Raising magnesium to control algae

[MCsaxmaster]

Tyler,

Yes, magnesium is an essential nutrient, but there is a TON of Mg in sea water, and relatively little is needed. Algae are never going to be Mg-limited in sea water--they'd be almost as likely to be water-limited

Cutegecko3,

Yes, of course copper is needed. It is an essential micronutrient. Only very small amounts are needed though (not a problem since it is usually in very short supply). Heavy excess of copper is quite toxic though. I'm not aware of any organism that uses aluminum as a nutrient. Would you please provide references demonstrating aluminum as an essential nutrient?

Chris

 

[cutegecko3]

sorry if i have confused anybody.but no one has claimed metals are nutrients they are neccessary elements.every known life form needs them,so do we.you can simply read the back of a bottle of centrum vitamins or ask any doctor and he will tell you without them you will die.algae arent much different if these metals arent replaced they will die too.sorry but my memory isnt very good but i believe it was in an issue of coral magazine and i believe i read an article on rc as well.

 

[majesticangelfish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11063781#post11063781 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MCsaxmaster
There could be a lot of things going on, and there's no reason to think that somewhat elevated Mg or SO4 is in any way harmful to Bryopsis (or much else). There do tend to be a lot of impurities in magnesium salts though, perhaps one of those is responsible?...
cj

Agreed. :thumbsup:

 

[MCsaxmaster]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11067320#post11067320 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by cutegecko3
sorry if i have confused anybody.but no one has claimed metals are nutrients they are neccessary elements.every known life form needs them,so do we.you can simply read the back of a bottle of centrum vitamins or ask any doctor and he will tell you without them you will die.algae arent much different if these metals arent replaced they will die too.sorry but my memory isnt very good but i believe it was in an issue of coral magazine and i believe i read an article on rc as well.

Some metals are essential nutrients. Without them an organism will die. Other metals are potent toxins. With a high enough concentration an organism will die. If you do not differentiate the two...well, good luck to you

cj

 

[Fishbulb2]

Boy has this thread taken an absurd turn.

 

[MSU Fan]

Back to Mag/Bryopsis discussion -

One belief from that thread is that the sulphate from the Epsom Salt or Kent Tech-M is being used as a substitute food source for the Bryopsis, instead of its usual phosphate/nitrate dinner.

Since sulphates are not on the usual menu, the Bryopsis is gorging itself on food it somehow can't utilize properly. So it starts to die off. This demonstrates why there has been almost no success using magflake (or is it dowflake?) because that is magnesium chloride (no sulphate).

So while the suggestion by the op in the other thread is that raising the mag level killed the Bryopsis, it is more likely that the magnesium is just the easily measurable portion. Even then, the levels people had to raise their mag level to varies from 1400ppm to 2100ppm depending on the tank, time, amount of Bryopsis, and probably which variety of Bryopsis you are dealing with. Oh, and the amount of its normal diet available during the treatment period.

It seems to work, and I will be trying this shortly since I have both Bryopsis and Derbesia in my tank. I don't think that there has been any conclusive evidence against GHA, but hey, one can hope right?

 

[Fishbulb2]

Yup good luck. I agree that the sulphate is the more likely candidate since the Magflake doesn't seem to work. It's still convenient to measure the Magnesium as you go along though since you can easily deduce how much sulfate you are adding as well. Measuring the Mag also gives us a guideline for others to use as well, requiring that the supplement is the same (Kent or EPSOM).
good luck, I finally just used a small herd of emerald crabs and they wiped out all of my bubble algae. I'll leave them in for a few months, then they get the boot.

 

[MSU Fan]

Thank Fishbulb2 - I'll post some results, but it generally takes a week or so for any real results...so see you in a week or 2.

 

[starsbravo]

what is a good mag test kit to buy in your opinion?

 

[MSU Fan]

I don't have one. I am going to borrow a friends. My understanding is that the Salifert kit is the easiest to use. However, they are tough to find since they are usually backordered...

 

[Fishbulb2]

I love my seachem kit. It includes a reference so if you suspect something is off, you can test it. It is a complicated kit though with many many steps. But I think it's necessary to be more accurate (by first precipitating other ions that can interfere with the mag reading).

 

[MSU Fan]

I don't know how that differs from the way the Salifert kit works, I only know that the Salifert kit is easier to use.

 

[jessezm]

Just FWIW, I didn't see this thread before I decided to raise my MG levels to kill a patch of Briopsis. I used Magflake (mg chloride) to do it and it worked just fine. Using a seachem test kit, my readings went from 1150 to 1450 over a period of 3-4 days and the algae was gone.

So mark one person for which mg chloride worked successfully... The reason I didn't want to use epsom salts was I didn't want to raise my sulfate levels that high.

 

[MSU Fan]

Congratulations - you should post in the other thread, since there seems to be almost no one with that kind of success with the mag chloride.

 

[MSU Fan]

Well, an update. I borrowed a mag kit from a friend, so that I have some way of measuring what I am doing.

So, my parameters are as follows:

Sg 1.024
PH 8.3
Nitrates 0
Phosphates 0
dKH 7
Ca 380
Mg 1020

I used to dose Kalk in my topoff, but stopped recently due to changing to a basement sump. That has been running for about a month now, so everything is settled in nicely.

I am going to again be adding Kalk in my topoff, starting tonight, and wait another week before starting to increase my magnesium. I want to make sure that everything is stabilized before I add any other additives. Again, I will report back in a week with or so with my tank parameters, so that we can track all the changes. Sorry for the delay, but I have had enough loss in my tank recently to make me wary of changes...

 

[Fishbulb2]

What brand or type of mag additive will you be using? Also you should get some snap shots of your various algal type before doing this we can see which stay and which die.

 

[MSU Fan]

I am going to use Mrs Wages Pickling Lime as the kalk additive in top-off, and then Epsom Salt as the mag additive to raise it to 1,500. I'll post some pics of the offending alga either tonight or tomorrow.

 

[madadi]

i had bryopsis for almost a year and it was gone withing 2 weeks after much much frustration! i used epson salt, raised it to well over 1500but thats because i overshot, i didnt use a test kit because i had a hard time finding one at the time. i would recommend to go slow so not too overdo it and hurt something else that the mag treatment was not intended for. use a mag kit. salifert is easy to use and accurate.

i haven't seen any bryopsis for at least 4 months. id say it covered more then half of my tank at the worst point. i have no doubt in my mind the mag treatment is what helped, id still have a bryopsis tank, not a reef tank without it. now as far as the magnesium being the miracle cure, im not sure. maybe something in the epson salt other then it helped, maybe not. i dont have a scientific experiment backed up by documentation to trow in the conversation but it worked and im happy. if you have bryopsis don't hesitate to do it ASAP. it wont hurt your tank if everything else is in check, when i finally tested my mag level, it was more like 2000 and it was like that for months

also, two weeks after the magnesium was dosed 30-40% of my sand turned into a brick, im not sure if that was a result of the high mag levels or if it made something else come out of solution. i do dose kalk and run a calcium reactor so that might have done it, but the sand was fine before the mag treatment.

 

[imsqueak]

I lost "my favorites" during a recent hard drive replacement. Anyone have the link for the site that shows ie: my mg is X, my tank volume is # and I want to raise Mg to Y using Z product?

I've been using lab grade Mg to no avail on my hair algae. I have epson salt under the bathroom sink so I may as well try that...

 

[Mark75]

I think this is what you want.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=102605