pico reef pest algae problem challenge

[MiracleFish]

100% love the challenge you will be surprised at the difference we can make. Im about to get some more really good after pics

since we are months into this, no hurry to start. Id like a good amount of the exchange to be prep work and brainstorms before we start.

You can see from this thread we haven't spent much if any time actually id'ing anything except the obvious targets. because its not needed to kill them, thats the point of the thread...we just clean tanks and let others do the id'ing to learn from as needed.

Your target is highly susceptible to this treatment and the rocks will show a huge improvement fast and Im not sure what it is
but Ive seen this before, lots of times, and as predictions go on this thread it will respond well to our treatment.

initial brainstorms:

some of the anemones could be stressed from the treatment although there isnt a big history of them dying. not much else is ultra sensitive in that tank, since the substrate is fairly clean this is easier than some jobs where the substrate is loaded with various algae, rock alone pretty much intertwined with coral is about what we have been doing the whole time here. so let me start by asking, is 100% of the rock glued and unremovable?

is there any part you can take out, externally spot treat, let sit, rinse, and put back in without hand removing the algae? you can see from recent pages, before undertaking big tasks a test rock is awesome, it gives us the expected kill time to expect for the rest of the tank before you put 11 hours of straight work into it.

The drain and treat we talked about in pm:

yes thats a real valid option here, and probably the best way not to stress any of the corals in the tank. The technique where we dose underwater is always, always, second best to any treatment where the water isn't present to distribute the peroxide around the tank onto the non targets.

any amount of repeat work you are willing to do for rock structure removal, what can be, or repeated tank drains is ideal in fixing your problem. brainstorm that with me and let us know about removable test rocks

on the tank drain I was meaning to drain it to where you can access a target area, dose, pour some water back on that spot, then change out a portion of the leftover water to export out the peroxide.

since this is a large tank, it is absolutely possible to drain tank, spot treat, refill, and let a calculated safe amnt of peroxide simply dissipate from the tank without all the extra changes.

that last pic, the zoanthid rock on the foreground substrate, you can lift that one out right? if you can use that as a test rock, remove and apply peroxide avoiding the zoanthids as best you can right on the algae, let sit two mins out of the tank, rinse and place back in. if some contacts the zoanthids its ok, but for good practice start applying around the corals using targeting applicators

This response put a huge smile on my face just from the first sentence:beer:

In the picture shown below, Ive circled rocks that can be removed. The rock directly in the middle that is to the right of the cave and the rock all the way to the left are the only 2 I'm willing to test because of how simple they are to remove. The rest of the rocks are certainly a b*tch to move but is certainly possible. but the other main parts of the algae cannot be removed because of the glue.

This tank isn't as big as you would think it is too, its only a 20g long. (Atleast I dont think its big). And that last picture, the rock isnt very moveable at all that Im looking at it a second time. However, the rock with the Dragon eyes on them is easy to remove and would a solid choice also for spot treatment.

 

[brandon429]

20?!?! I thought this was a 90 thats awesome

ok great that makes whatever water change in/out work you are willing to do so much easier. I def would start by pulling the rocks you can and do the external spot treat. post us pics as it dies off and turns pinkish then white in about 4-6 days time then we move on to rest of the tank as we see fit. easy test to begin w here no prob

I couldnt tell if that tangle of macro at the top was an invader or something you wanted, it looks nice. decorative macros are likely to get zapped as an extra prediction, do you want to kill that off or work around it ?

 

[brandon429]

if it helps any, I do not classify this type of invader covering your rocks (reddish color) as nutrient dependent. Dont even care to know what your phosphate levels are, they dont cause this, import does.

If you take a rock of this algae/invader, and go place it in a tank of great water params, guess what happens to that tank.

this is exactly the kind of algae we need to act directly on, the ocean would have presented a grazer to keep it in check and if those grazers were lacking in that area it would take over that part of the reef which has better phosphate levels than you or I will ever obtain.

Yes its true -sometimes- these invasions are beaten by heavy GFO/nutrient stripping where a change in the stasis of the tank shocks the invader back to death. I have simply found that action less effective/repeatable compared to direct peroxide work, and, more stressful to corals who are enduring the same stasis shift as the target. overstripping nutrients and bleaching corals white is a real concern when using an indirect means of target removal.

IMO, phospate stripping is best left for GHA/microalgae invasions if thats how someone wants to battle them. these red invaders I dont see a lot of success w nutrient stripping as the only means of both prevention and removal.

