Placed in advanced bc I don't think this should be done half-hazardly and not until all other avenues have been exhausted.

So, I just finished with a little experiment.
You see, I've been battling an ongoing battle with Bryopsis in my 10 gal. nano.
And with undectable levels of phosphates and nitrates... I was ripping my hair out.
So, after lotsa online research I read of a few peoples' success with Magnesium addition to control bryopsis. Supposedly Bryopsis can not handle Magnesium levels around 1500-1600 like other things in the aquarium.... It's like it's Kryptonite.
So, after dosing my tank with 10 mL daily for a week... the bryopsis has literally fallen apart in the tank. And to make me happier... Everything else in the tank is thriving with the added Magnesium.
My Chaeto has gone CRAZY!!!
I'm having to trim it every 3-4 days...
This has me very happy and I just wanted to share my success, especially since I know a few of you are battling the Bryopsis too.

Note: The standard GHA growing on my snail's shell is not affected, just the Bryopsis... so if you're battling GHA, there seems to be no help with this method.

interesting, i hadn't heard of that method of "attack" for bryopsis. i wonder what the 'mechanism' behind that is(?).

If this works...I'll marry you.

yup this works. do a search in RC and there is a huge thread with this method not long ago. multiple people have confirmed and were able to reproduce this consistently. interesting enough, no other algae or corals are affected by the high mag, just bryopsis. and the best part, there is no report of bryopsis coming back after the treatment.

I've abandoned this board because of this algea. It's even killed my coral. My tank has been 'shut down' with only my clownfish bobbing around, diminishing coral and more algae. I pray this works.

Reefs... may the force be with you!!!

Maybe the excess Mg stays in the rock, thus why it won't grow back??

Reefs, when we getting married??? I need to let my bf know.

i think it's more like it really kills the bryopsis down to the root. here is the thread on RC:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/printthr...hreadid=1113109

with good pictures too!

I did the 3 days of darkness and it worked pretty well. All of my corals looked awesome when the lights came on as well.

I've had rocks in complete darkness for about a year...the algae stayed nice and green. I think my liverock came from the depths of hell.
I've literally tried everything...expect this. I instantly ordered the magnesium, and if it works I'm marrying the OP. That's all.

If it works, you can start spending more money on nano reef stuff.

I know! I can't wait to see my pocket book drain again!



But really, I just added it, and I'm impatient. The directions said 1 teaspoon per 20 gallons twice a week. For how long should I keep that up? I don't want to overdose.

the directions are probably to maintain proper level of mag, in your case, you need to overdose and shot it up in the range of 1500 - 1600 and keep it there for a week.

did you check out the thread i posted above? the guy who did it saw bryopsis disappear as soon as day 2. and by the time it progress to day 4, the majority was dead.

OK, I just added some more. It says in that thread people have had luch with Kent, but I have Seachem. I hope that's not problematic.

I used Kent daily by bottle directions and it went away on day 5

so, reefs... update???

ya know, you could have mentioned to use kent

well, I don't know if that's the problem, but I haven't had much progress. I thought I saw some of the tips turning white, but I'm not sure. No massive melting. I'm gonna get kent.


btw, the supplement I added was powdered. Kent is liquid, there's probably a major difference between the two. I also need a test kit now because I don't want to OD too much, just a little.

uh, she did.

kent's mgcl and mgso4, not sure their ratio but those should be the main mg components. what was the powder you used?

Yeah well, I didn't know it had to be kent. Apparently in the thread, the people who weren't having luck may have been not using kent
I used seachem, they're more like crystals. I feel uncomfortable about dumping it in until I get results, so it looks like I'll need a test kit. No worries, if it ends up working I don't mind spending any amount.

You all need to get a Mg test kit before you screw your tanks up... willy-nilly dosing of Mg isn't very smart.

true dat. but this is the "advanced" forum! we're invulnerubble heres! muahahahaha!

meh, this is a radical treatment approach for bryopsis anyway. kinda like chemotherapy for a reef imo. reefsrule knows what he's doing. he's not a noob. ...i think.


and you said "willy". hehehehehe

haha I did say willy didn't I!?

Well, the tank I was dosing it in is empty, it's the same tank my iguana knocked a potted plant into...so I'm not really worried about any mishaps

One of my best friends was having a severe magnesium deficiency in his reef about a month ago. He started by using the Seachem, but after almost a week straight of dosing, the Mg levels in his water barely went up. He switched over to Kent Mg and withing a week was seeing good results. IMHO the Kent is either more consentrated, or more easily soluable (sp?).

Thanks for the info. Seachem claims to have 'no ammonia' and I don't see that claim on any other bottle. Whatever they do for that must affect the product. Time to spend more money
It sucks that they don't sell this stuff in pet stores; shipping.

disclaimer: only throw this out there because this is the Advanced forum

if it's specifically the magnesium portion of the formula that cripples the bryopsis, a cheap option may be epsom salts (MgSo3). while i'm not so fond of throwing that much sulfate into the tank, i believe there is some MgCl in the epsom mixture. or you can locate a small bag of de-icer that is predominantly MgCl to supplement, e.g. my own two-part mix is epsom salt (CVS) and dow flake (Home Depot).

just a suggestion if you want to try a cheaper version. again, this isn't something beginners should try. it could be an easy receipe for a quick tank crash as well!

