They'll never know.

 

[jamiep]

Add to that list an algae bloom! I had mine for 2weeks before I learnt all I had to do was turn out the light for 3days!

 

[Sk8r]

It seems to help some---including me. I think one thing really important to having that lights-out thing work is having a fuge: if a fuge, lit 24/7, is lurking there ready to grab any nutrients set free by darktime dieoff, it's got to be operating at an advantage over the tank. Same goes for running Phosban. If you don't do something to get it eaten and poo'ed into the water column, or dying back and releasing nutrients---you can't grab it by fuge or by phosban.

One caution with the lights-out method: if your display tank plague is caulerpa, don't do the lights-out thing. Caulerpa 'spores' in a lighting change and the toxin can take out a tank. If you have caulerpa in your fuge, don't muck with the lighting schedule: always light it 24/7 and have a spare bulb in case the bulb burns out on a holiday. That stuff is dangerous.

 

[FBNitro]

Do snails eat Hair Algae Sk8r? For some reason I thought they wouldn't touch the stuff.

 

[Nanz]

Re: how to get rid of [fill in blank]: various plagues: FYI

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11769824#post11769824 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sk8r
2. red slime: it's another phase. It happens..ime, when you have sunlight from a window hitting your tank in a certain spot it will happen there. Improving flow helps; get rid of dead spots. Curtain the window. Best, ime: turn out your lights for 3 days, shield tank from window: 4th day actinic only. Do this once a month. Do not use Red Slime Remover unless you are an older, stronger tank. There is hazard of it weakening your sandbed.

That makes so much sense Sk8r. My tank is 6 months old which is still premature and I have a DSB. I got cyano and used Chemi-clean to remove the cyano. It worked but since then I have been fighting diatoms on my sandbed because the Chemi-clean killed the bacteria. Its slowly going away but its been like this for over two months. I wish I never would have used Chemi-clean.

 

[Sk8r]

So sorry about the sandbed battle: I had the same.

Snails will eat short hair algae: after it grows to a certain length they can't manage it. Use a toothbrush to wind and yank it off until only the short stuff is left: it's all in the wrist---lol!

Fighting conchs will eat it. if you're over 50 g you can consider a lawnmower blenny. But you have to be prepared to feed him afterward. And this is a problem.

WHY I AM AGAINST GETTING AN ALGAE EATER FOR YOUR REEF TANK: once they've done for your plague, you still have to keep importing algae to feed them, even as dried nori or spirulina---which contains phosphate. Phosphate harms corals. You have fuges, run ro/di, and run phosban to get rid of phosphate: why have a fish that has to have food that imports it?
Just my opinion. And that lets out a large range of fish as appropriate reef tenants. You can keep corals with them, but you cannot keep corals well without heroic measures against phosphate, ie, the battle will be ongoing. It's why I like little detritus sifters and the like more than I like algae-eating sorts.