 

[MiracleFish]

20?!?! I thought this was a 90 thats awesome

ok great that makes whatever water change in/out work you are willing to do so much easier. I def would start by pulling the rocks you can and do the external spot treat. post us pics as it dies off and turns pinkish then white in about 4-6 days time then we move on to rest of the tank as we see fit. easy test to begin w here no prob

I couldnt tell if that tangle of macro at the top was an invader or something you wanted, it looks nice. decorative macros are likely to get zapped as an extra prediction, do you want to kill that off or work around it ?

if it helps any, I do not classify this type of invader covering your rocks (reddish color) as nutrient dependent. Dont even care to know what your phosphate levels are, they dont cause this, import does.

If you take a rock of this algae/invader, and go place it in a tank of great water params, guess what happens to that tank.

this is exactly the kind of algae we need to act directly on, the ocean would have presented a grazer to keep it in check and if those grazers were lacking in that area it would take over that part of the reef which has better phosphate levels than you or I will ever obtain.

Yes its true -sometimes- these invasions are beaten by heavy GFO/nutrient stripping where a change in the stasis of the tank shocks the invader back to death. I have simply found that action less effective/repeatable compared to direct peroxide work, and, more stressful to corals who are enduring the same stasis shift as the target. overstripping nutrients and bleaching corals white is a real concern when using an indirect means of target removal.

IMO, phospate stripping is best left for GHA/microalgae invasions if thats how someone wants to battle them. these red invaders I dont see a lot of success w nutrient stripping as the only means of both prevention and removal.

I just finished spraying the removable rocks from the tank, every rock I can remove that is and I can already notice a difference of HA that was falling off in the bucket when I was rinsing them off. As for the rock in the middle with the dragon zoas on it, I spot treated that one and so far is looking the best. However, the large red zoas have yet to open back up but Im sure they will by tomorrow.

As for the macro algae in the corner, Im not actually trying to remove it from the tank. Its just that there is some hair algae on the same rock. It looks nice since it covers the heater and also does its biological job in my tank as is also does in my HOB fuge along with the chaeto.

Ill be keeping you updated with pictures as soon as the first trial of rocks clear up or whatever happens within the next 4 days.

 

[MiracleFish]

Here's an update of the sample rocks I used

And here's today's struggle draining the tank and peroxiding it.

Refill

Completion of today's progress.. More updates soon.

 

[brandon429]

Excellent pics

The cleaner shrimp is very iffy for a big run, rinsed well they can still survive but are listed here as in the top two most sensitive animals we keep.

My questions are how much total peroxide was input into the tank, how does that volume relate to the known safe dosage of one ml per ten gallons of tank water?


Did you do the whole tank at once or just a part?
Lastly, did you do another follow up water change after refilling, or is the tank digesting it all within the refill water?

 

[brandon429]

I truly thank you for documenting the drain, before, during, its my number one hope for the thread. Pics with each treatment to track predictions and outcomes makes the thread a helpful reference for comparing conditions among tanks during any phase of invasion.

The point of the thread is to test the repeatability of basic peroxide dosing independent of seemingly important tank parameters like varying starting dissolved o2 levels and varying degrees of organic waste that directly acts with peroxide to produce chemical intermediates and action. That's supposed to be big risky territory per the Chem forum guys and while I'm sure its affecting tank chemistry we collect no data to show it as particularly impactful. In one month its likely you will look back on the treatment as worth it, even if you lose one or two known sensitives. Any reactive treatment on a tankwide scale will carry some stress to the more sensitive animals...


In every tank being treated here, the option existed to treat immediately when the spot was small, but we are prevented from doing that by current algae invasion philosophy. Direct action is barred, a bandaid, not worth the time. So this thread will grow.

If it were my tank I'm not particularly patient. My take would be use the max round one and take a loss to save the repeat work, but for this thread its always recommended to treat in steps if you have a zero loss outcome wish

Its possible to trade off tank work for safety. If one is willing to break up the treatments into fifths for example, you'll be changing some of the water five times on your tank but on each pass very little residual peroxide stays in the tank to contact non targets- hit one fifth of the tank each time and wait a few days between runs, w good water changes each run.

For a total ecosystem correction sometimes thats the cost, loss of a known sensitive, but overall in about four weeks you will see overall a fresh start and you can take preventative action next time.

Feel free to cheat with peroxide as needed, I do

As soon as something else works better ill quit using it.

It would be particularly helpful if you would follow up in four months w pics

We lack long term follow up pics on most featured tanks here.

 

[MiracleFish]

Excellent pics

The cleaner shrimp is very iffy for a big run, rinsed well they can still survive but are listed here as in the top two most sensitive animals we keep.

My questions are how much total peroxide was input into the tank, how does that volume relate to the known safe dosage of one ml per ten gallons of tank water?


Did you do the whole tank at once or just a part?
Lastly, did you do another follow up water change after refilling, or is the tank digesting it all within the refill water?