Sounds like the homemade 2-part for Ca and alk. Good info for the advanced though, Tiny!

For those of you that run calcium reactors, I have heard of people using a couple of spoonfuls of dolomite lime to release Mg into the water along with the calcium and alk. I'm actually debating on adding it to mine, but need to research it a bit more.

Just throwing this out there. I had the normal hair alage bloom after my tank cycled and in the spirit of experimentation I decided to use a syringe and squirt different additives I had onto the hair alage and see what would happen. I found that if you squirt Purple Up over the offending algae with a syringe (the Purple Up will stick and settle over the GHA if you squirt right on top of it) and then let it sit for a few days, the hair algae will then lift right off cleanly from the rock with tweezers and can even just be siphoned out with small diameter tubing. I've also yet to have GHA grow back over where I did this.

I think I should update, I don't normally come here often...

I experienced no massive algae die off, but my water quality is beyond crap. I'm planning on spending more time on this during winter vacation (school isn't treating me nicely) by keeping the water clean as well as high magnesium levels. I also need a test kit.

I think I should post pics on this evil stuff.

Bryopsis IS the devil.

I have been battling this algae for 2 yrs now... it's seriously one of the hardest stuff to get rid of.

perhaps it kills off the bryopsis through photorespiration?

im getting bryopsis as well and its growing like weeds. i pluck them as best as i can on my GPS coral but they keep coming back. read this thread and also the RC thread and decided to try out the mg dosing to kill them.

i got the red sea testing kit and followed the instructions as best as i can. and im getting a reading of around 1520ppm. which was within the range where the mg should be.

should bump the mg to 1600ppm or higher? 1700ppm?

I added a yellow tang to my 125G and my bryopsis is fading. If your tank isn't large enough, be a tang and manually remove the stuff! Just take the rock out and give it a good scrub w/your old water change water.

I know adding critters to a tank doesn't eliminate your Bryopsis problem but a control method could be a lettuce nudi. We had a random tank in our lab when I was in college that was overrun with GHA and Bryopsis. It was a 20H if it matters to anyone. It had no coral and just a bit of live rock but was on the light cycle timer with everything else so the stuff grew like mad. We introduced a blenny and several lettuce nudis to this tank and had amazing success with them both. The nudis actually reproduced to the point that we were selling them and giving them to local people for Bryopsis control because we couldn't grow the stuff fast enough to feed them all. I ended up growing Bryopsis in one of our greenhouses for a bit until our population stabilized. It's not a permanent solution but if you have a serious problem this could help you in the short term.

Bill

its not on the rocks...its on the GPS frag. and i do manually pluck them off. but any deeper i dig im afraid im gonna kill my GPS

You can't kill GSP.

ill give the the mg dosing a try before i start scrubbing the gps with a toothbrush.

so 1500ppm mg in my tank with no additives sound right?

i use reef crystals and RO water

Buy a test kit... It is easy to overdose magnesium if you do not know where you started at. If you overdose you will loose stuff in your tank.


Dave

A lettuce nudi can make for good control of GHA in a small tank. I have used them in the past. In a small reef like a 10g, one large adult will never fully take out the problem but they do graze pretty randomly so it doesn't allow the offending algea to grow densely or in one place long enough to really harm the corals. Besides you don't want them to eat all of the algea since that is their food source, and without it they will die. Just make sure you have no way for them to get into a filter intake or you will have an even bigger problem on your hands.

Danny

This is an OUTSTANDING FIND !

I wish I knew about this two years ago when I had a tank full of it
Chit smothered out an entire colony of Orange dragon eyes in about 3 weeks.

reefsrule, any update? did it kill off the bryopsis?

Yeah, any real results?

My mg is above 1600 all the time and it grows in my tank, thankfully only in a couple small spots. I am gonna give it a shot, and add a little MG. I use ESV MG which I know is strong so I hope it works well.

I had some growing in my 90 an dall I added was some lettuce nudis and all gone now

Do tangs eat this stuff?

Because after reading the thread I went to go look for mine and it is all gone, and I noticed the tang picking at the rock.

Some tangs will if the algae doesn't get to long so the best thing to do is pull out as much as you can add a few lettuce nudis and done deal

well i got my elos mag test kit and kent's tech m and started dosing.

i tested my water and its already at 1500ppm mag according to elos test kit. it goes at 100ppm increments. im shooting for 1700ppm mag level as the guy on reef cental went as much as 1680ppm and it didnt kill off anything in his tank. i guess ill see how this goes.

i didnt anticipate my mag level to go up that high. i was shooting for 1700ppm. the bottle said 1ml per gal will raise level up by 18.3ppm. i dosed 6 days worth of mag and my level went up to 1900ppm

so far nothing seems to be affected. corals are well. fish are doing good. snails shrimp and hermits are doing fine. havent seen my emerald crab for a while tho.

bryopsis are slowly dying. turning translucent and white. i see the hermit and shrimp grazing on them for a while. this seems to be working

It worked for me this last summer, took about 3 months for complete die off.