pico reef pest algae problem challenge

[brandon429]

MXX
all systemic treatments are slower than drain and treats, why not make a one pass fix on that bad boy by draining the water out, all of it, into a bucket, use a sprayer with any percentage, and hit all the areas. let sit for 5 mins, refill, blaze clean in 3 days. whatever you missed is an easy submerged spot treatment. Refill back with clean water if you can, old water is never beneficial at this stage. if you have to reuse the old water thats fine we aren't pleasing corals just yet its the initial cleaning stage so they won't be placed in a primary producer selective environment.

 

[mkbtank]

MXX
all systemic treatments are slower than drain and treats, why not make a one pass fix on that bad boy by draining the water out, all of it, into a bucket, use a sprayer with any percentage, and hit all the areas. let sit for 5 mins, refill, blaze clean in 3 days. whatever you missed is an easy submerged spot treatment. Refill back with clean water if you can, old water is never beneficial at this stage. if you have to reuse the old water thats fine we aren't pleasing corals just yet its the initial cleaning stage so they won't be placed in a primary producer selective environment.

Thats what I was thinking. Drain. Spray and let sit. refill. = Direct nuke without removing rock! (Great looking back wall btw)

 

[Mxx]

I've just had a look at the tank, which is not looking pretty after the 250 ml of 35%. The purple coralline algae is turning orange and is presumably dead, and the invasive algaes all remain green.The water is cloudy, and I presume full of gunk but the skimmer doesn't seem to be picking up anything which I presume is because of the altered water chemistry at the moment. At this point I've spent more on chemicals to try to eradicate algae on the live rock then I paid for the live rock itself...

Is there any reason now not to switch to a gallon of bleach to nuke the tank, rather than spending an additional £60 on 5 litres more of 2(HO)? Would I really be saving any more bacteria in the live rock and avoiding lingering chemical compounds by using 2HO rather than bleach?

And would filling my tank up with plain untreated tapwater meanwhile cause problems with chemicals and phosphates potentially leaching into the sand?

I was thinking I should potentially just system treat the tank water with bleach for 24 hours, drain the tank, take it outside, spray it with bleach again, let it sit for a day, then fill it up with tapwater and let it sit like that for a few more days before I take it back inside and refill it with clean saltwater?

 

[brandon429]

Why not do the drain and treat we mentioned, no massive chemistry changes etc, works every time. We expected coralline to bleach but it comes back

If you simply drain and treat and refill with new water what you just described won't happen except for the coralline

 

[mayjong]

where is/do you have a list of "safe and unsafe" corals/livestock for using the peroxide with?
thanks

 

[brandon429]

its interspersed throughout the thread, a three hour headache I know. heres a rough rundown just to be concise. pls list the specifics you have in mind I'll let you know in case its been missed.

1. Do external treatments when you can. This allows zero contact on any coral, and you apply the peroxide only to the bad areas, wait, rinse, install.
2. drain and treats are the next order of operations if you cant remove rocks, since its an in tank treatment variant you still have to compare your animals to the list of known sensitives which I'll try to recall below
3. any tank wide treatment where the peroxide is applied to water is a last resort when the first two aren't an option, there is a wide array of acceptable doses and dilutions based on your target and whats in the tank.

For mXX's tank above, Im trying to get him to run the first two methods to get the fastest kill.

list of sensitives
1. cleaner shrimp of the lysmata species, super sensitive, can't deal with the free radicals due to lack of genetic complement is my theory on why they are peroxide wimps. cleaners like stenopus are not affected, maybe among the toughest animals which is an interesting dichotomy between these cousins, implicates strong genetic variations inherited that allow for marked differences in oxygen level tolerance.
2. xenia and hosting anemones have been stressed through rarely killed by in tank variations
3. coralline algae bleaches and comes back regardless of how you treat
4. I always forget the other two and have to go back and re read my own lists lol

corals that are tolerant of in tank dose variations

-all sps, we've not seen any issues with them in the common doses we run. from seriatopora to acropora, all have fared well.
-all lps have survived treatments in the usual doses after closing up then reopening.

-zoanthids and mushrooms almost can't be killed by any dosage of peroxide no matter how you apply it. I purposely try to kill my mushrooms with 35% which can burn formica cabinets permanently, but genetically and mucosally the corallimorphs are so strong they are literally immune to any peroxide which is amazing and warrants further study.

chalices, acans, all the common lps are fine

Post pics of your tank lets see what we've got here

 

[mayjong]

thanks-
i just have a couple pieces of bubble algae on a frag plug with a babys breath favia.
i pick them off, then they return. gonna use the "dip" method . won't dip the whole favia, but some of the edges will certainly be submersed.

i also have one stubborn spot of hair algae. it's about as big as 50 cent piece. can't remove it, gonna try the upside down pill bottle on that.
although i do have a shrimp, gotta check the species...

