pico reef pest algae problem challenge

[ampemployee1]

Pics about 2 weeks post "Spot" treatment

Pics about 2 weeks post "Spot" treatment

Here's the latest pictures The FTS has the best view of the overall impact of peroxide spot treatment of HA. I included pix of the livestock, they are doing great!

I added a GFO reactor because I was having limited to no success with running GFO passively in a filter sock. I've been able to get my phosphates down from 0.36 to 0.08; trending down every day! Goal is 0.03

 

[brandon429]

good gosh thats a clean setup

Id have to trade a small foreign subcompact car to be able to afford that bad boy. Thank you for laser clear pics man that helps our thread tremendously

 

[88rxna]

So what do we do with inverts if we cant remove the rocks from the display?
I have some snails,emerald crabs and a cleaner shrimp...

 

[brandon429]

you'll have to qt them or try another method. only the cleaner shrimp of those you listed is sensitive. the others can stay in the tank.

 

[88rxna]

Thanks!! I have a 10 gallon i can put him in. Any estimate how long i should wait to put him back in?
Any certain corals effected by peroxide?

 

[brandon429]

there's no way to gauge the time frame of safety for lysmata cleaners, using peroxide at all around them is a risk. successful treaters qt'd them a week after their last application but if any residual contacts them I expect them to not make it, they are very genetically weak to it for some reason

try to read the thead for the comprehensive list of corals in case I miss some

from what I can remember zo's are not ever affected by any application, they are strongest, sps corals are somewhat affected but pretty strong, and anemones and very weak to it. We try to keep it off the corals. the drain and treat method is ideal for tanks you can't remove the rocks, because after treatment you fill and drain the tank once again to minimize contact time

 

[88rxna]

Ok.
Thank you. Sorry if you had to write that all again (im sure have done it quite a few times).
My hair algae is spread through out the tank and im just looking for a way to fight it. Its only a 4-5 month old tank so its still pretty new. My rocks come from another tank so i suspect they are leaching phosphates. Phosphates run 0 on a hanna checker, have lots of cheato, no dosing of vodka or vinegar, was running GFO but i shut it off for a few days to see if it rises any.

 

[brandon429]

Part of what i hope to show in this thread is its not always required to even measure phosphates in order to have an algae free tank. In a lot of tanks, killing the target removes the problem. In some it doesn't

 

[brandon429]

For the controls you have set against phosphates i think a quick kill might get you the upper hand back

 

[88rxna]

Some of the top rocks are not glued into place so i can remove those and treat them. I have done this treatment 2 months ago but did not have the same livestock then.
Thanks for the education...
Here is the tank right now:

 

[brandon429]

I see tentacles on the underside of the rock ledge he's our concern lol

thats a really nice tank doesnt look invaded at all

 

[88rxna]

Thanks...and yeah, he thinks hes a bat until feeding time..then all 100 legs boogy to catch dinner!! Lol i like the guy, dont want to lose him.
I am starting to gain control but i still have some GHA. Even in my poor powerhead!!
I just won a war with dynos (still a little on the coast to coast overflow) and this is when the GHA came back.

 

[brandon429]

found an old thread from 2006 where two prominent reef authors were commenting on peroxide

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=965117

 

[jackers]

I have an 85 gallon flat back hex that has been mostly a FOWLR tank for a number of years. I use two koralia powerheads (constant flow, not the alternating ones), a Tunze 9010 skimmer, around 80 lbs live rock, bare bottom, two clowns, a tang, a hawkfish, and a few cleaners.

I won't lie, for a while, I went a while between water changes, didn't keep up with algae removal, etc. This year because of a temperature spike, all of my fish died except for two clowns.

Instead of tearing the tank down, I started doing weekly water changes (RO/DI), siphoned out my sand bed (now bare bottom), scraped down all the algae, added GFO and Carbon reactors, got my parameters in order, and have been adding corals for the past few months.

Anyway, I have some spots of hair algae on a few rocks and now some thick red slime algae on one or two other rocks. I also have some green algae on the bottom and back of my tank, but it isn't too major.

I can probably pull my rocks out and treat them with peroxide but I don't really know how. I have been researching all weekend but I would hate to mess something up and have another setback with the tank.

Mostly, my corals are zoas, duncans, monti caps, and a couple encrusting montis and undatas. I have a couple orders of some higher end letpos and zoas coming next week and would like to kick this before adding anything new.

Can you tell me what peroxide I need, how to dilute it, how to apply it to my rocks (inside or outside my tank) and if I should dip any of my current frags or frag plugs.

I did a water change yesterday (kept the water to "rinse" rocks off after peroxide dips) and blew a lot of the red slime off with a turkey baster. It came off pretty easy, probably because of catching it early. Anyway, here are some pics. I can get better pics as needed.

 

[jackers]

I can take any more if needed. Photos are with iPhone5, sorry for the quality.

 

[jackers]

And here are my other two shots, one of the full tank.

 

[jackers]

For clarity, the pics looks a little worse than real life. I turkey baste the rocks every water change, which is once a week. Most of the rocks are clean with no fuzz or algae present. Problem is, some of the larger base rocks are the ones with small patches of hair algae. I am wondering if there is some way to treat those under water, I would hate to pull out my entire aquascape.

 

[jackers]

Oh, and here are some frag plugs with some algae growth. Can how would you recommend treating these? I'm more concerned with the Tyree sunset and expensive rainbow undata.

 

[brandon429]

Yes.

That tank is completely fixable. This is the classic algae balance of a healthy tank. If you wanted to support more tang bioload you could probably kill it off long term but this is a tank showing only sparse local tufts, no sign of long term nutrient issues, you will like how fast peroxide works.

For all the algae on the glass including that mixed with coralline on the rear i would completely razor scrape clean all of it using a series of scrapers made from a box of razor blades, some epoxy, and some three foot dowel rods. Extension scrapers

The coralline is retentive substrate for algae gha holdfasts

Its easier to scrape it

What's left on the rocks is mega easy

You just turn off pumps for five minutes to still the water

Take large squares of saran wrap and submerge, onto a target area

You can use large pins to press this tarp over a target area, seal it decently. Temporarily set rocks around the perimeter if that helps, do anything to secure it that's creative

Then you just inject a tiny shot of 3% peroxide into the target

The temp tarp extends contact time

Remove after five mins

Photograph algae as it dies in 48hrs we need good pics like yours

Only do 4~ patches per
day so the peroxide won't build up, but that tank doesn't have sensitive species from what i see in the pics
Only use a new bottle of peroxide not an opened one

You really need diabetic injection syringes to do this right. Its like five bucks for twenty of them at a pharmacy
They are hard to get nowadays without medical referrals and prescriptions

Id start by showing the pharmacist this post on your cell phone so he can see we aren't drug users

We are peroxide injectors and their implements are invaluable!

What do think of that man, pure custom approach tank totally clean in two weeks

Repeat annually as catch up, i recommend not messing with phosphate stripping i can tell that isn't a problem with the pics.

 

[brandon429]

The frags work like this

Zoanthids
Mix up a cup of half tank water half 3%
Dribble it all over the polyp, zos will be fine
Remove after one minute
Rinse, reinstall

I don't see cleaner shrimp or anemones which are known sensitives

Sps spot inject it around the plug, keep the fifty fifty solution off the polyps

They will be mildly irritated if you get the polyp wet so use the syringe to deliver it -not- on the polyp

The dosing for the tarp injections is a few cc's under each tarp nothing super specific. It will lighten/bleach out the coralline in that spot temporarily

Totally worth the loss of algae, coralline is back in two months.