Killing Bubble Algae with Reef HD Reef Flux

[ezcompany]

My 30 gallon had so much bubble algae that I was going to take it down after losing the fight, so as a last ditch effort I decided to test a high dose of fluconazole. I had tried a high dose earlier in the year in a different tank to test on turf algae with capsules from online, but lost SPS from what I'm guessing was fillers? This time I went with Reef HD Reef Flux after seeing good reviews but still expected the same result.

First I used a 2x dose at 40mg per gallon (2 capsule per 10 gallons), and a dozen bubble algae turned white but it wasn't much.

After a big water change I did 4x dose at 80mg per gallon (4 capsules per 10 gallons) expecting to lose corals again. Turns out it was a perfect dose

Over 3-4 weeks all of the bubble algae slowly turned white and died out, so about double the time of bryopsis. I only took photos of the back wall but it was EVERYWHERE in the tank and omg it looks so clean now. I haven't seen any pop back up, but might do another 4x dose in a few weeks just to make sure I wipe it out.

The tank has acros and montis, pair of clowns, LPS, flower anemones, and a few mushrooms. Nothing was affected at all, which makes me think the online capsules I used before had something in them that Reef Flux didn't. The only downside was I got a cyano bloom for a week from all that bubble algae dying in a skimmerless tank that went away after a water change.

I bought so many different products trying to kill this stuff with varying degrees of unsatisfying results from Vibrant to phosphate removers and different media, and none of them got close. If you're looking for the magic bubble algae cure this is it. I wish I'd known before losing super nice acans to bubble algae on the skeletons but it won't happen again

Here is a progression, time between photos is 2-4 days since changes were pretty slow compared to bryopsis.

These 2 show how much died on a 2x dose

Then this was after the 4x dose

 

[ezcompany]

Time between the next 2 is around a week

Here's a closer look at one of the areas, seems like that red filament algae wasn't affected.

 

[moondoggy4]

Congrats I had the same success using Algaefix, it got rid of my bubble algae, I had the clean my power heads weekly because they clogged my power heads. It took one week to clean each power heads so I was rotating them, one on one off. I had zero in my sump but in my DT and overflow box tons.

 

[Raintree]

Wow that is impressive. I might have to try that