Jump to content
Coral Vue Hydros

Byprosis/algae help


KeRogers

Recommended Posts

Although I am far from an expert I am not a beginner and I understand the basics of algae control. That being said, I have never seen an algae outbreak like this one. I have been battling it now for a few months. I have tried dimming the lights and using more blues than whites and it only seems to hurt my corals and clam. I have attempted to reduce phosphates by changing my source of RO water. I have added more purigen and I now have 3 packs in my 24 gallon tank. I added a refugium and I have reduced feedings and the only thing that has suffered were my fish and shrimp. The algae doubles in size about every 3 days and I can not get this one figured out. I have a jawfish, dartfish and a scooterblenny in a 24 gallon nano. I feed frozen 3 times a week and pellets 2 times a week. I change filter floss daily and do water 20% water changes weekly. My concern is that this type of algae may be Byprosis and I will have to treat with Magnesium. Before I start to go that route can anyone please help me identify the algae so I can properly treat it?

post-80585-0-06765500-1444708317_thumb.jpg

post-80585-0-72465200-1444708332_thumb.jpg

post-80585-0-95966800-1444708376_thumb.jpg

post-80585-0-01953400-1444708393_thumb.jpg

Link to comment

Looks like good ole hair algae to me. Do you have a clean up crew? I battled hair algae for about a year trying to control nutrients and it never completely cleared it up. Added some hermits, snails, and a lettuce nudibranch and the algae is now 99% gone

Link to comment

Although I am far from an expert I am not a beginner and I understand the basics of algae control. That being said, I have never seen an algae outbreak like this one. I have been battling it now for a few months. I have tried dimming the lights and using more blues than whites and it only seems to hurt my corals and clam. I have attempted to reduce phosphates by changing my source of RO water. I have added more purigen and I now have 3 packs in my 24 gallon tank. I added a refugium and I have reduced feedings and the only thing that has suffered were my fish and shrimp. The algae doubles in size about every 3 days and I can not get this one figured out. I have a jawfish, dartfish and a scooterblenny in a 24 gallon nano. I feed frozen 3 times a week and pellets 2 times a week. I change filter floss daily and do water 20% water changes weekly. My concern is that this type of algae may be Byprosis and I will have to treat with Magnesium. Before I start to go that route can anyone please help me identify the algae so I can properly treat it?

i battle bryop before, sometims you win, sometimes you loose, i had to empty my tank and bleach it, but this looks like hair algae, which is more managable, whats your RO source? tell us more about your tank as well.

Link to comment

I had bryopsis before and it is a terrible algae to fight. I eventually took down my 29gal which was a two year old system, since it was introduced from a frag. I can tell you though, that I would have defeated it if I continued treatment.

 

What I found to work well to weaken the algae was the use of AlgeaFix Marine. After a couple of days the algae was weakening and turning a pale color. It became super easy to pull out. What I did was use a canister filter to suck the weakened algea while putting the return of the canister back in the tank. This way, the algae got caught in the canister and I could do it without having to do water changes.

 

Other people add turbo snails and some type of nudibranch (the name escapes me at the moment, ill find out and edit this)

Link to comment

I had a pretty large clean up crew but the last few weeks they have been dying fast. I am down to 5 astrea, 10 nasarius, 5 cerith. I can see dozens of small snails that I believe are stometella as well as a very large growing population of small starfish. I have sponge covering the bottom of every rock. Unfortunately my source of RO water now comes from the Grocery store. I use the pay by the gallon water that is carbon filtered, UV sterilized and uses RO. I have tried a few different locations to get the water and I used to get RO water from my LFS with similar results but they are now out of business. My house is on well water and I don't think purchasing an RO unit would get better results. I also do not have a protein skimmer. I have not found anything that will fit in a 24 nano with good reviews.

Link to comment

You would get better results with an rodi system but with your likely high tds well water you'll have to replace the filters and resins more often. I'd say it would be worth it though. What are your testing numbers? Lights and lighting schedule?

Link to comment

That's easy fix post in disease and pest forum here, giant peroxide thread mid page

fixed by end of week just like prior 61 pages. Is one option of many. That's not a collection of fails. Your zoas will lose the algae and be just zos. The algae is space competing them, time for war.

Link to comment

I would peroxide the rocks (zoas can survive it, there is many articles how to do this) and manually remove anything else and clean the hell out of that crushed coral if you haven't been.

Link to comment

I would peroxide the rocks (zoas can survive it, there is many articles how to do this) and manually remove anything else and clean the hell out of that crushed coral if you haven't been.

+1

Take out one rock - dip for at least 3 minutes in 50/50 peroxide and tank water. rinse in another container of tank water and put back in the tank. Let us know after 3 days how the rock looks.

 

Peroxide will kill cleaner shrimps so if you have one of those - rehome him or put in a bucket with heater and air.

 

Urchins, mexican turbo snails, emerald crabs, blue hermit crabs will all eat GHA.

Besides the source water, the rocks may be leaching phosphates if they came from an old system.

Link to comment

I had a pretty large clean up crew but the last few weeks they have been dying fast. I am down to 5 astrea, 10 nasarius, 5 cerith. I can see dozens of small snails that I believe are stometella as well as a very large growing population of small starfish. I have sponge covering the bottom of every rock. Unfortunately my source of RO water now comes from the Grocery store. I use the pay by the gallon water that is carbon filtered, UV sterilized and uses RO. I have tried a few different locations to get the water and I used to get RO water from my LFS with similar results but they are now out of business. My house is on well water and I don't think purchasing an RO unit would get better results. I also do not have a protein skimmer. I have not found anything that will fit in a 24 nano with good reviews.

ive found grocery stores to be unreliable when it comes to water, my house is on well water as well and i have my own system, if money is an issue, check out the filter guys, they have a few different systems for under 200. unless you see the water passing through the filters dont assume you cant get better results. on my system with no DI, i run about .5 tds. i used to run a cadlights pls50 great skimmer, but had to upgrade with the tank. i will say it again, an RO system you run will be better.

Link to comment

I did a Kent Tech-M magnesium treatment all the way up to 2000, and in two weeks, I was bryopsis free! Zoas took a hit and closed up, lost color, and some melted. But everything is recovering now and looking better than ever.

Link to comment

Urchins, mexican turbo snails, emerald crabs, blue hermit crabs will all eat GHA.

Besides the source water, the rocks may be leaching phosphates if they came from an old system.

 

I had blue hermit crabs for a while but they got big quick and started attacking corals and fish. It took me a while to even find a place to get rid of the large hermit crabs.

 

What do you mean by "old" I got about 2/3 of my live rock dry from BRS and cultured it with live rock about 10 months ago.

Link to comment

Don't dip do spot treats we are doing one in the thread live time new peroxide entrant

 

tech m as an external treatment works just fine too

 

everyone doses water to affect algae but we get our mileage reversing that

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recommended Discussions

×
×
  • Create New...