pico reef pest algae problem challenge

[cnseekatz]

I'm not worried about the zoanthids and palys, but I'm concerned about the mushrooms & riccordias, as well as some LPS (hammers & frogspawn). I've also got a clam in there I'd be concerned about.

 

[cnseekatz]

Here's a shot from this morning:

 

[brandon429]

that is a nice tank!! I will have to go back and re read the gallonage but it looks small. You might be happy to know that none of those including the clam have shown to be peroxide sensitive in this thread, or the giant thread from Nr.com

these full tank shots really help. You could also easily do a full tank drain and treat on it as well, I didn't see any fish that would be flopping around on the sand lol. But if there are fish, you can remove any of that structure if its not too much work and just apply some peroxide around the base area where the algae (? variant) is embedded. wait a couple mins, rinse off and put back in.

This effort of removing the rock structure has a side benefit in that you can siphon up the mess that will be up under the rock structure on top of the sandbed, every tank where the rock rests directly on the sand has this issue, mine included. I bet not having removed the rock in my tank for almost 8 yrs means its terrible up under there lol.

A drain and treat is a nice option because it wont disturb anything. the tank looks to be 8-10 gallons? if that option is chosen, one way to do it would be to drain out all the water in the morning before your corals expand, thats when i do my drains either during full water changes or for peroxide apps

catch this water in a bucket, as the tank is drained and peroxide is spot applied, I dont see any reason to spray it I would dropper it in to the correct places, use that old water to refill back up about halfway. This puts all the treated areas back into suspension and that treatment peroxide is now in solution mostly. Then siphon it all back out again, tank is now empty and the treatment peroxide has been exported. At this point you can refill with all new water matching temp and sg of the changewater, or you can use half new water and half pre aged water you made before the treatment run. Either way is fine. full water changes wont hurt your corals, I have done about 300 of them with those exact corals in my pico reefs. Some prefer to only do partial water changes, either way is fine. as long as the treatment water is fully exported there is no big deal.

When pouring water back in, I would slowly pour across that top point of the rock and let it trickle in so that your sandbed is not disturbed, this is one of the concerns in full water changes, not shocking the corals, but shocking up deposits in the sandbed creating a nutrient storm, this is why I like to recommend thorough top layer siphoning of sand if someone is going to take time to remove the rocks.

I didn't notice any cleaner shrimp lysmata species in there, those would be of concern using any of the in tank treatment variants.

Regrowth:

Very rarely is any algae control method a one off shot permanently. GFO has to be refreshed, cuc's have to continually eat etc. So, I fully expect a nice dieoff of this species after treatment, but the regrowth rate will be indicated by nutrient cycling in your tank, the amount of nutrients bound up in the latticework of the rocks etc.

I don't see a lot of nutrient pocketing in your system which indicates a nice cleaning regimen you have in place, the tank doest have an apparent high bioload etc, so I think this will work out nicely.

Lastly, for first time dosers I really like to recommend waiting to treat every bad spot in your tank, even though those arent sensitive corals, its prudent to break the treatment up into a couple or three sessions over a couple weeks time. a few giant water changes, poured in slowly, are very refreshing to the system and your tank will appreciate the extra nutrient exports during this time if you run them carefully. I have all the corals you have except for the clam, and there are many reports on previous pages in this thread of clams being part of in tank treatments so thats how Im basing the assessment of your coral sensitivity. PLus I use 35% peroxide, you should be good to go with this 3% application.

 

[brandon429]

for the parts of the tank where the algae is intertwined among the zoanthids and rics, heres my reco


make a diution of half tank water half brand new peroxide. for the ric rock, dabble this solutn around the polyps as best you can onto the algae patches. its diluted to be safer. on the zoanthids, just put it on them they wont care. if they act mad for a couple days they will open up. All this is a prediction based on the previous 40 pages of this thread lol

 

[jacob.morgan78]

Hey! I have what I think are dinoflagellates in a 20 gallon tank, about 25 gallons of total volume. I've read that h2o2 can work for dinos too. What do you think? What's your recommendation for dosing? How much? How often? When?

The tank is pretty new, about 4 months old. It doesn't have any coral yet, two fish, and some hermits and snails. The only other possibility is that this is part of the cycle somehow or a result of biopellets maturing. However, the brown stringy stuff does have the bubbles. I'll add a couple videos below showing the stuff.

Thanks for any help or guidance anyone can offer!




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THANKS!!!

 

[brandon429]

Hi Jacob thanks for stopping in. Yes, peroxide has cured some tanks of dinos, and some not. One of the benefits of trying it, is that we know now what's tolernant of the application and what is not. Typically we need a full tank shot to discern what else is in the tank...but from these shots it doesn't appear to be fully stocked yet. This is a huge thread that will show you several common approaches to dino curing:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1962886

-total blackouts have worked
-pH spikes and sustains using kalk has worked
-peroxide has worked
-marine algaefix has worked

so you do have these alternates in case one doesn't work.