 

[brandon429]

Sounds good, id go ahead and dilute the peroxide down to 1.5 it w still zap the targets just fine. pls take bef/aft pics! I have a fav too it w be fine after it gets un-mad after the run.

 

[Saltydrip]

I have some peroxide that will kill your shrooms!!!
Methyl Ethyl Keytone Peroxide!!! It's nasty stuff. Not suitable for snything living!! Lol.

 

[brandon429]

hey thats funny I have never heard of that. building clandestine rockets are we

 

[Saltydrip]

It's the activator for several of our polyester resins and paints at work.

 

[Mxx]

Is there any reason now not to switch to a gallon of bleach to nuke the tank, rather than spending an additional £60 on 5 litres more of 2(HO)? Would I really be saving any more bacteria in the live rock and avoiding lingering chemical compounds by using 2HO rather than bleach?

I looked into doing a treatment of bleach, and it turns out that is a rather bad idea at this stage. Rock can be bleached, but then the process to get rid of the bleach takes ages, and involves soaking the rock in muriatic acid. And as such I'd never get all the bleach out if I used it in the tank. Using loads of dechlorinator only helps to a certain degree apparently, and results in other byproducts being produced as well which are not exactly beneficial.

I wish I'd gone through that process of the acid bath with my live rock actually, and thereby turned it into dead rock before I started my tank... But if you're going to do the acid soak then the bleach is in any case redundant, and the acid bath has the added benefit of removing any phosphates which might be soaked into the rock, especially if the rock came from a tank that had been running for a while as was the case with mine...

It seems that I'm going to have to cough up the dough for the 2HO instead, which might not entirely kill my biofilter in any case.

 

[brandon429]

the tank should be drained and spot treated, then refilled w clean water, all algae w die, it can't survive that and it w still preserve your biofilter

one diagnosis for that problem would be to drain and treat so the algae dies, then watch for rebound growth if any, while accurately measuring phosphate in the water.

if a strong rebound growth occurs, in light of acceptable levels in the water column, you've got substrate bound phosphate and this is also not likely but a possibility since your rock was used

also have you done a test in the order of something like pulling out a spare rock off the top, rinse it well, soak it a week in distilled water where we know there was no phosphates and then test that soak water afterwards?

 

[Dexters Reef]

Since you have very little livestock, why dont you remvoe the rock, spread it out in your bathtub, cover all the GHA you can find with peroxide, let it sit in the bathtub for about 5-10 minutes, then place back in the tank? Make sure it is soaked in the peroxide.

When I did this to some of my rocks (have repeated this process 2-3 times now) it always works. Day 1 just bubbling. Day 2 GHA looks fine and I get nervous it didnt work. Day 3 it starts to die off. Day 4-5 its all gone

 

[Mxx]

I hadn't heard about that test for using a distilled water soak to test for potential substrate bound phosphates, but I do have a a few spare rocks so I might try that.

Do many people have recurrent algae after spot treatments however? With how porous rock is I would have thought it would be extremely likely that some Bryopsis roots or spores might be caught deeper in the rock where a surface treatment would not reach them.

Can 35% strength peroxide etch glass or plastic by the way? I'm just wondering how careful I need to be when working with the concentrated stuff.

 

[brandon429]

Plastic i'm not sure, mines in a plastic bottle though. Glass, def not I clean my glass with it routinely.

Drained spot treatments usually wipe out the bryopsis in one pass that's why I think its best for your problem, and that's w3%

Your 35, if spot treated, will certainly wipe any target and the coralline w come back later.

 

[5ergio]

Hi...do you try dosing vodka?
any comments about use it?
Works for me....

 

[brandon429]

Nope this is a peroxide thread we haven't used vodka. many ex vodka users where it wasn't working are here though

they got tired of the cyano outbreaks, if its working for you thats good, we like whatever it takes to get results.

 

[brandon429]

also, vodka dosed into a tank can't cure bryopsis, red gelidium, cyano, etc so while its helpful for some invaders the focus here is a broad scale attack using the peroxide...

 

[laugh]

I'm about to move everything over to my new tank so it is the perfect time to do a total treatment. Would I be best to just treat my rock and frags with full strength when I remove them, then rinse and place in new tank? Or should I treat my rock in a seperate container with the whole tank method? Most of my corals can be removed from the rock but a few will remain. Some monti's and a spongnodes mostly. I want to drill and stack the rock with acrylic rods and hydraulic cement as well so I was thinking to let cure for a few in a seperate container anyway.