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Innovative Marine Aquariums

Is this bryopsis or GHA?


mountaineer

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Update:

 

I started aggressive treatment on 10/25. Treating individual rocks with peroxide put a dent in the bryopsis, but didn't eradicate it. I just had way too much on the glass and tucked into crannies and equipment; I wasn't brave enough to dump straight peroxide into the tank.

 

I also ran down a single lettuce nudibranch, and he's been happy as a pig in slops. I've gotten attached to the little guy ("Oliver Twist"). He just gobbles the stuff, then goes to tan himself under the lights...

 

Anyway, I had tons of bryopsis still around, so I got an Elos magnesium test and a jug of Tech M. I slowly raised my mag levels; at 1500-1600 ppm, the short patches of bryopsis looked sad, turned white, and began to die. The long strands paled a bit but didn't die. I just did hardcore manual removal during water changes and swapped out filter floss regularly. I kept putting the pedal down and raised the mag to 1800-1850 ppm. I've lost no live stock, though a few of the larger nerites have gotten sluggish and/or stressed...

 

As of this week, no bryopsis is visible to my eye, either on glass, rocks, or equipment. I'm going to keep up my mag levels for the rest of the month, just to be careful. Still a good amount of regular GHA, though, but I'm getting more coralline, too.

 

Here is something odd and I wonder if others experienced it; dosing the Tech M did wonky things to my salinity. It would be at 1.025 before I went to bed, and when I woke up, the refractometer read 1.027 or 1.028! Due to evap, I usually woke up to 1.026. It would continue to rise through the day, and I'd have to top-off with RODI liberally to keep salinity in line, which kept driving my mag levels back down. For several days, it was up & done. I decided to remove the carbon from my HOB, just to see what would result.

 

(Someone later told me he suspected the carbon was removing the magnesium and leaving chloride behind, resulting in the higher salinity. That's beyond the realm of my knowledge; alas, chem class always put me to sleep.)

 

I pulled the carbon, and shortly my salinity went back to normal and my mag levels stabilized. The carbon/Tech M combination was working some kind of voodoo...Now I'm just running Phosguard.

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