Valonia macrophysa outbreak

[DownTown]

Hello All...

It's been a long time since I've posted, but now I need some advice again. I have a nasty outbreak of valonia that has crept up on my tank, and many of the cysts are in rocks or crevasses in my rocks that won't allow me to remove them.

A little background - my tank is a 135 reef, with hard and soft corals, and 5 fish. I skim with an ETSS Gemini 800 running an Iwaki 55RLT. 2x175 MH + 320 fluorescent actinics. About 160 lbs of rock. Tank has been up since Oct 2002.

My question is, if I spend some time and use something to pierce all the cysts that I can get to, will be helping or exacerbating the problem? I was thinking of a needle mounted to some sort of fiberglass stick or some such to reach in and poke at them, hopefully killing the cyst without spreading them.

Questions? Answers? (Gossip? Scandal? Rumor?)

Thanks a lot for your thoughts.

Dave Town.

 

[Opcn]

poping the bubbles will not kill them. physically remove the bubbles as you find them, mithrax genus crabs have been known to eat them as well.

 

[DownTown]

Rats... I was hoping you wouldn't say that. What if I used the blade and split them wide open ? There is no way I can remove them all. Many are growing in between the nodules of the rock, or in places I just can't get my fingers... I tried mithrax crabs, but they were more or less useless. I've read that some tangs, like Nasos, will eat it... Is it worth a shot, considering that there is a nice yellow tang already in the tank ?

D.T.

 

[Plantbrain]

Remove everything you can by hand, yes, it's a lot of work if you let it go.

I've eradicated it from 4 tanks and it's never came back.
Poke what you cannot remove and do your self a big favor, get some nice scissors/tweezers to pick and primp.

They are really useful.

If you can poke them, you can grab them with tweezers and get most of it off.

If there is a lot, try working one part of the tank one day, then other the following etc. Larger water changes also seemed to help.

The client's tank I came to fix have about 60-70% coverage of 3 species of noxious algae, about 50% was Valonia.

Been clean since, but took a while.

Nail things early, before they get out of hand.
All weed issues should be treated that way.

Regards,
Tom Barr


Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[DownTown]

Tom - thanks for the resopnse. Looks like I'll me in manual cleaning mode for a while.

Again, thank you for the response.

D.T.