In your particular case, Id like to see a FTS to develop a max dose for you real quick. The entry dose of 1:10 mentioned in your chem forum thread is a fine start, but if you tank allows I would go above that since we have full coral tanks applying 4:10 and still doing ok. I base my dose opinions on full tank shots just to be safe.

The application method I recommend is different than most. I think we should be siphoning all the dino out of the tank, with pure elbow grease first, and then dose the tank with the max allowed dose to prevent regrowth. This is much better than using any chemical to remove your biomass first, its less mass to dose when you are fighting regrowth vs the initial infestation. It looks like your tank has room to access all the stringy growths.

 

[jacob.morgan78]

Thanks! I'll have to get you a recent picture. I believe in the video there are some shots of the entire tank. There are no coral and two fish (firefish), about 4-5 hermits, and three margarita snails.

Do you still need a FTS? I don't mind, I just have to get one first.

Thanks again and let me know if you need anything else!

 

[jacob.morgan78]

The first is a full tank shot along with some more up close pictures. Thanks again.

Let me know if you need anything else!

 

[brandon429]

Im so glad this is being done before the tank is stocked. i hope you get lucky and never have to do it again. My LFS had a rough outbreak of this stuff in their frag tanks, but since my tank is already packed full I got lucky by having no more room to import. I hope in the future, after this is fixed by whatever means, we can find a preventative dip or technique listed out of the many that will prevent reimportation of this heinous being agian.

I just hate seeing this big tanks all full of inverts that have the same problem. the firefish aren't a big concern with peroxide, we've haven't seen a fish that was, but since the eradication process is insulting (lights out, potential pH spikes etc) Id like to see if you can house them elsewhere while we scrub this bad boy clean.
imo there are two application modes that strike me as do able:

1. relocate fish elsewhere for a few days. have supplies to completely wrap the tank in black paper or black plastic several times, by blackout we don't mean playing around here . black out. tape lock it into place so when you turn room lights on the tank is pure black inside. it seemed in prior threads that partial blackouts didn't help, and full ones did in a HUGE percentage of threads. Im not sure how sensitive fish would like this, although in other tanks they had no choice and fish did ok. I don't remember how firefish did specifically with blackouts.

after fish are relocated and the tank is ready for blackening, Id siphon out as much mess as you can. remove that biomass target...replace the tiny sandbed if you want with cleaner sand, or just wash well what you already have. ro water is ok. the sand is not your primary biofilter, and fresh nonchlorinated water isn't particularly antibiotic anyway for nitrification bacteria trapped in biofilms for a short rinse. Getting the target out is the goal. You could also hand remove your rocks and rinse them off well

put back everything, hit the tank with a dose of 3mls peroxide per 10gallons of water volume, 3x in one week spread out, as in M W F. leave the tank fully blacked during this time. see how the tank looks at the end of one week, that very well could beat it.

2. Leave everything in place including the fish and rock and sand, and just hit the tank with 1-2 mls per 10 gallons of water, fresh 3% peroxide from a new unopened bottle, a couple times in a week and see if that knocks it back. the theme in this thread is trying to avoid full tank dosing when possible in place of more effective concentration options which was my reco #1

let us know, please post back!

 

[brandon429]

to alleviate any concerns about recycling, the techniques and doses mentioned for both treatment options will have no effect on the nitrification abilities of your tank, there will be no recycle. fish can go right back in after treatment.

also I forgot...if you do option 1, run a nice 50-80% water change before putting fish back in just to keep them as free from stress as possible. peroxide hasn't affected any fish such that we never put any on our known sensitives list, but why risk it. we always try to keep peroxide off nontargets where possible.

 

[csammis]

brandon, I'm having trouble actually finding a list of species which are known sensitive to peroxide treatment...just some mentions around different forums and in this thread. Is there one place this list is located and could be perused / added to?

And in case there is not

I've got an outbreak of bryopsis and an ongoing battle with red bubble algae. I've been successfully spot treating frags and rocks with peroxide but I recently got some new corals (which is where the bryopsis came from - that little *%%$ survived quarantine). I'd like to make sure I'm not going to harm anything. Full stock list:

Zoanthids
Ricordea
Red and green war coral
Candy Cane
Frogspawn
Nepthea
Duncans
Plate coral
Pink birdsnest
Snails (nerite + cerith + nassarius)
Red hermit crab

Thank you!

