Thoughts on algae removal from LPS skeletons

[cambo123]

I am in the process of building and assembling a secondary tank to quarantine all of my corals before an impending move in August. The primary objective is to get rid of AEFW but I would also like to rid my self of many of the nuisance algae I have picked up over the years. I am cycling dry rock and tossing my old live. However many of my LPS skeletons have various macro algae thriving on them. I am not sure how to approach this. Scraping and scrubbing can only go so far and I fear an H202 dip might be to hard on LPS. I am thinking of pulling them and using a small paint brush on the algae areas and just letting the tissue slime up while out of the water. Anyone think this would wok?


Thanks for looking!

 

[cambo123]

Bump

 

[Reef Frog]

Carefully treating the exposed skeleton that has algae growing on it will definately give you a fresh start.

Try to get the frag or colony to retract its polyps as far as possible as you remove it. Pull off as much algae as you can with your finger nails, tweezers or a very small brush. Then drip, or apply by dabbing with a Q-tip hydrogen peroxide to the skeleton. Hold the coral in such a way to keep it off the polyp as much as is possible as you work. You may want to try cutting the 3% peroxide 2:1 or 3:1 with RO water to be cautious and see how it goes. Let the peroxide sit for a few minutes & rinse in salt water. Brush the skeleton again to remove any lingering debris. You may want to repeat. Then back in the tank.

The LPS I've treated responded well with no fatalities but be careful. Sometimes the polyps will stay retracted for a while, some may slime up and others will regurgitate food, others may put out their stinging tenticles. But for me things always returns to nomal quickly. YRMV. Never used this with SPS.

 

[cambo123]

Exactly what I was thinking. Thanks for the reply Reef frog!

 

[Reef Frog]

You're welcome. Goes without saying, but you'll need to correct the underlying condition or the algae is likely to return. I've had this problem with trumpets that get too much light & detrius accumulates inside the stalks. luckily that's easy enough to correct. There's something about bare coral skeletons that some algae species just love to grow on, even when the rest of the tank is pretty much free of it.

 

[cambo123]

Yeah the macro algaes populating these skeletons were very interesting. More a result of not quarantining then nutrients. The two types that hit the LPS skeletons seemed to have significantly less impact on the rock work...very strange.

 

[cambo123]

Just wanted to post an update here. I ended up keeping the quarantine running at my new location and just yesterday got around to moving the LPS over and killing most the remaining algae. I found that scrapping/brushing before H202 dip worked okay but I never had the patiences to do enough scrubbing to knock out the algae with the H202. Sooooo, I purchased a couple nylon brush dremel bits...WOW. These are used for polishing and the skeletons are white! Very pleased with the results. I ran through several times with the dremel before going in with H202 on a paint brush.

 

[Reef Frog]

Glad to hear your clean up project went well.

I'll be using this method too when the need arises. Great idea. It will work much better & quicker than the manual method for sure, without the drugery. I've been thinking about buying one of those cordless micro rotary tools anyway - they don't cost much & look like you can handle them like a pencil, making the work easy. I also might try a carbon steel rotary brush to a small stubborn patch of turf algae.

I'll have to check if there's something waterproof on the market. The need would be rare, but I can see it being useful for creating holes or depressions for frag plugs for example.

 

[Newstead]

Thanks for sharing the dremel idea. Will be getting a nylon brush for mone.