I've had this tank in operation 15 + years and over the last 5 years once and awhile i get outbreaks of these weird green tubular like growths. They spread quite fast and only solution seems to be manual removal and they just disappear. When you grab them and pinch with your fingers they seem to be soft but also calcified at the same time. Any idea what they are and any suggestions other than manual removal (which is a real PIA since they are in some many cracks and crevices.)
ID Please and Suggestions to Eliminate
- Thread starter hilde123
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Looks like Neomeris sp. Usually dies off but can be invasive as you seem to have found. To my knowledge, not much eats it due to be a calcified algae
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Also there seems to be some one off cures but nothing concrete.
Agree. What are your water parameters? Particularly nitrate and phosphate?
Could be an imbalance between NO3 and PO4. You don’t want either at zero.
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How long have they been growing in your tank? I had some grow in one of my tanks and I just left them alone and they died off in a few weeks.
Fluconazole has been successful is treating bryopsis and hair algae. I haven’t heard using for Neomeris but it could be something to try.
Well looking around it appears this algae requires calcium, alkalinity, bright light, and clean water, so basically SPS conditions. It looks like your corals are majority softies so maybe try letting the tank slide for a month (no water changes, no dosing) and see what happens. I was going to suggest trying urchins, but it also appears this algae has toxins designed to deter grazers.
Good thinking Sean. Maybe lowing Ca levels.
I just tested my alk and calcium, 5.3 and 300, respectively. That is much, much, lower than my aquarium usually runs. I haven't checked it in a few months leading me to conclude that this Neomeris must have consumed this much slower than my SPS corals, which have been doing pretty poorly the last 6 months or so by the way. I haven't done any water changes for several months. I'm going to do a series of 10% water changes and I cranked up the calcium reactor to hope fully get to my more normal levels of 10-11 for alk and 450-480 for calcium.
I'm hoping to rekindle this thread and see if anyone out there with this Neomeris has had any success eradicating. Over the past four months every two weeks I've been spending about an hour or two removing with forceps as many as I can as close to the base as I can. This has resulted in keeping them "mowed down" but they seem to keep re-growing from the small base that is inevitably left behind after removal. I did some research on Fluconazole and based on the below that describes the mechanism of how Fluconazole works it seems certain it will not work on macro algae which I understand Neomeris is. In reading several threads I see reports of people using Flucanazole and their desirable macroalgaes are unaffected leading me to further conclude that it will probably not affect Neomeris. Unless someone has different experience or I am misunderstanding how Flucanazole works it doesn't seem the risk of harming my corals, clams, etc is worth trying it. I did read one post where some indicated that over feeding for a few weeks resulted in killing them off by raising nitrate and phosphate. I tried this and shut off GFO and the result only seemed to be some more nuisance algae.
I'm wondering if anyone else out there has a success story they can share. I was thinking about maybe trying to set up a siphon into a filter bag in sump and getting more aggressive at scraping the bases in hopes of removal the portion that is re-growing but I'm not sure of the likelihood of that being a success.
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I'm wondering if anyone else out there has a success story they can share. I was thinking about maybe trying to set up a siphon into a filter bag in sump and getting more aggressive at scraping the bases in hopes of removal the portion that is re-growing but I'm not sure of the likelihood of that being a success.
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I’ve never had to battle it, but I’m wondering, and I’m saying this very cautiously, if Vibrant would work. Unless they changed the formula, @Randy Holmes-Farley confirmed in 2022 that Vibrant is an algaecide identical to Algaefix.
With that said, if you opt to go that route, please do your research. I’m not sure if it works on Neomeris and it has been known to obliterate reef tanks (I believe @JCOLE experienced this).
With that said, if you opt to go that route, please do your research. I’m not sure if it works on Neomeris and it has been known to obliterate reef tanks (I believe @JCOLE experienced this).
I actually used Vibrant and lost a lot of corals as a result. This included soft corals, LPS and SPS.
What I find interesting is Vibrant being identical to Algaefix. After the coral losses with Vibrant, I was still having algae (Dictyota) issues. Now, this was before I was aware of Randy’s findings, and I then tried Algaefix. I was successful in eliminating the Dictyota with Algaefix and had no coral losses whatsoever.
I’m not doubting Randy, i just thought id share my experience.
What I find interesting is Vibrant being identical to Algaefix. After the coral losses with Vibrant, I was still having algae (Dictyota) issues. Now, this was before I was aware of Randy’s findings, and I then tried Algaefix. I was successful in eliminating the Dictyota with Algaefix and had no coral losses whatsoever.
I’m not doubting Randy, i just thought id share my experience.
Thanks so much the research, really appreciate you taking the time to look this nasty stuff up that keeps plaguing me! I'm going to try adding the tuxedo urchins, hopefully that together with increasing nutrients which seems to slow down and manual removal maybe the urchins can stay ahead of it and them I can try removing urchins and see what happens. I know, probably a dream! The question I have is how many blue tuxedo urchins to add. The last post in the thread you provided where the individual posted what he did to defeat it indicates one urchin per gallon. That seems crazy I can't imagine adding 180 of those to my tank let alone the cost, the cheapest I can find them is $30 each, I know this is an expensive hobby but I'm not spending $5k on urchins!