 

[brandon429]

nepthiids should be ok I think I recall one tank from nr.com that had them in a 1:10 dose but in any case they haven't been reported as specially sensitive. we do try and avoid polyp contact where possible, except in the case of zoantharia that may import hitchhiker species in on the tough fleshy exterior

usually for LPS corals as a preventative dip people only apply peroxide to the skeletal areas and avoid the polyps, the polyp areas of LPS aren't near as passive as zoanthids in that there are multiple digestion/defense mechanisms taking place, ciliated transport that works against algae holdfasts etc

the slow and dumb zos I have seen algae growing off them lol so we just dip them for a couple mins in a 50/50 mix and the algae

most sensitive animals to how we dose:

lysmata cleaners, blood shrimp and sometimes hermodice fire worms

anemones are sensitive althouth I haven't seen a reported loss yet

coralline tends to bleach and come back

xenia have shown sensitivity

decorative macro algae for obvious reasons

top list of tolerants, animals and plants we thought would not tolerate peroxide but do quite well:

-filtration bacteria, we've never detected a loss in any sensible dose, even really high ones. biofilms and sheer number, placement within the substrate likely play together to make simple bacteria the most resistant thing in our tanks to treatment. This statement flies in the face of years of posits in older threads in the chem forum. great ongoing debate we have here. as soon as ammonia and nitrate/nitrite tests indicate differently, I'll update

-fish, I know of no known sensitives reported, this thread shows the typical gamut of marine fish being exposed to 1-4:10 no problem

-lps corals. although we avoid direct contact as possible, with external treatments to the skeletal areas, they are wholly tolerant we've seen across posts. None of them singly stand out to me as concerning, even on the tankwide doses

-benthic life. Another ongoing saga of opining in those against peroxide use, usually chemists, is that unknown communities of benthic life could be being killed in tankwide doses. I leave the statements in this thread about that as testimony as to whether it occurs commonly or in very isolated cases. we try to keep that in review here for others to make their inferences.

-some algae don't show much susceptibility to 3% peroxide after a while, our very own targets. depends on any given variable from tank to tank...in my tank, which receives the most peroxide in the highest concentration of any tank since its my testbed, the typical dark green/brown algae we have to scrape off the upper areas of our glass has developed total resistance to 3%. you can apply it, check back later, and its still the same whereas 3% is still used here as the primary kill dilution for all invaders.

I had to step up to rocket fuel 35% in order to blast that algae, now its gone in one day after treatment and I dont ever, ever scrape my glass clean now. havent in two years.

-sps corals are surprisingly tolerant. one would think they would be the worst, its not so, again deferring to pictures and statements from many in this thread.

-the single most tolerant coral group Ive seen are the zoanthids. I routinely try to kill some in my tank with long duration 35% direct application and it doesnt do anything to them. they contort up one day, and by the next are better than ever. no version of 3% solution will kill them. In a nr.com thread we had a guy posting loss of zos after treatment, from a bunch of zo's that were long and stalky and pinching in at the base before he even treated. Not one report since. zoanthids are the most resistant to peroxide organism Ive seen.

hope that helps man
B

 

[jacob.morgan78]

That is an awesome report! Thank you.

 

[brandon429]

Here's a shot from this morning:

I was thoroughly hoping for an update on this drain and treat

 

[chrislPa]

Ok Brandon I'm almost ready to give this a shot. I had been battling GHA for a few months. With upping gfo that's all gone but now I have the pink HA (cotton candy) growing everywhere. This stuff seems to grow much faster than the green. My problem is almost all of my rock is fused together from encrusting of the sps. I have taken out what is can and dipped but the rest I am screwed. Most of the algae is growing at hard to reach spots and in between the coral. So I don't think turbos are an option. Full tank treatment?? What scares me about that is my clam and rics.

 

[csammis]

Thanks Brandon, that list is great and very helpful. "1:10 dose" means 1mL to 10 gallons of water right?

 

[brandon429]

yes sir! And Chris you know what I have developed as a habit now after so long on situations like yours...not acting too fast. lets see how well what you treated melted. the reason being, there is a range of susceptibility across the organisms and Id like to see how well yours responds before doing some underwater concentration work to finish it off. buried somewhere in the first 20 pages is capture tricks like using cellophane to make an underwater tarp, pumps off, around your pink fuzz targets and then injecting peroxide through a diabetic's syringe into that tarp which is all an underwater treatment.

things like that combine and spot treatment into a full running tank but still are much more concentration application techniques vs the simple 1:10 dump it in the water

post pics guuys!

 

[brandon429]

theres also the medicine bottle capper where you have a syringe and medicine bottle setup so that when you put the opened medicine brown pill bottle over your target, you inject the peroxide down into a hole on thebottom of the pill bottle and let sit for a while, this is a concentrating technique too that can save you from having to take apart rocks

 

[chrislPa]

Let me see if I can get a few pics later today when lights come on. I did use a syringe yesterday with full peroxide on a few spots to see what happens. I used 1 ml on each spot. I'll also see what happend with that.

 

[brandon429]

I expect that method to take up to four days~ for an effect so maybe some lightening of the tissue by end of week

its only the undiluted applicates that get 24-48 hr results typically