I just dumped a good amount of peroxide into the bottle and watered it down a tad. I tried not to over dose even though I may have since I did spray the entire tank.. But I also did a 25% water change all together today.

I rinsed the rock right after and siphoned out 2 gallons of what water was in the bottom. Added the rest of the tank water and also added 4 gallons of fresh salt water. The tank hasnt completely cleared yet which is scaring me a little bit, but Im sure will be fine. I also replaced the GFO in the phosban because of all the deatris and rotting hair algae getting sucked into it from the powerhead.

I plan on mixing saltwater before noon tomorrow and doing a premature water change with that freshly mixed batch later that night so it gets a few hours of oxidation, but I also may wait till wednesday morning if i dont get caught up with other things.

 

[brandon429]

Excellent detail just one more response to a clue in that post

We discussed earlier some common tank settings that can amplify the effects of peroxide and should be considered before concomitant use

Heavy lighting pushes peroxide stressed coral over the edge, bright lighting is a stressor post peroxide for your known sensitives in the tank.

Free radical impact is common among both peroxide treated and light-intensive settings


Gfo use alongside peroxide treatments is a stress factor to consider. Simply put, both methods are RTN imparting when overdone and running two at once doubles the chance at least by laymans statistics. It is prudent to suspend all gfo use in the recovering tank. Let the extra water change export work take over...change the water in the recovering tank more often than usual and keep the lights cut short for at least a couple days imo. If there is a reduction setting I'd cut by 50% for as long as you think they need to regain composure.

 

[Mpek]

Hey Brandon...awesome stuff. I just picked up about 14 corals from a fellow reefer last night after work around 1am. Didn't know until I picked them up that they were covered in green hair algae. I currently have no nuisance algae in my DT what-so-ever so I did not want to introduce them into my tank. I ended up dipping them in a coral dip and scrubbed the crap out of them with a tooth brush until about 4am and left them in a bin overnight. Needless to say I didn't get all of the algae off and thought about discarding them. That was before I read this thread. I just gave the peroxide a go and so far I'm impressed. I didn't take any before pics bc I was pretty discouraged and didn't read this thread. So, I'll let you know the status and if they all survive.
Thanks

 

[brandon429]

Ok thanks for posting can't wait to hear of the results!

 

[MiracleFish]

This is the finishing result of the peroxide spraying. Everything is back up and running, the only invert that past away in the event was my emerald crab that was seen only at night once in a blue moon. All corals made it from what I can see. However the frogspawn is a little bleached but still recovering. My candy Cane coral is also recovering a little but will be fine. Star polyps are finally starting to come out and grow already along with my zoa's. My clownfish and goby seem to also be doing just fine, no sign of heavy breathing. And I now have filter socks on filters to Polish the water clean after how much of a mess the scrubbing made in the tank.

There will be more scrubbing to come to clean of deatris and missed HA areas.

 

[Zwagerman]

Hi all,

Im also going to get rid of my algea. I have one question before i start.

I bought a bottle of peroxide 3% (120ml), do i need to mix it with salt water and dip the stones in it? And can i also dip corals in this stuff?

 

[Zwagerman]

Ok, I have dipped a rock in the peroxide. after putten the whole bottle over the rock, the started to make a sissing noice. I cleaned the rock by rinsing it of with osmose water. The result was stunning, the rock was already clean and all that is left is green hairy algea. My yellow surgeon directly checked out this rock and the same did my snails. lets see whats going to happen next in my aquarium with the algea

 

[Mpek]

Ok...it worked 100% but I added too much peroxide and probably bathed the corals for a little bit too long. 5 out of 14 of them bleached out. Boneheaded move on my part. Other than that I can say that when I first got them they were covered in GHA and now I see absolutely no GHA.
Thanks for the info on the treatment.

 

[brandon429]

Hi guys! thanks so much for posting especially with starting pics!

I know its a terrible headache but do read the whole thread when you can, its worth it to save the life in your tank. in several places we talk about application techniques that dont contact the coral polyp whatsoever as the ideal starting point, and working down from that if rocks cannot be removed, we have specific dilutions listed and dip intervals so you know how to dip if that is truly the only way to work with your rock scape.

Additionally, there are hidden bits of information you will pick up from the 55 pages lol that I may miss in a recap but I dont mind giving you my opinion on any aspect of the treatment!

Zwagerman one thing I remember in reading about your tank was that the rocks aren't glued together, they are accessible for external treatments around the polyps so that actual corals are not dosed. And, I remember your sandbed wasn't a big issue meaning only the rocks were the goal and that should be easy to work with.

I remember you had a lysmata cleaner shrimp which is highly intolerant of any degree of peroxide in the water.

 

[brandon429]

continuing from pm discussion

Hey Z thanks for updating me I have some brainstorms for your project

we are talking about seeming regrowth on the rock:

Truly the only way to handle delays or setbacks in fighting pests with this stuff is by constant picture updates, we look for tell tale signs of starting to die in the target
we need pics after treatment, and then ones of the regrowth to see if a kill even took place (is it regrowth or the same mass still left on the rock from the initial treatment for example)

many red algae invaders look exactly the same 3 days after treatment that they do 5 mins after, so it appears to not work

and then about day 4 the color changes to hot pink and thats the death knell color change, fish and other animals start enjoying the taste of that which they used to shun

and then in about a week it all falls off the rocks bone white

but there are times the treatment simply doesnt work, however you can see from thread history thats about 1% of what we show here. its too early to tell if you have an unbeatable invader

what we enjoy presenting in the thread is the ability to make an attempt on the tank and control collateral loss. We identify through pics where your risks are, and the most repeatable method for application to see if it works.

on your tank we are still on the test rock phase, so no harm done to anything and we can see if the peroxide is truly making a kill when we know the date of 1st application, the application method, and sufficient follow up pics during the process.

if we have to go without update pics my recommendation would be to remove the test rock again, dont physically remove any biomass since we need something to track, and treat the rock externally again.

using the brand new bottle of 3%, wet only the target areas. pour it right on the algae and let some run off into the sink...rewet it again during the treatment. simply hit it harder this round and lets see if longer time out of the tank 'cooking' gets your rock clean within 4 days, the usual time frame for non red algae macro invaders.

what you saw in the initial kill might not have been an instant removal of your target, truthfully Ive never seen peroxide do anything instant. whatever came off the rock id be interested to see suspended in the rinse bucket or filtered back through some paper towel, with macro pics to see what it may be. I never actually got a solid ID on your rock invader, from the standing back pics it looked like a brownish algae but I dont recall if its thick stemmed macro, or more like a blanketing mass of cyano etc. interested to see some more updates

 

[Zwagerman]

Hi Brandon,

Here are photos of the progress:
photo 1. Before dipping in pure peroxide
photo 2. Directly after rinsing the stone from the peroxide dip
photo 3. About 20 hours after the dip
photo 4. Close-up of a stone with the unknown algae (p.s. the algae has spread in the last 4 weeks to also covering the sandbed). When taking out some large pieces of the algae, it is very slimy.

The steps that i have taken are as followed:
1. Taken a rock out the display tank
2. Put the rock in a clean bucket
3. Rinsing the rock with 120 ml (0.03 gallon or 4.06 fluid ounce)of water peroxide 3%
4. Swirling the rock thru the w. peroxide (because the rock was to big for the little bit of w. peroxide that i had bought) 1-2 min.
5. Adding osmosewater and let is cook for another 1 min. in the mix
6. Rinsing is very good with osmosewater
7. Put the stone back in the display tank.

 

[brandon429]

that is excellent pictures thanks!

if Im reading correctly, the 3% peroxide was further diluted before soaking/application to the test rock. I do believe for the second round we need a simple straight, undiluted peroxide application to a non coral area of the rock. literally hold the rock over the sink or bucket, and pour another bottle of peroxide directly on the bad areas. let sit outside of tank for two minutes, rinse off, put back in tank.

based on excellent macro pics of your invader, which I cannot identify (if pressed Id say its a mixed community of invaders, one component a cyano variant and another component ? brown algae) I do expect them to succumb to peroxide we just have to find the right strength. can you snap a pic of your peroxide bottle label, I want to see if details are different than the medical grade peroxide we mostly use in the thread

so my offer would be lets test the target rock again, with no dilution from the bottle of 3%. simply apply, wait two mins outside the tank, rinse, put back in and get us pics in three days. I really do expect some movement at that time of the test rock.

the sps coral that is enveloped by the invader will die anyway if not saved, so, directly applying peroxide to that test area might not hurt if it can kill the algae in time to save the coral. it depends how far the holdfasts run into the coral skeleton. until we get a test rock, non coral area to respond to your external treatment we need to just wait and let the tank remain as it has for months that way we dont add undue stressors while the corals are under attack. corals that have been allowed to be consumed by any physical competitor are already under stress and can be bleached by direct peroxide application, you will have to pick if you want to test it or not. it doesnt have long anyway with all the algae around it.

clearly doing this size of a tank may take a few bottles. this is a particularly invasive challenge and I appreciate the pics and discussion tremendously.

 

[Zwagerman]

On the side of the bottle is says: solutio hydrogeni peroxydi 3%